The global justice gap

Abstract

The ‘global justice gap’ refers to the state of affairs in which the just entitlements of the global poor do not correlate with the justly enforceable duties of the global rich. The possibility of a global justice gap is controversial, because it is widely thought that claims of justice cannot exist unless they are matched up with corresponding duties. In this essay, I refute this sceptical view by showing that the global justice gap is indeed a theoretical possibility. My strategy is to argue for a particular way of understanding the concept of distributive justice which I call the ‘dual-component model of justice’. On this view, distributive justice is a single value with two distinct components: (1) a fairness component, which specifies the situation that people would be in if they lived under conditions of what I call ‘basic distributive fairness’, and (2) a legitimacy component, specifying the rights that people have according to what I call the ‘principles of justified coercion’, which limit the ways in which they may permissibly be coerced. The global justice gap arises when the two components of justice are not in alignment. This happens when, although it is within the collective capacity of the members of the developed world to bring the global distribution much closer to the ideal of basic distributive fairness, there are considerations that make it unjust to coerce them into exercising this capacity.

Keywords:

• global justice
• justice gap
• distributive justice
• two standpoints
• Nagel
• Miller

Acknowledgements

For helpful discussion of earlier drafts of this paper, I would like to thank participants at the Forum for Legal and Political Philosophy in Cambridge, the Centre for Ethics, Law and Public Affairs Seminar in Warwick, the Politics Colloquium in Manchester and the Theories of Global Justice Workshop in Glasgow. Special thanks to Carl Knight and, in particular, Jonathan Quong for detailed written comments on the main arguments in the paper.

Notes

1. For many, following Hohfeld, this ‘correlativity thesis’ is a conceptual truth, though there are also other more substantive reasons for thinking that claims must always correlate with duties. For a discussion of some of these reasons, see O’Neill (2005).

2. GCAP’s self-declared mission is to ‘[challenge] the institutions and processes that perpetuate poverty and inequality across the world to defend and promote human rights, gender justice, social justice and security needed for survival and peace’. Available from: http://www.whiteband.org/en/about.

3. Some reject the distribution claim; see e.g. Nagel (2005), Sangiovanni (2007), Blake (2001), and Meckled-Garcia (2008). These writers argue either that judgements of distributive justice cannot be coherently applied at the global level, or that the global distribution, while unjust, is not ‘radically’ unjust, because justice at the global level does not demand anything more than the provision of a basic minimum. Others reject the empirical claim; see e.g. Pogge (2008, p. 10). These writers argue either that the admittedly radical injustice of the global distribution could be eradicated without significant sacrifice on the part of the well-off, or that even with significant sacrifice on the part of the well-off, the radical injustice of the global distribution will persist. A third group of writers rejects the duty claim; see e.g. Singer (1972, p. 231), and Unger (1996). These writers argue that if the global distribution is radically unjust and the only way to rectify this injustice is for the well-off to make significant sacrifices, then the well-off do have an enforceable duty of justice to make these sacrifices.

4. ‘… as I conceive of it, this does not amount to a moral bias in favour of the status quo’, Nagel (1991, p. 173).

5. I acknowledge here my significant debt to G.A. Cohen, whose work on the concept of justice – especially in Cohen (2008) – has had an enormous influence on my development of the dual-component model and in particular my characterisation of the fairness component. The names of the two components have also been influenced by the discussion in Cohen (2011a).

6. Some people will want to include these reasons under the category of ‘personal prerogatives’. This does not affect my argument.

7. Compare Christiano (2008, p. 30), ‘The principle of equality stands out as a fundamental principle when we take the impersonal point of view toward persons. When we step back from our particular interests, roles, and special relationships and we take a perspective on persons and their lives generally, we see that it is important that their well-being is advanced and that that well-being be advanced in a way that accords with justice’.

8. I borrow this idea, though not in all its specifics, from Matthew Kramer’s discussion of ‘inchoate rights’ in Kramer (1998, pp. 45–49).

9. Another reason the claims are ‘inchoate’ is that we do not yet know their precise weight relative to other inchoate claims that people might have as a result of other, competing social ideals (i.e. ideals other than the ideal of basic distributive fairness). Unfortunately, I do not have space here to discuss this aspect of the inchoateness of the claims that arise from the fairness component of justice.