International Distributive Justice Research Articles

The Middle‐Income Kingdom: China and the Demands of International Distributive Justice

The Middle‐Income Kingdom: China and the Demands of International Distributive Justice

INTERNATIONAL CLIMATE DEBT AND DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE (“We can pay our debts to the past by putting the future in debt to ourselves.” - John Buchan, British novelist and politician)

As the effects of climate change worsen, poor nations call for climate justice. This Editorial conducts a holistic analysis of this call for climate debt. It examines merit of such calls by applying the three principles of distributive justice. It then demonstrates how international law obligates rich nations to redress poorer nations for climate abuses. Finally, it provides four ways that climate debt can be vindicated. While many developed nations have promised increased climate investment abroad, these are empty promises, plunging poorer nations into debt and insufficiently meeting their demands. This paper offers more comprehensive and justiciable pathway to repay climate debt to poorer nations.

Global Justice and the Role of Stakeholding

Most research in global justice considers international distributive justice from a perspective of what duties, if any, affluent states have towards people in severe poverty. The debate usually focuses on whether positive or negative duties are most relevant and how they should be applied. This article challenges this orthodoxy by defending stakeholder theory as a promising new approach overcoming limitations in current debates through promotion of the virtue of stakeholders having a say where they have a stake.

Global Justice and Stakeholding

The orthodox position in global justice is to consider questions about international distributive justice from a perspective of what duties, if any, affluent states have towards people in severe poverty. The debate has focused on whether positive or negative duties are most relevant and how they should be applied. This article challenges this orthodoxy by defending stakeholder theory as a promising new approach overcoming limitations in current debates through promotion of the virtue of stakeholders having a say where they have a stake. Forthcoming in International Journal of Applied Philosophy (draft version)

Solidarity through Redistribution and Insurance of Incomes: The EU As Support, Guide, Guarantor or Provider?

Income redistribution and insurance are core functions of welfare states. What role should the EU play in this domain? I examine the purchase of normative theorizing on social justice on this question, building on the contrast between three models of EU involvement: the EU as Support, which implies the sharing of resources through intergovernmental transfers; the EU as Provider, which implies EU cross-border transfers towards individual citizens; the EU as Guide or Guarantor, which implies that the EU formulates normative policy ideals. I review different normative accounts of justice for the EU (Ronzoni, Viehoff, Sangiovanni, Van Parijs), and how they bear on the choice between these models of EU involvement in welfare state solidarity. These accounts evolve between two extreme positions. On the one hand, an account based on supranational justice as ‘background justice for nation states’ implies that the EU should be a mere instrument in the hands of its member states. The opposite extreme position is that EU should be a laboratory for international distributive justice, whereby national welfare states are demoted to the toolbox of instruments. I argue that an account of justice for the EU must search for a middle ground, whereby neither the national welfare states nor the EU are demoted to mere instruments. I conclude that the EU should support the member states’ welfare states in some of their key functions, on the basis of common social standards and in pursuit of upward convergence. Such a ‘Social Union’ would be a Support, Guide and Guarantor, both in the realm of insurance and redistribution. Through the establishment of interstate insurance, it would be a true ‘insurance union’, but, from the point of view of individual citizens, it would not become a direct Provider of insurance. It would engage in interstate redistribution, but not in interpersonal cross-border redistribution.

Global Justice and Stakeholding

The orthodox position in global justice is to consider questions about international distributive justice from a perspective of what duties, if any, affluent states have towards people in severe poverty. The debate has focused on whether positive or negative duties are most relevant and how they should be applied. This article challenges this orthodoxy by defending stakeholder theory as a promising new approach overcoming limitations in current debates through promotion of the virtue of stakeholders having a say where they have a stake.

Subverting the Idea(l) of Equal Opportunity in Global Trade: The Paradoxes of Differentiation for Peripheral States

The existing multilateral trade regime is often beleaguered for unfairly privileging its Western guarantors. Since not all countries command the same opportunity sets to compete in global markets, world trade rules sanction über-rich markets to extend autonomous trade concessions to capital-poor countries without demanding any reciprocal treatment. Given the entanglements of trade in the thorny issues of international development and distributive justice, this paper joins a crowded trade as/and fairness debate by judging how the present global economic order (dis)favors developing and least developed countries on the basis of equal opportunity. In a Roemerian-Rawlsian reading of economic fairness, I start by elevating the demands of diffuse reciprocity over the misguided minimalism of mutual reciprocity in a twin attempt to morally defend asymmetric exchanges between asymmetric trading partners and to redress background inequalities in access to the merits of commerce. While the notion and praxis of altruism in international trade generally allude to northern democracies in modern political thought, this article also unmasks parallel models of special and differential treatment projects lorded over by two seemingly unusual suspects: the Eurasian Economic Union and the People’s Republic of China. In juxtaposing weak and strong conceptions of equal opportunity vis-à-vis leading compensatory measures presently open to needy nations, I articulate how the strong standard of equal opportunity is partially cantilevered by existing level-playing-field structures and yet brutally bulldozed at once by the politics of donor discretion. Finally, although a diluted form of diffuse reciprocity grows more fashionable among affluent and emerging economies, unlocking the strong standard of equal opportunity still insists on a solidaristic system of preferences to diffuse both opportunities and obligations arising from a less tilted trading order as widely and deeply as possible.

