Abstract

Global justice is a nearly all-encompassing concept, which not only permits, but makes it mandatory, to reflect upon its importance in the most diverse areas of global politics – trade, migration and tax regulation, for instance. Unsurprisingly, then, most theorists of global justice have analyzed the import of their conception for the practice of development aid/cooperation. Additionally, some also have argued that justice represents the most relevant normative concept for spelling out as to how to understand development. However, there are many lacunae in this field of research. The continuing criticisms that the existing theories of global distributive justice entail a parochial justification of the development practice and an insufficiently democratic understanding of development demand a revisiting of these theories. Moreover, very little scholarly attention has been devoted so far to the fact that the criteria that are employed to allocate official development assistance may lack a sound normative justification. In addition, new research in development economics on the question as to how to best explain global economic inequality promises to shed new light on moral questions regarding the proper kind of ascription of moral responsibilities for reducing this inequality. And finally, on a more practical level, few theorists of global justice made explicit contributions to the ongoing deliberations about the post-2015 development agenda. The special issue of the journal Global Justice: Theory Practice Rhetoric aims to contribute to filling the existing research gaps concerning the various linkages between global justice and the theory and practice of development.