Normative Concepts of Global Distributive Justice and the State of International Relations Theory

Abstract

The terrorist attacks in September 2001 on the world's most affluent country have highlighted the need to address the increasing disparity between the wealth of different nations. Rather than seeing global distributive justice as a concept non-conducive to their national interest, the affluent states might begin to accept it as an integral part of it, as one of evidently many means to prevent the proliferation of political extremism. This article analyses the role that international relations (IR) theory in its current state can play in this process. Since IR theories purport to explain, and possibly predict, behaviour in settings in which states face problems for which solutions beyond states are required and since global distributive justice is one such problem, it should be reasonable to expect that IR theories provide some answers to these questions. To that end the article critically assesses the major scholarly trends in the field for their ability to accommodate two recently developed normative proposals on global distributive justice put forward by Thomas Pogge and Hillel Steiner. IR theory is found to be inadequate to fulfil the demands usually directed at a theory, in that it fails, firstly, to appreciate the significance of norms in international politics and, secondly, to prescribe and recommend alternatives to policy makers.