This chapter contains section titled: Introduction A Global Distribution Principle? Problems with Globalizing the Difference Principle Conclusion Notes.

A branch of political philosophy treats human rights as the output of democratic deliberations by a certain kind of polity. This school, represented by theorists like Benhabib and Besson, do not see detailed human rights as constraints on legitimacy but rather as the specification of abstract human rights (such as the "right to have rights") in terms of obligations and the distribution of burdens. This paper argues that the position is untenable as the notion of democratic decision-making depends on sufficiently (...) clear and specified human rights standards and the political respect they guarantee. Furthermore, the form that any democratic deliberation will take must express respect and reasonableness towards both rights recipients and burden-bearers. To do so, a clear sense of human rights must exist as a threshold, as must standards of societal justice and fairness. Human rights must come first, as a background condition of democracy. (shrink)

This paper argues that the concern for distributive justice might be universal rather than contingent on a morally optional relationship, but limited in the demands it places upon us where a reasonable assurance of reciprocity is lacking. Principles of distributive justice apply wherever people are interacting, even if they have no choice but to interact, but are grounded in the goal of constituting relationships of mutual recognition as equals, and so partly conditional on compliance by others. On this view, there (...) is no unilateral duty to share the benefits of cooperation fairly, only a unilateral duty to help establish institutions that will permit fair sharing with a reasonable assurance of reciprocity. (shrink)

Cosmopolitans argue that the account of human rights and distributive justice in John Rawls's The Law of Peoples is incompatible with his argument for liberal justice. Rawls should extend his account of liberal basic liberties and the guarantees of distributive justice to apply to the world at large. This essay defends Rawls's grounding of political justice in social cooperation. The Law of Peoples is drawn up to provide principles of foreign policy for liberal peoples. Human rights are among the necessary (...) conditions for social cooperation, and so long as a decent people respect human rights, a common good, and the Law of Peoples, it is not the role of liberal peoples to impose upon well-ordered decent peoples liberal liberties they cannot endorse. Moreover, the difference principle is not an allocative or alleviatory principle, but applies to design property and other basic social institutions necessary to economic production, exchange and consumption. It presupposes political cooperation—a legislative body to actively apply it, and a legal system to apply it to. There is no feasible global state or global legal system that could serve these roles. Finally, the difference principle embodies a conception of democratic reciprocity that is only appropriate to cooperation among free and equal citizens who are socially productive and politically autonomous. a Footnotesa I am grateful to K. C. Tan for many helpful discussions and criticisms of this essay. I am also grateful to the other contributors to this volume for their comments, and to Ellen Paul for her many helpful suggestions in preparing the final version of this essay. (shrink)

The present article explores ‘anti-cosmopolitan’ arguments that shared institutions above the state, such as there are, are not of a kind that support or give rise to distributive claims beyond securing minimum needs. The upshot is to rebut certain of these ‘anti-cosmopolitan’ arguments. Section 1 asks under which conditions institutions are subject to distributive justice norms. That is, which sound reasons support claims to a relative share of the benefits of institutions that exist and apply to individuals? Such norms may (...) require strict equality, Rawls’ Difference Principle, or other constraints on inequality. Section 2 considers, and rejects, several arguments why existing international institutions are not thought to meet these conditions. (shrink)

One of the central debates within contemporary Anglo-American political philosophy concerns how to formulate an egalitarian theory of distributive justice which gives coherent expression to egalitarian convictions and withstands the most powerful anti-egalitarian objections. This book brings together many of the key contributions to that debate by some of the world’s leading political philosophers: Richard Arneson, G.A. Cohen, Ronald Dworkin, Thomas Nagel, Derek Parfit, John Rawls, T.M. Scanlon, and Larry Temkin.