Institutional consequentialism and global governance

ABSTRACT

Elsewhere we have responded to the so-called demandingness objection to consequentialism – that consequentialism is excessively demanding and is therefore unacceptable as a moral theory – by introducing the theoretical position we call institutional consequentialism. This is a consequentialist view that, however, requires institutional systems, and not individuals, to follow the consequentialist principle. In this paper, we first introduce and explain the theory of institutional consequentialism and the main reasons that support it. In the remainder of the paper, we turn to the global dimension where the first and foremost challenge is to explain how institutional consequentialism can deal with unsolved global problems, such as poverty, war and climate change. In response, following the general idea of institutional consequentialism, we draw up three alternative routes: relying on existing national, transnational and supranational institutions; promoting gradual institutional reform; and advocating radical changes to the status quo. We evaluate these routes by describing normatively relevant properties of the existing global institutional system, as well as by showing what institutional consequentialism can say about alternatives to it: a world government; and multi-layered sovereignty/neo-medieval system.

KEYWORDS:

• Consequentialism
• institutions
• global justice
• institutional consequentialism
• global governance
• world government
• neo-medievalism
• state

Acknowledgements

First and foremost, we would like to thank the participants in the World Government or Else? workshop held in Zurich and Konstanz in 13–14 June 2017 for their generous comments on the presented manuscript. The manuscript in different forms has also benefited from comments at the Swedish Congress of Philosophy in Uppsala (Sweden), the ‘Significance of Borders’ conference in Budapest (Hungary), and the Workshop on Minority Rights in Tromsø (Norway). Attila Tanyi’s work on the article was supported by a EURIAS Junior Research Fellowship (COFUND Programme – Marie Sklodowska Curie Actions – FP7) at the Collegium Helveticum (University of Zurich/ETH) in Zurich. Last but not least, we would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their extensive and constructive comments as well as Prof Eric Palmer, one of the editors of Journal of Global Ethics, for his review of our paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Attila Tanyi http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2027-9446

Notes

1 See Miklós and Tanyi (ms). Others, consequentialists as well as non-consequentialists, have also noted this ability of institutions. See, for a non-consequentialist such position, Nussbaum (2006), 309–310.

2 For details see UN Millennium Development Goals Report (2015), World Bank (2016), Pogge (2007, 2).

3 For a good overview of consequentialism, see Sinnott-Armstrong (2015).

4 The obvious reference point here is the classic argument in Singer (1972).

5 See Miklós and Tanyi (ms). The objection is built upon two pillars: one, that consequentialism is excessively demanding and, two, that an adequate morality should not be excessively demanding. For an early statement, see Sidgwick (1907, 87); for a recent discussion, see Cullity (2004), Chapter 1.

6 The term ‘ethical division of labour’ comes from Nagel (1979). See also Nagel (1991) for a more detailed – but non-consequentialist – investigation of this Rawlsian thought.

7 In particular, this basic structure includes roughly ‘the political constitution and principal economic and social arrangements’. It covers legal rules affecting property and the organization of the economy. Property is determined not only by property law regimes but by a broader set of public norms including contract and commercial law, laws in criminal law against force and fraud, public health law, labour regulations, etc. See Rawls (1993, 258, 282–283). There is, of course, more to be said about what institutions are; we do this in Miklós and Tanyi (ms). What is important for us in this paper is that this view of institutions is compatible with consequentialism, which, we think, it is. Compare the utilitarian position on institutions in Bailey (1997) and Hardin (1988) for a proof. 

8 Hardin (1988, 6–9) discusses another type of limit of reason: limitations concerning our value theory. The idea is that we are limited in assessing both utility to ourselves and utility to others. These limits have partly to do with the difficulties concerning interpersonal comparisons of value and with the possible non-additivity of value (such as the case of organic wholes).

9 Hayek, the economist, that is, not Hayek, the political philosopher: we are not suggesting that a recognition of the informational role of markets commits us to Hayek’s general libertarian political theory.

10 Public goods are defined as goods that are non-excludable and non-rivalrous. That is, no one within the relevant population can be excluded from their benefits and their consumption by one person does not reduce the quantity or quality available for others.

11 For a discussion of the case of vaccinations in this context, see Miklós (2009).

12 A further way in which economic and political institutions assign responsibilities in a constitutive manner is by determining distributive shares through an authoritative determination of property rights. See Miklós (2011).

