Many of the foremost defenders of distributive egalitarianism hold that its scope should be limited to co-citizens. But this bracketing of distributive equality exclusively to citizens turns out to be very difficult to defend. Pressure is placed on it, for instance, when we recognize its vulnerability to ?extension arguments? which attempt to cast the net of egalitarian concern more widely. The paper rehearses those arguments and also examines some ? ultimately unsuccessful ? responses which ?citizenship egalitarians? might make. If it (...) does turn out that citizenship egalitarianism cannot be defended, then two options are open to its adherents: to modify that position substantially in order to embrace at least some global egalitarian components, or to argue for a reorganization of citizenship regimes in such a way that citizenship might properly track the subjects of egalitarian justice. Both are radical options. Finally, the paper then briefly considers one way in which an attenuated form of citizenship egalitarianism might still be defended. (shrink)

any of us think that we have duties of distributive justice towards our fellow citizens that we do not have towards foreigners. Is that thought justified? This paper considers the nature of the state's relationship to distributive justice from the perspective of utilitarianism, a theory that is barely represented in contemporary philosophical debates on this question. My strategy is to mount a utilitarian case for state-specific duties of distributive justice that is similar in its basic structure to the one that (...) is standardly mounted for special duties towards the near and dear. I begin with a discussion of whether or not the co-citizen relationship can be justified in terms of its welfare consequences. I then consider what the answer to that first question implies concerning the duties of distributive justice that arise within that relationship. (shrink)

In this thesis I defend the principle of global egalitarianism. According to this idea most of the existing detrimental inequalities in this world are morally objectionable. As detrimental inequalities I understand those that are not to the benefit of the worst off people and that can be non-wastefully removed. To begin with, I consider various justifications of the idea that only those detrimental inequalities that occur within one and the same state are morally objectionable. I identify Thomas Nagel’s approach as (...) the most promising defence of this traditional position. However, I also show that Nagel’s argument does not even justify the elimination of detrimental inequalities within states. A discussion of the concept of political legitimacy rather shows that egalitarian justice is not a necessary condition of the justifiability of the exercise of coercive political power. I, then, consider other, more Rawlsian approaches to the question of detrimental inequalities. These views appear more plausible than Nagel’s position and argue that egalitarian duties also arise in certain international contexts. But also these more global theories of distributive justice suffer from shortcomings. Since they make the application of duties of justice dependent on the existence of social practices they cannot adequately account for the justified interests of non-participants that are affected by these practices. The counter-intuitive implications of practice-dependent theories lead me to investigate the plausibility of a theory that does not limit justice to existing practices and that argues for the inherent value of equality. This theory is global egalitarianism. I defend global egalitarianism by debilitating three objections that opponents of this idea frequently present in the relevant literature. Finally I also address two particular objections to the idea that global egalitarian duties are institutionalizable with the help of coercive global authorities. (shrink)

Matias Risse and Gabriel Wollner’s On Trade Justice largely neglects the role of money and central banking in ‘trade fairness.’ This article rehearses why J. M. Keynes thought money and global central banking matters for national capacity, and suggests that this helps answer Risse and Wollner’s chief objection to Aaron James’s Fairness in Practice.