Reciprocity, Equality and International Justice
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12027 |
| Date | 01 May 2014 |
| Author | Pietro Maffettone |
| Published date | 01 May 2014 |
Reciprocity, Equality and International
Justice
Pietro Maffettone
London School of Economics
Abstract
In this article I criticize a prominent account for resisting the extension of egalitarian justice to global politics. For
Andrea Sangiovanni it is the reciprocity requirement generated by the provision of basic public goods that grounds
egalitarian justice. Such basic public goods provision is absent internationally and this entails that egalitarian justice is
only appropriate between citizens of the same political community. This article highlights the problematic empirical
assumptions on which Sangiovanni’s work builds. It proposes a more ample class of basic public goods necessary to
act on a plan of life and maintains that whatever list we adopt, in a globalized world, basic public goods provision is
often dependent on the international system. It goes on to suggest that the role of equality beyond borders is an
important topic not only for relations between persons at the global level but also for inter-state interactions and that
what we really should be worried about is the instrumental effects that inequality has when it comes to issues con-
cerning poverty reduction and the shape of international regimes and institutions.
Policy Implications
•Global inequality in income and wealth both between persons and between political communities matters because
it affects international efforts in poverty reduction and because it endangers the prospects for self-determination of
less wealthy states.
•The governance mechanisms of international institutions and organizations should not be designed to reflect differ-
ences in economic clout.
•Attempts to reduce income and wealth inequality between persons globally and between political communities
should be understood as a further element of international poverty-reduction strategies.
For Andrea Sangiovanni (2007),
1
it is reciprocity that
grounds egalitarian justice. Within the state, co-nationals
and co-residents provide each other with the ‘basic collec-
tive goods necessary to act on a plan of life’: security from
physical attack and a functioning market for economic
activity. In this picture egalitarian duties of justice emerge
from the proper recognition of the fair value of reciprocity.
But, Sangiovanni continues, the public goods necessary to
act on a plan of life are only provided within national bor-
ders, hence the scope of egalitarian reciprocity exists only
within the state. This paper criticizes Sangiovanni’s
account of the restriction of the scope of egalitarian justice
to the state. It argues that his account of reciprocity in the
provision of basic public goods cannot accomplish the
empirical task of restricting the scope of justice to the state
alone by qualitatively distinguishing between state and
suprastate forms of socioeconomic and political interde-
pendence. The very idea that the ‘collective goods neces-
sary to act on a plan of life’are limited to security and
market relations is excessively restrictive; even if we were
to agree with such a restrictive view, the state alone can
never fully guarantee the provision of the basic collective
goods necessary to act on a plan of life, no matter how
‘thin’our account of such collective goods is.
In part two of the paper I offer a more general diagno-
sis of the problem that Sangiovanni’s argument has. I
start by recalling two implicit assumptions on which the
argument builds. The assumptions are: (1) that the cor-
rect unit of analysis is the individual; and (2) that con-
cerns for equality are noninstrumental in character. I
challenge both assumptions: in both cases, I argue
against their restrictive implications. In an international
system characterized by relationships between political
communities and in which the very norms that sustain
its architecture attribute rights, duties and obligations to
political communities directly, to overlook this ‘state to
state’dimension is unduly restrictive. When we ask
ourselves what is the value of equality beyond borders,
one question we cannot elude is its implications for rela-
tions between nation states, not simply individuals.
Global Policy (2014) 5:2 doi: 10.1111/1758-5899.12027 ©2013 University of Durham and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Global Policy Volume 5 . Issue 2 . May 2014 181
Research Article
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