Non-domination's role in the theorizing of global justice

Abstract

What role should the political ideal of non-domination play in theorizing global justice? The importance of this ideal is defended most prominently in neo-republican political thought where non-domination embodies a conception of political freedom and serves as the foundational ideal of state citizenship [Pettit, Philip. 1997. Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government. Oxford: Clarendon Press; Laborde, Cecile. 2008. Critical Republicanism. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press]. It has been argued, however, that these theories can be extended to the global political community and yield a separate framework for global justice. This paper agrees with proponents of non-domination that there is a significant critical and normative potential in the ideal's capacity to speak to the structural inequalities of power in the global order and to make them central, in a way that not only encompasses but also moves beyond questions of redistribution. Yet it argues that this should be conceived as a complement to existing approaches to global justice, rather than a full-fledged alternative. Non-domination's central contribution lies in reframing our perspective on the political authority of states and global institutions. As such it should be viewed as a freestanding principle to assess the political legitimacy of institutionalized global power relations.

Keywords:

• non-domination
• political legitimacy
• global justice
• global power relations

Notes

This paper was written prior to the publication of Philip Pettit's book On the People's Terms (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012) and for this reason does not address the more detailed account of political legitimacy he offers there.