The Cosmopolitans vs. the Neo-cosmopolitans
A case study on the arguments of Rawls, Beitz, Pogge, Caney, Barry, Wenar, Miller, Blake and Nagel
Cosmopolitans tend to argue for universal duties of fairness and equality by taking domestic theories of justice and applying them on a global scale. Along the way, they also establish universal duties of minimal wellbeing.
Cosmopolitans usually take the best arguments for duties of fairness and equality in the domestic arena, and use them to argue for universal duties of fairness and equality in the global arena. Thus for example, Beitz and early Pogge take Rawls’s argument for his Difference Principle in the domestic arena (i.e. the original position), extend the parties involved in the original position to include everyone around the world, and use it to argue for something similar to Rawls’s Difference Principle in the global arena. Caney also does this when he argues for his global norms of distributive justice, which include subsistence rights, equality of opportunity, a principle of equal remuneration for equal work, and a priority for the poor.
“… I now want to introduce a general claim about the character of the arguments employed to defend cosmopolitan principles of justice… the scope claim: the standard justifications of principles of distributive justice entail that there are cosmopolitan principles of distributive justice. The latter maintains that the very logic that underpins most domestic theories of justice actually implies that these theories of distributive justice should be enacted at the global, and not (or not simply) the domestic, level”.
The difference between Beitz’s and Pogge’s positions is just that, while Beitz contends that the resulting universal duties of fairness and equality are exactly the same as Rawls’s Difference Principle in the domestic arena, Pogge contends that they would be less stringent than their domestic analogues.
Against the cosmopolitans, the neo-cosmopolitans argue that arguments for duties of fairness and equality in the domestic arena cannot and should not be seamlessly moved into the global arena to argue for universal duties of fairness and equality. Some of their arguments target a specific cosmopolitan. For example, against Beitz, Barry argues that trading in the global arena is not the relevant kind of cooperation that grounds Rawls’s arguments for his Difference Principle in the domestic arena. Thus Beitz cannot just use Rawls’s argument to argue for a Difference Principle in the global arena.
There are also arguments targeting certain approaches that cosmopolitans widely use. For example, against the prospect of extending Rawls’s theory of justice, i.e. the two principles of justice, from the domestic arena to the global arena, Wenar argues that the global public political culture is different from the public political culture of a liberal democratic society.
While the latter supports Rawls’s theory of justice in the domestic arena, the former does not support it in the global arena. Against those he calls the ‘global extrapolators’, Richard Miller argues for a view similar to Barry’s, that the mere fact of economic interdependence in the global arena does not sustain a demanding duty to help the disadvantaged. This is because what primarily ground this duty in the domestic arena are not facts of economic interdependence, but facts of political interaction. Finally, there are arguments targeting cosmopolitans in general. For example, Blake argues that there are duties of fairness and equality in the domestic arena, i.e. states that coercively impose property laws. This is because those duties are required to justify this kind of coercion. But this kind of coercion does not exist in the global arena. Thus there are no duties of fairness and equality in the global arena. Nagel also argues for something similar. According to Nagel, there are duties of fairness and equality in the domestic arena, i.e. the arena of sovereign states. This is because sovereign states impose coercion in the name of their subjects, and those duties are required to justify such an imposition. But there is nothing in the global arena that imposes coercion in the name of the individuals around the world. Thus there are no duties of fairness and equality in the global arena.
I believe that the main difference between Blake’s and Nagel’s position is how they understand the kind of coercion that is at stake here. For Blake, it is the coercive imposition of property laws by states. While for Nagel, it is the coercion imposed by sovereign states in the name of their subjects.
David Miller also offers arguments against the cosmopolitans. According to his first argument, there are duties of fairness and equality in the domestic arena because justice involves establishing the conditions under which individuals within a domestic arena can continually act as free and equal citizens. In contrast, nothing in the global arena is equivalent to that. Rather, individuals relate to each other in the global arena “... as citizens of independent national communities, where each citizen body has a collective interest in determining the future of its own community”.
In his second argument, Miller argues that as long as the cosmopolitans argue for their case by arguing that nationality is a morally arbitrary feature of individuals, then the cosmopolitans can be refuted by showing that nationality is not a morally arbitrary feature of individuals.
This debate between the cosmopolitans and the neo-cosmopolitans runs deep and from an epistemological point of view it is impossible to dichotomize. However we can observe, based on the arguments that we have analyzed, that cosmopolitans and the neo-cosmopolitans agree that there are universal duties of minimal wellbeing.
Furthermore, this relation that is specified in terms of fairness and equality is determined by the form of that cooperation. This is how I think the debate between the cosmopolitans and the neo-cosmopolitans can be resolved
Brian Barry, Humanity and Justice in Global Perspective
Charles Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations
Charles Beitz, The Idea of Human Rights.
Michael Blake, Distributive Justice, State Coercion, and Autonomy
Simon Caney, Justice Beyond Borders
Thomas Nagel, The Problem of Global Justice
Richard Miller, Globalizing Justice
Thomas Pogge, Realizing Rawls
John Rawls, A Theory of Justice
Leif Wenar, Why Rawls is Not a Cosmopolitan Egalitarian
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