Debating Global Justice: an Introduction
| Published date | 01 May 2013 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12036 |
| Date | 01 May 2013 |
| Author | Sebastiano Maffettone |
Debating Global Justice: an Introduction
Sebastiano Maffettone
LUISS ”Guido Carli“, Libera Universit
a Internazionale degli Studi Sociali, Rome
Political philosophers dealing with the theme of justice
at nation-state level usually take into prior consideration
what is called distributive justice. The same happens with
global justice, which is justice among people beyond
nation-state borders and across the planet. This is for
both conceptual and historical reasons. From the concep-
tual point of view, the notion of global justice coincides
primarily with the notion of fair consideration of interests
and equal treatment of people the world over. From the
historical point of view, the priority of distributive justice
at a global level is explained by the struggle between
capitalism and communism that characterized interna-
tional political theory and practice during the second
part of 20
th
century. This struggle was animated by the
idea of justice as (re)distribution, which clearly gestures
at socioeconomic problems.
A direct implication of that approach was the relatively
late emergence of the idea of justice as ‘recognition’, the
content of which relates more to cultural and social
issues than to socioeconomic ones at both the nation-
state and global levels. To a considerable extent it was
the crisis of 1989, with the fall of communism and the
parallel revival of so-called ‘identity politics’, that con-
ferred value to that idea. Of course, it is still possible to
incorporate the idea of recognition in the notion of dis-
tributive justice, where the goods to be distributed are
equality of cultural opportunities and fair political space
for minorities.
Even when we think of global environmental justice
and sustainability, the connection with distributive justice
seems evident. Rich and poor countries pollute in differ-
ent ways, and profit to a greater or lesser extent from
the activities that produce that pollution. By and large, it
seems clear that rich countries have more stringent obli-
gations towards the preservation of the planet than do
poor countries. Even if environmental issues and sustain-
ability problems can appear as ‘lateral’problems, with
their own structure and dynamics, their interconnection
with socioeconomic issues is tight and complex, as the
phenomenon of climate change shows.
In short, reflecting on justice at a global level implies
reflecting on economic redistribution, cultural recognition
and environmental sustainability as three closely
connected concepts. The conference ‘Global Justice:
Principles and Applications’–organized by David Held
and myself, and held at LUISS University (Rome) in June
2012 –explored the hypothesis that even if we keep in
mind the boundaries between these three ways of con-
ceiving global justice, there is always the possibility –
and, indeed, the need –of integrating them. From this
perspective, the main topic of the conference was how
to integrate them. The reconciliation of the three topics
within our conference was predominantly interpretive. By
this I mean that it was neither treated thematically nor
shown systematically in each presentation. On the con-
trary, our keynote speakers and their discussants were
asked to delve as deeply as they could within their own
topics, leaving the task of establishing connections
mainly to the audience and the reader. This has been
done and –I think –must be done, under one theoreti-
cal premise of remarkable significance. When we speak
of justice, we start with a moral ideal that we try to con-
vert in a political practice. To operate this conversion we
need appropriate institutions, such as courts and parlia-
ments. From this point of view the gap between national
justice and global justice is evident. At the nation-state
level, we get the institutions that can convert moral
claims into legal obligations. At the global level, however,
we do not have similar institutions. This very fact makes
the notion of global justice intrinsically problematic.
Even if the keynote speakers and their discussants did
not explicitly provide a model for reconciling the three
aspects of global justice, this does not mean that such
an ambitious task will not be pursued in the future. The
conference of June 2012 and the collection of essays pre-
sented in Global Policy should, therefore, be understood
in the light of a broader research project on global jus-
tice that relies on the interdisciplinary Center for Ethics
and Global Politics, based at LUISS, and aims to consoli-
date an international network of established scholars and
young researchers. Many of the members of that net-
work are included in this editorial project: main articles
and commentaries are presented in the form of symposia
and are divided into three clusters. After reading them,
some may decide that one aspect of global justice
deserves primacy over the others, or may instead focus
on the search for connections and common ground.
My own hypothesis, which opened the conference, is
based on the idea that human rights can provide a use-
ful paradigm to construe a general framework for consid-
©2013 University of Durham and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Global Policy (2013) 4:2 doi: 10.1111/1758-5899.12036
Global Policy Volume 4 . Issue 2 . May 2013
194
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