Why the Weaker Version approximates the Stronger Version

However, once we take the weaker version of the reformed practice view to its conclusions it seems that it will ultimately have similar results as its more

295 _{See, for instance, Peter Singer, One World (New Hav en: Y ale Univ ersity Press, 2004), ch. 3.} 296 _{Singer, for example, quotes the WTO’s Article XX that speaks out against arbitrary and}

unjustified discrimination between countries concerning tariffs (see Peter Singer, ibid., p. 66).

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demanding twin. That is to say that also Cohen, Sabel, and Ronzoni will have to acknowledge that a consistent application of their own view must in many cases lead to an endorsement of the demand for transnational egalitarian duties of justice.

To recall, unlike Nagel, supporters of the reformed practice view of justice do not argue for the application of international egalitarian duties by appeal to the need to justify any coercive authority. Thus, even though Ronzoni argues t hat cases of background injustice “cannot be stopped by any rules of conduct that states can adopt; only supranational institutions can fulfil this task, by setting up appropriate incentives, sanctions, and counterbalances,”2 9 8 _{this does not} mean that the creation of such global authorities would also generate egalitarian duties among their subjects. The service conception of authority explains that and why equal treatment is not a necessary condition of legitimate authority. So, just like the need coercively to enforce (possibly justified) international sufficientarian duties would not ultimately lead to global egalitarian obligation, neither do (as such) efforts to authoritatively ensure global background justice.

Instead, at the outset out our discussion of the reformed practice view of justice it became clear that its proponents ground their calls for international distributive justice on Rawls’s explanation of this idea. We also saw that we should establish supra-national authorities so that they can perform morally vital purposes on behalf of and in the interests of those they coerce. If, as Buchanan and others suggest, even democratic societies have problems fulfilling such duties and if international authorities could help states to conform to them, we have weighty moral reasons to recognise that these authorities act in

298 _{Miriam Ronzoni, “The Global Order: A Case of Background Injustice? A Practice -Dependent}

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our name.2 9 9 _{However, in a footnote Ronzoni rejects Abizadeh’s direct path} from the need for a basic international structure to the transnational application of egalitarian concern.3 00 _{This is, as we saw, because she thinks that our present} international practices are too diverse and of a differing quality so that they cannot all be thought to require egalitarian justice.

Ronzoni might well be correct in thinking that (contrary to the view taken by Abizadeh, James, and Moellendorf) currently there exist few international practices that are integrated and momentous enough to warrant the application of this ambitious ideal. But the need to establish and ensure just terms and conditions for the participants in international cooperative interactions can only increase the degree of global interconnectedness among people from different countries. Many of our international practices might therefore soon actually require equal concern among their participants. As James asserts,

Even if the globe is not fully integrated, […], independent or pre- existing factors that were once relevant or non-arbitrary will inevitably become irrelevant or arbitrary over time. The value of local factors will become inseparable from the influences of global markets. As markets are increasingly opened, the moral trajectory is toward ever greater positive claims to fair gains. As integration increases, such claims will only increase – and perhaps increase quickly – over time.3 01

If James is right about the development of global interactions, it is to be expected that in the not too distant future the demands of the stronger and the weaker version of the reformed practice view will all but align.

299 _{Buchanan actually envisages such a two -lev el model of global and domestic authority with}

respect to the details of ideas like a human right to health care, see Allen Buchanan, Kristen Hessler, “Specify ing the Content of the Human Right to Health Care” in Allen Buchanan, Justice and Health Care. Selected Essays (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009): pp. 203- 218, pp. 216, 217 .

300 _{See Miriam Ronzoni, “The Global Order: A Case of Background Injustice? A Practice -}

Dependent Account”, p. 245.

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At this point it is worth pausing to spell out the important consequences of the critique that reformist writers levy against Nagel’s actual practice view of distributive justice. Here it is crucial for us to keep in mind that both camps subscribe to the idea that distributive justice is an exclusively associational or practice-dependent ideal that presupposes certain interactions among people. Supporters of both the actual and the reformed practice view therefore agree with Ronzoni’s claim that

Conceptions of justice depend on the nature of the practices that they regulate, and therefore no state of affairs can be judged just or unjust unless we refer to a specific practice within it. People come to hold obligations of justice in virtue of the relationships they stand with respect to one another in specific social practices with particular aims

and regulated by rules; and the very content of these obligations depends on the aims and rules of said practices.3 02

Background justice is a very general idea but to everyone who holds an associative view of justice it is thus an empty concept in absence of on-going interactions among people. If our actions have no effects on other people, the practice-dependent perspective tells us, we have no reasons to believe that we owe each other anything as a matter of distributive justice. Nonetheless, reformist writers disagree with Nagel about the purpose and justification of distributive obligations and egalitarian duties in particular. As we have seen, this lets the reformed practice view at least avoid the shortcomings that Nagel’s view on global justice suffers from.

But, as was pointed out, even if we do not agree with Abizadeh’s, James’s, and Moellendorf’s direct route to international egalitarian justice it is plausible to think that also a weaker take on the reformist critique eventually will have to endorse the demand for transnational distributive equality. What that means is

302 _{Miriam Ronzoni, “The Global Order: A Case of Background Injustice? A Practice -Dependent}

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nothing less than the falsification of Nagel’s claim that “the idea of global justice without a world government is a chimera.”3 03 _{Morality does not demand of us to} create a world state.3 04 _{What it does make mandatory for us, though, is the} creation of new international political authorities that, in accordance with the service conception of legitimate authority, help states better to perform vital functions and to ensure background justice. This is because only coercive supra- state authorities seem to be able to guarantee conditions of background justice for our sometimes unavoidable transnational practices. If we fill the existing global authority vacuum in this fashion, then (according to the reformed practice view) we can expect egalitarian duties of justice to arise within commonly organized and regulated social contexts.

7. The Practice-Independent View of Justice as a Critique of the