Redistribution between Rich and Poor Countries

The topic of redistribution between rich and poor countries opens a can of worms. This paper first inquires into what we mean by some of these words and second, considers the role of taxation in redistribution. It briefly considers the various modes of redistribution to address poverty and inequality, including the role of taxation, within a country before turning to consider modes of redistribution between rich and poor countries. The paper then turns to consider whether we are asking the right question. Should the question, really, be about redistribution between rich and poor people? In an increasingly global and digital era, how might we reconsider the role of taxation in achieving this? The paper briefly touches on state-based and cosmopolitan theories of international distributive justice, before considering whether we need to unpack the very concept of the country, nation-state, or government to achieve the transnational provision of public goods and redistribution between rich and poor.

Is Investor-State Arbitration Unfair? A Freedom-Based Perspective

Investor-state-dispute-settlement (ISDS) is an arbitration mechanism to settle disputes between foreign investors and host-states. Seemingly a technical issue in private international law, ISDS procedures have recently become a matter of public concern and the target of political resistance, due to the power they grant to foreign investors in matters of public policies in the countries they invest in. This article examines the practice of ISDS through the lenses of liberal-statist theories of international justice, which value self-determination. It argues that the investor-state arbitration system illustrates how liberal-statist theories of international distributive justice ought to care about relative socioeconomic disadvantage, contra the sufficiency principle that they typically defend. The sufficiency principle draws on a questionable conception of the freedom that self-determination consists in.

Propuesta de un consenso económico superpuesto en el debate sobre la justicia distributiva internacional

<p class="p1">El debate sobre la justicia distributiva internacional se ha centrado tradicionalmente en una discusión normativa acerca del alcance de las obligaciones de los ciudadanos de los pueblos ricos hacia los pobres del extranjero. Las distintas posiciones presuponen ciertas nociones económicas empíricas a la hora de emitir juicios sobre la justicia del ordenamiento económico internacional. En función de las teorías económicas que se tengan por válidas, una misma posición normativa puede justificar distintos ordenamientos incompatibles de las instituciones económicas internacionales. Este artículo busca explicitar las nociones empíricas que subyacen en las posiciones normativas y propone un consenso económico superpuesto para alcanzar una base de justificación neutral que permita fundamentar juicios sobre la justicia del ordenamiento económico internacional.</p>

The sovereignty of human rights

Acknowledgments 1. Field Missions Human Rights as Moral Concepts Human Rights as Political Concepts Human Rights as Legal Concepts The Plan of the Book 2. Sovereignty and Structure Sovereignty and its Exercise Between the National and International Sovereignty and its Distribution 3. Human Rights: Three Generations or One? Generations as Chronological Categories Generations as Analytical Categories Civil and Political Rights as Monitors of Sovereignty's Exercise Social and Economic Rights as Monitors of Sovereignty's Exercise 4. International Law at Work Labor Rights as Instrumental Rights Labor Rights as Universal Rights Labor Rights and the Structure of International Law 5. The Ambiguous Appeal of Minority Rights The Moral Ambiguities of Minority Rights The Political Ambiguities of Minority Rights The Interdependence of Sovereignty and Minority Protection 6. International Indigenous Recognition Indigenous Territories and the Acquisition of Sovereignty Indigenous Recognition and the International Labour Organization Indigenous Recognition and the United Nations The Purpose of International Indigenous Rights 7. Self-Determination in Three Movements Self-Determination and the Legality of Colonialism The Many Paradoxes of Self-Determination Bridging International Law and Distributive Justice 8. Global Poverty and the Right to Development The Emergence of the Right Implementing the Right From Global Poverty to International Law The Right to Development and the Rise and Fall of Colonialism Bibliography Index

Addressing the Global Climate Change Problem in GATT/WTO Law: The Vision of a New International Climate Law Based on International Distributive Justice