13 As noted at the start of this paper, in Miklós and Tanyi (ms) we argue that another reason to endorse institutional consequentialism is that it tackles the demandingness objection. Its ability to do so, however, is in part dependent on the considerations discussed in the previous two sections. In particular, we argue for three points. First, institutions reduce consequentialist demands on individuals by restricting individual contributions to the moral cause to the setting up and maintaining of institutions. Second, institutions economize on the time and attention spent by individuals on the pursuit of consequentialist goals. Third, institutions also remove some of the motivational burdens in making and executing decisions. We also respond to objections to these claims: that institutional consequentialism merely transfers the demandingness problematic to the institutional level and that even if maintaining an institution is not objectionably demanding, setting up institutions is. Finally, using in part the considerations we will discuss as favouring gradual global institutional reforms, we consider how institutional consequentialism can handle the demandingness objection on the global level.

14 Our approach differs both from classical consequentialism and from the Rawls-inspired existing global justice literature. Although consequentialism – or, more precisely, utilitarianism – was born as a theory that targets institutional reforms, it is, in its classical form, a monistic theory: the same principles apply to institutions as to individuals. By contrast, institutional consequentialism is a pluralistic theory, and it thus differs markedly from classical consequentialism. Cf. Berkey (2016) and Murphy (1998) for opposing views. On the other hand, much of the existing global justice literature is overwhelmingly focused on institutions, as both sources of justice requirements and agents of justice; however, these theories endorse an institutional division of labour on Rawlsian – i.e., non-consequentialist – grounds. We thank an anonymous referee for raising this point.

15 Goodin (1995, 61–62), Bailey (1997, 24–27), Hardin (1988, 14–17, 100–110) seem to agree, although their use of the term ‘rule-consequentialism’ is ambiguous between two readings. The same is true of Mulgan (2007, 126–128).

16 For classic statements of such positions, see Hare (1981); Railton (1984).

17 We leave it open whether or not this rule belongs to common-sense morality and we also do not take side on the matter whether institutions, owing perhaps to the indeterminacy in what the act-consequentialist criterion of rightness requires, themselves would specify this rule for individuals.

18 We are deliberately using tentative language here – ‘perhaps most important’, ‘not necessarily’ – since, as we explain below, a two-level consequentialist can never be sure that these decision rules are always the best ones to apply.

19 We say ‘typically considered’ because two-level consequentialists are not restricted to regarding all social rules as rules of thumb. They can support the adoption of legal rules and social practices that do not allow direct application of the consequentialist principle in particular cases. These rules may even penalize actions that do in fact maximize utility. Thus, another role of institutions in two-level consequentialism is to modify behaviour by changing payoffs and preferences.

20 How rare these occasions would be, depends on whether the rule to set up and maintain institutions would be part of an ideal (understood as involving conditions of full compliance) or a non-ideal set of decision rules. In the former case, following the rule (jointly, we presume, with other rules) would produce extensional equivalence with the requirements of act-consequentialism; in the latter case, it would not.

21 Nonetheless, we keep an open mind on these matters. There are two ways to go: either abandon the act-consequentialist criterion of rightness or keep it but abandon two-level consequentialism. As to the first, interesting candidates could be Regan’s (1980) co-operative utilitarianism or Mendola’s (2006) multiple-act consequentialism. Although we personally are not in favour of it, a switch to some kind of rule-consequentialism is also possible. Alternatively, but along similar ‘indirect’ lines, we could abandon standard act-consequentialism, and instead adopt a view that only applies consequentialism to questions about the right institutions, then going on to evaluate acts indirectly (e.g. the right act is the one that is required by the best institutions, and/or that makes the biggest positive contribution to bringing and about and/or sustaining the best institutions). As to the second approach, one option would be this: by the lights of act-consequentialism itself, individuals’ most pressing or important moral obligations concern their contributions to the establishment and upkeep of institutions because it so happens that the most effective ways for individuals to do good proceed via individuals’ effects on institutions.

22 Relationists hold that a necessary condition for requirements of distributive justice to exist among individuals is that the latter stand in specific practice-mediated relations with one another. One representative of this view is Nagel (2005). Note, however, that relationists about global justice allow for the existence of humanitarian moral obligations outside these relationships.

23 Some, like Nagel (2005), seem to hold that a non-relational theory must be monist (i.e., the same principles must apply to individuals as to institutions), but we fail to see the connection. The relational/non-relational distinction concerns the grounds of normative claims against others (with consequences for their scope), whereas the monism/dualism distinction is about the site of these claims (i.e., where these principles apply: individuals, institutions or both). Although both invoke institutions, they do so in an entirely different role.

