Patrick Taylor Smith has submitted the following post:
If you work in global justice, you are probably familiar with (and sick of) what might be called 'the basic structure' debate that started with Charles Beitz's Political Theory and International Relations. Briefly, if you are a relational egalitarian, then you think that co-membership in some set of institutions or co-participation in common practices* is necessary to activate or trigger obligations of egalitarian distributive justice. Of course, there is considerable disagreement between relational egalitarians concerning which institutions or practices appropriately undergird claims of equal distributive consideration (which is not necessarily the same strict equality of distributive shares, since egalitarian distributive justice presumably can include something like a difference principle, but you get the idea). Furthermore, there is disagreement at the global level about how to properly characterize global governance and economic institutions. So, the 'basic structure' debate concerns whether the appropriate institutions exist at the global level (that is, do global institutions constitute a basic structure?) that justify a global-egalitarian distribution of the benefits of social cooperation. Generally speaking, those who think that the basic structure is essentially coercive say 'No, there is no global basic structure' while those who think that the appropriate institutions are those that structure cooperative and productive activity say, 'Yes, there is.' **
I don't think it is too controversial to say that this debate, if not utterly stale, has reached the point where one might suspect that the moves have gotten a bit baroque. But Miriam Ronzoni's article, 'The Global Order: A Case of Background Injustice?' does a really excellent job of giving the debate some new life. See, most of the foregoing debate has been about, if I may, the ontological question: is there a global basic structure that triggers a global demand for egalitarian distributive justice? Yet, Ronzoni asks, 'Should there be a global basic structure even if there isn't one right now?' Rawls, for example, more or less assumes that we have a domestic basic structure and that a global one is unnecessary, end of discussion. Most people have objected to Rawls by saying there is a global basic structure (a claim I find pretty implausible), whereas Ronzoni's piece offers a whole new avenue for discussion: why do we have basic structures and when should we create them? So, she argues that we should build a global basic structure in order to handle certain problems that we simply cannot reasonably expect even relatively just states to handle bilaterally in the realm of international politics.
Anyway, as you can perhaps tell, I'm very much on board with thinking about global justice in these terms*** Yet, the few times I have mentioned the Ronzoni's view to senior people, I've gotten blank stares. As I'm very impressed by this article (which isn't to say I agree with everything in it), and I really think that we can breathe new life into the global egalitarian justice/global basic structure debate if we attended to it more carefully, I consider it quite under-appreciated.
* People should be the lookout for a paper of Kristina Meshelski's (http://csun.academia.edu/KristinaMeshelski/CurriculumVitae) where she argues that relational egalitarians should focus on structures instead of practices or institutions.
** See my forthcoming SEP Entry on 'International Distributive Justice' with Michael Blake for a deeper analysis of these positions.
***This is also one of the reasons that I think early modern political theory is especially relevant these days. Hobbes, Locke, Kant, and company were dealing with a world where the modern state was still in an inchoate form, so there were dealing with a developing institutions.
Thanks for the shout-out Patrick! As you know I also think Miriam's paper is excellent and I really hope more senior people take notice of it. Also really looking forward to your SEP entry. Good post!
Posted by: Kristina Meshelski | 08/04/2013 at 04:26 PM