‘International distribution justice’, not ‘most favored nation’ (MFN), is the appropriate core principle to govern a law of obligations such as that of the World Trade Organization (WTO). The international distributive justice principle delivers opportunity for economic development because it observes the ‘differences’ principle that characterizes distributive justice, whereas the MFN principle does not, for it distributes obligations erga omnes partes. On the international distributive justice model, obligations are distributed in accordance with WTO member countries’ capacities to bear them. The distribution metric is simple: the degrees of obligation to observe WTO law should range from ‘nil’ to ‘absolute’ along the range of ‘least-developed’, ‘developing’ and ‘developed’ countries. The rank ordering of countries should occur on the basis of their gross domestic product (GDP) status alone, for that status is sufficiently indicative of every country’s economic condition. Accordingly, the current WTO sense of ‘least-developed’, ‘developing’ and ‘developed’ countries should be abandoned in favor of their distinction in terms of their GDP status. Quite properly, there is global interest in the development of a climate law that will deliver the reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The core principle of that law must also be international distributive justice, in order that there be an equitable distribution of the cost burden of GHG reduction. The concept of international distributive justice is discernible in the ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’ doctrine of multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs), but there is no clear relationship between MEAs and the WTO/GATT legislative scheme. A new climate law securely based on the international distributive justice principle will determine that relationship once it is also the core principle of WTO law. Then only the legislative power of the United Nations is required to give the new climate law a coercive power that obliges all GHG emitters.

Identity, Nations and the Requirements of Global Justice: Limits of the Debate in Democratic Politics

How do we, as individuals, communities and nations, arbitrate between the requirements of justice or our sense of justice, at the local or national level, as compared to our idea of justice in the world at large? Is the demand for global justice a demand for greater equality among nations, for systems of just global governance to manage an increasingly interconnected world of increasing complexity, or just another utopian ideal? This article seeks to bring together two separate debates in contemporary social sciences and social philosophy to discuss these questions. The first part of this article examines questions of identity, individual and collective, and the expressions and practice of nationalism that forms the basis of international exchanges based on the debates between communitarian and universalist social philosophers. The second part of the article analyzes how the idea of global justice, and in particular, international distributive justice, is limited or constrained by the questions of identity and nationalism under the democratic and institutional compulsions of nation states, even when they accept the necessity of institutions of global governance. The later work of Rawls and their extensions are a common thread in these two debates. JEL: F6, F52, F54, D63

Freedom beyond the threshold: self-determination, sovereignty, and global justice

In current debates about global justice, statist and nationalist theories appeal to the right to self-determination in argument against egalitarianism beyond borders, and in general as a reason for caution about substantive international duties of justice, lest the exercise of self-determination would be too tightly constrained. Has self-determination—an important heritage of decolonization—no longer a role to play in the argument against international inequality and disempowerment? In this article, I examine a dominant interpretation of self-determination in the global justice debate, as defended prominently by John Rawls and David Miller and find it wanting. Specifically, two challenges are raised: at the conceptual level this interpretation leaves unclarified the distinction and relationship between sovereignty and self-determination; at the normative level, this interpretation adopts a sufficiency view of international distributive justice that neglects that problem of relative extents and measures of self-determination, beyond the threshold. While the article's argument is mainly of a critical scope, it is suggested that a more robust theoretical account is required of the content of the right of self-determination, and in particular of the freedoms that the right confers to the right-holders in the socioeconomic domains and their extents.

「国際的な」 分配的正義

Contemporary political philosophers have explored issues related to global justice, such as global inequality and absolute poverty. In particular, they have mainly concerned with the ‘scope’ of distributive justice. Whereas Statism have stressed that the scope is limited within domestic realms, Cosmopolitanism have claimed that it is applicable at the global scale. By rejecting accounts from both camps, this paper explores the possibility of distribution among the nations as international distributive justice. As cosmopolitans have aptly criticized, statists have overlooked that institutional relations which are presumed to trigger distributive justice are not limited to those within states. Cosmopolitan, however, have also failed to provide us with grounds by which they have denied the role of state as one of crucial institutional relations. If we understand institutional relations as a precondition for distributive justice, it is necessary to seek international distributive justice which compatibles with domestic distributive justice. Also, because of the interdependency between domestic and international distributive justice, latter is as important as former.

The Concept of the State in Political Philosophy

In a lecture given in 1991, while working on the never finished third volume of his series on theories of justice, Brian Barry gave a rare glimpse into the ideas with which he was wrestling – twenty years ahead of present-day political theorists. What is the role of the state, how are we to conceptualize it, in a world if globalization, and against the background of a legitimate appeal for international distributive justice?