24 This strategy coincides with proposals by relationist advocates of global justice. For an early representative see Pogge (1994); for a more recent one see, Moellendorf (2011). Of course, the justification for their proposals differs from the consequentialist position we started out with, since they hold that claims of justice are grounded in institutional relations.

25 This list is not exhaustive. Part III of Bull (1995) discusses further alternatives; however, and we agree, he discards them as unable to solve global problems, which is our primary concern here.

26 Simon Caney (2005, 149–150) helpfully describes the system of sovereign states as possessing four defining features: legality; supremacy; territoriality and comprehensiveness. Legality refers to states’ authority over their jurisdiction. Supremacy indicates that this authority is final and absolute – with no other final and absolute authority over the same jurisdiction elsewhere. Territoriality refers to the fact that authority is defined over a territorially specified unit. Finally, comprehensiveness means that sovereign states have authority over all issues, not just some. Without trying to determine whether or not the world’s current institutional set-up can still be described as a system of sovereign states, we think that this is a useful conceptual framework for thinking about alternative institutional configurations.

27 We are aware that more should be said of neo-medievalism given the relative unfamiliarity of the position to most theorists. However, this paper, given its space limitations, is not the right forum for such in-depth discussion. We must ask the reader to turn to the writings of Zielonka (in particular) for a comprehensive analysis.

28 It is unclear that a neo-medieval global system would fare any better. Although Zielonka (2006: Chapter 1; 2014: Chapter 4) argues that his neo-medieval system can produce integration in the face of radical diversity and plurality and is able to produce democratic legitimacy, his focus is on Europe (the EU) solely. Hence the question whether and how his arguments can be extended to the global sphere is left unanswered.

29 This might seem too easy an exit: one may worry that this argument neglects the possibility of change from below from exceptional figures, such as those of Lech Walesa and Martin Luther King. These are people who might be thought of as exceptional but they do not come from exceptional backgrounds: they appear as an exception only after the fact of their successful action. However, the problem is that the exceptionality of these individuals could well be understood in ethical terms: that what they did went beyond the call of duty, that is, it was supererogatory. Then what we would have to end up with at this point is the vexed matter whether (institutional) consequentialism has a place for the supererogatory – a classic objection to consequentialism being that it has no such room. We would like to steer clear of this dispute in the paper and leave discussion of this objection to another occasion, however. We thank Eric Palmer for pointing out this challenge to us.

30 Bull (1995, 275, 280–281) makes at points similar claims. He says that the comparison of alternative utopias is a sterile and fruitless exercise: whether, e.g. the world state would produce global peace is something we have as much reason to assume to happen as we have to assume the same about the state system. His point appears to be that these are utopias so removed from reality that we cannot theorize about them fruitfully.

31 His example with Marxism is telling (Risse 2012, 315–317). The Marxist utopia gave us a picture of the future. But we simply could not predict and imagine what that future in all relevant detail would look like once the basic ideas were implemented. Namely, hidden structural features came to the fore and had devastating effects. We could not predict this not only because we could not tell how likely this was to happen but also because we could not picture what would happen.

32 According to Risse (2012, 322), the notion of realistic utopia has three parts. One, a realistic utopia is always relative to a time, and our age involves global structures based on states but nothing beyond that. Two, a realistic utopia reconciles us with our social world: there are some aspects of this world that we cannot or should not change. Three, a realistic utopia must be such that what it recommends can be the subject of reasonable agreement among people and, apparently, radical institutional alternatives cannot fulfil this role. For a good overview of criticisms of the Rawlsian notion of realistic utopia, see Simmons (2010). For clear contrast, see Cohen (2008) and Sen (2009).

33 Comprehensive discussion of this subject, we think, would require evaluating the possible institutional alternatives according to three criteria: desirability (is the given system desirable intrinsically or instrumentally?), necessity (is the given system one that we need to achieve important aims of ours?) and possibility (is it realistic, possible or conceivable that the given system will come about?) The best, perhaps, is to see this discussion as giving us a picture in terms of a balance of reasons (provided by these three criteria) and that alternative system ‘wins’ which is, on balance, supported by these reasons. Seen in this light, what we have done in this paper is to provide and assess some of these reasons – in particular, in the possibility and necessity dimension – but we have of course not provided a comprehensive discussion of all the reasons in all dimensions.