Shared Understandings, Collective Autonomy and Global Equality

Abstract

The political theorist Michael Walzer has usually been taken as an opponent of global distributive justice, on the basis that it is incompatible with communal autonomy, would endanger cultural diversity, or simply on the basis that principles of global distributive justice cannot be coherently envisaged, given cross-cultural disagreement about the nature and value of the social goods which might be distributed. This paper challenges such an identification. Particularly in his recent work, Walzer demonstrates a surprising degree of sympathy for the claims of global distributive justice, even of the egalitarian variety; but the precise nature of his (surprising) commitment to global equality is not yet well understood. The paper therefore examines the contours of Walzer's global egalitarianism, paying particular attention to the conclusions we might draw firstly for our understanding of the opposition between global equality and national self-determination (which is more complex than has sometimes been thought), and secondly for the relationship between global equality and shared understandings.