While few cosmopolitans would dispute the account given above, for many the reforms suggested by Pogge and others do not go far enough. In particular, insofar as they leave state sovereignty in place, they remain constitutionally unjust. Instead cosmopolitans such as David Held and Andrew Linklater argue that reforming the practices of states and
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Box 9.5: Discussion points
Australia as a good international citizen
Middle-sized and small powers like Australia have significant capacity to work towards global justice. They have the opportunity to act, in Hedley Bull’s words, as ‘local agents of the world common good’ or as ‘good international citizens’. This idea was championed by Labor Foreign Minister Gareth Evans, who argued that Australia could punch above its weight in the international forum and could promote universal values like human rights in its foreign policy. Peter Singer and Tom Gregg argue that a good global citizen ‘seeks global solutions for global problems . . . [and] will not bargain too hard in order to extract the maximum benefit for its own citizens’ (Singer and Gregg2004: 80). Singer and Gregg have made an assessment of Australian foreign policy from a cosmopolitan perspective.
They conclude that Australia’s current record is not one ‘of which any nation could be proud’ (Singer and Gregg2004: 80) in five key areas of foreign aid (poor), UN cooperation (poor), trade (moderate), global environment (very poor), asylum seekers and refugees (very poor). Australia’s standing as a good international citizen therefore has diminished in the last decade due to the changed priorities of the Howard government. In particular its scepticism about multilateralism, its reduced commitment to certain values enshrined in UN institutions and its refusal to sign the Kyoto Protocol indicate to many that Australia increasingly prioritises its national interest over the common good.
international institutions is only the beginning of the necessary cosmopolitan transformation.
Taking their lead from Kant and German critical theorist J¨urgen Habermas (see chapter8) they argue that the categorical imperative requires a full democratising of the international realm, as well as an account of distributive justice.
Cosmopolitan democrats tend to be social contract theorists of a different sort to Rawl-sians. They begin by arguing that we cannot simply or fairly imagine what idealised agents might choose in the way that Rawls claims. Human beings are too diverse for any theorist to be able to anticipate what they might agree to. In addition, the Rawlsian solution is vulner-able to the criticism that it is insensitive to cultural differences in varieties of justice because it imposes a liberal view on others.
Instead of beginning with a hypothetical social experiment, cosmopolitan democrats argue that in order to be legitimate, the principles of global justice ought to be derived from a real dialogue between real people. They argue that the idea that people should be able to con-sent to actions which affect them should be taken literally. This principle has been embodied in democratic societies in the form of representative elections and institutional accountabil-ity. The same practices should also apply in the international realm. They argue that there is a duty to create institutional structures that allow participation in decision-making on matters that affect everybody, such as rules of global trade and finance. What is needed to make the international order both more just and more legitimate is the democratising of its core insti-tutions and practices. International instiinsti-tutions such as the UN, the WTO and the World Bank, as well as regional institutions, ought to be made representative of people and not just states. This would involve forms of direct representation and election and the creation of a third directly elected chamber in the UN (Held1997).
The advantage of this approach to global justice is that it is a means for preventing the imposition of a single distributive scheme on anyone. The principles of distributive justice
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would not be worked out by politicians or philosophers alone and then imposed on the world;
rather they would, at the very least, have to be consented to by the directly elected represen-tatives of all the world’s people. In addition, a degree of redistribution would be necessary to enable effective participation in any such assemblies. To participate in democratic practices requires that one not only be physically capable, but also be able to access relevant knowledge and information. Therefore cosmopolitan democracy requires global justice even as it seeks to legitimise the decision-making process.
It is important to note that it is not being argued that global justice requires either a world state or the destruction or homogenisation of other cultures. The main argument is that when people are affected by a rule or a practice of an institution (or other actors) then they ought to be able to participate in the decision-making process or have direct representation in the bodies most involved.
Conclusion
Cosmopolitans of all persuasions begin with the assumption that justice, understood broadly, is the first virtue of social institutions. In other words, the very purpose of the state or polit-ical community is to provide justice for its members. Cosmopolitanism also begins with the argument that the equality of the human species requires universal principles of justice. This argument is buttressed by the profound degree to which international institutions such as the WTO now affect people across the world. Interdependence and globalisation mean that even
‘national’ justice is in part dependent upon global factors. Under these circumstances justice necessarily requires global solutions, including the democratising of the international realm.
Questions
1. Why do Rawlsian cosmopolitans criticise Rawls’s solution to global justice?
2. What is justice and should it be global?
3. Should the global order be more democratic?
4. Should democracy be cosmopolitan?
Further reading
Beitz, C. 1979, Political theory and international relations, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Early attempt to apply Rawls’s insights to international relations.
Linklater, A. 1998, The transformation of political community: ethical foundations of the post-Westphalian era, Cambridge: Polity Press. Important attempt to outline a cosmopolitan theory of international relations.
Pogge, T. 2002, World poverty and human rights: cosmopolitan responsibilities and reforms, Cambridge: Polity Press. Impressive philosophical account of universal obligations to alleviate poverty.
Walzer, M. 1994, Thick and thin: moral argument at home and abroad, Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. Important exposition of communitarian ethics.