Addressing the Global Climate Change Problem in GATT/WTO Law:

‘International distribution justice’, not ‘most favoured nation’ (MFN), is the appropriate core principle to govern a law of obligations such as that of the World Trade Organisation (WTO). The international distributive justice principle delivers opportunity for economic development because it observes the ‘differences’ principle that characterises distributive justice, whereas the MFN principle does not, for it distributes obligations erga omnes partes. On the international distributive justice model, obligations are distributed in accordance with WTO member countries’ capacities to bear them. The distribution metric is simple: the degrees of obligation to observe WTO law should range from ‘nil’ to ‘absolute’ along the range of ‘least-developed’, ‘developing’ and ‘developed’ countries. The rank ordering of countries should occur on the basis of their gross domestic product (GDP) status alone, for that status is sufficiently indicative of every country’s economic condition. Accordingly, the current WTO sense of ‘least-developed’, ‘developing’ and ‘developed’ countries should be abandoned in favour of their distinction in terms of their GDP status. Quite properly, there is global interest in the development of a climate law that will deliver the reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The core principle of that law must also be international distributive justice, in order that there be an equitable distribution of the cost burden of GHG reduction. The concept of international distributive justice is discernible in the ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’ doctrine of multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs), but there is no clear relationship between MEAs and the WTO/GATT legislative scheme. A new climate law securely based on the international distributive justice principle will determine that relationship once it is also the core principle of WTO law. Then only the legislative power of the United Nations is required to give the new climate law a coercive power that obliges all GHG emitters.

Towards a Kantian Theory of International Distributive Justice

This article examines where Kant stands on the question of the redistribution of wealth and income both nationally and globally. Kant is rightly seen as a radical reformer of the world order from a political standpoint seeking a republican, federative worldwide system; can he also be seen as wanting to bring about an equally dramatic shift from an economic perspective? To answer this question we have first of all to address the question of whether he is an egalitarian or an inegalitarian at the national level. Certainly there are certain social and material inequalities within a civil society Kant is prepared to accept and there are some he is not. This would imply that he would affirm certain inequalities at an international level and that there are others upon which he would recommend action. Thus the question arises as to whether or not it is appropriate for Kantians to regard the current enormous inequalities in wealth and income between individuals living in different parts of the globe as scandalous and in need of change. The paper throughout relates the problem of distributive justice within the state to the problem of distributive justice amongst states, arguing that this approach is warranted by Kant's own method. Particular attention is paid to how Kant's own approach to political philosophy may be deployed to underpin a change to a distinctive type of international distributive justice.

Minority Rights in International Law

Why should international human rights law vest members of a minority community - either individually or collectively - with rights that secure a measure of autonomy from the state in which they are located? To the extent that the field offers answers to this question, it does so from its deep commitment to the protection of certain universal attributes of human identity from the exercise of sovereign power. It protects minority rights on the assumption that religious, cultural and linguistic affiliations are essential features of what it means to be human. There exists an alternative account of why minority rights possess international significance, one that trades less on the currency of religion, culture and language and more on the value of international distributive justice. On this account, international minority rights speak to wrongs that that international law itself produces by organizing international political reality into a legal order. This account avoids the normative instabilities of attaching universal value to religious, cultural and linguistic affiliation and instead challenges the international legal order to remedy pathologies of its own making.

Minority rights in international law

Why should international human rights law vest members of a minority community with rights that secure a measure of autonomy from the state in which they are located? Answers to this question typically rest on a commitment to the protection of certain universal attributes of human identity from the exercise of sovereign power. Minority protection thus operates on the assumption that religious, cultural, and linguistic affi liations are essential features of what it means to be human. This essay offers an alternative account of why minority rights possess international signifi cance, one that trades less on the currency of religion, culture, and language and more on the value of international distributive justice. On this approach, international minority rights speak to wrongs that international law itself produces by organizing international political reality into a legal order. This account avoids the normative instabilities of attaching universal value to religious, cultural, and linguistic affi liation and, instead, challenges the international legal order to remedy pathologies of its own making. 1. In a kaleidoscopic redistribution of sovereign power after the First World War, the once-great Ottoman Empire ceased to exist, its territory divided, partitioned, and reallocated to friends and enemies alike. France received mandates from the League of Nations to govern Syria and Lebanon. The United Kingdom received mandates to govern Iraq, Palestine, and what eventually became Israel and Jordan. Turkish nationals repelled Allied forces occupying their country and established the Republic of Turkey, while huge swaths of the Arabian Peninsula became parts of modern-day Saudi Arabia and Yemen. The instruments that invested these political developments with international legal validity dramatically reshaped the structure of the international legal order. The 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, for example, delineated the territorial sovereignty of the new Republic of Turkey, replacing the 1920 Treaty of Sevres, which had been negotiated but not ratifi ed by the Ottoman Parliament. In doing so, the Treaty of Lausanne restored Turkey’s previous boundary with Bulgaria and Western Thrace, annulled the transfer of Smyrna to Greece, and relieved Turkey of postwar obligations to compensate Allied civilian nationals for wartime losses. The treaty also provided for extensive population exchanges between Turkey and Greece and repudiated Turkey’s