The natural duty of justice in non-ideal circumstances: On the moral demands of institution building and reform
| Author | Laura Valentini |
| DOI | 10.1177/1474885117742094 |
| Published date | 01 January 2021 |
| Date | 01 January 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
EJPT
Article
The natural duty of justice
in non-ideal circumstances:
On the moral demands
of institution building
and reform
Laura Valentini
London School of Economics, UK
Abstract
Principles of distributive justice bind macro-level institutional agents, like the state.
But what does justice require in non-ideal circumstances, where institutional agents are
unjust or do not exist in the first place? Many answer by invoking Rawls’s natural duty ‘to
further just arrangements not yet established’, treating it as a ‘normative bridge’ between
institutional demands of distributive justice and individual responsibilities in non-ideal
circumstances. I argue that this response strategy is unsuccessful. I show that the more
unjust the status quo is due to non-compliance, the less demanding the natural duty of justice
becomes. I conclude that, in non-ideal circumstances, the bulk of the normative work is
done by another natural duty: that of beneficence. This conclusion has significant implica-
tions for how we conceptualize our political responsibilities in non-ideal circumstances,
and cautions us against the tendency – c ommon in contemporary political theory – to
answer all high-stakes normative questions under the rubric of justice.
Keywords
Beneficence, justice, institutional reform, partial compliance, role responsibilities
Introduction
Consider the following three contexts, ordered from the most ideal to the most
non-ideal.
1
i. Sweden Plus: ‘Sweden Plus’ is a distributively just state, one that successfully
secures its citizens’ socioeconomic rights.
European Journal of Political Theory
2021, Vol. 20(1) 45–66
!The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/1474885117742094
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Corresponding author:
Laura Valentini, London School of Economics, Houghton Street, London, WC2A 2AE, UK.
Email: l.m.valentini@lse.ac.uk
ii. United Kingdom: The United Kingdom is a somewhat unjust state. It is legit-
imate, but it fails to secure its citizens’ socioeconomic rights to the full extent
of which it is capable.
iii. Global Arena: In the world at large, institutions capable of securing everyone’s
socioeconomic rights do not exist.
What ought the individuals inhabiting these contexts do, from the point of view
of distributive or socioeconomic justice?
2
Many political philosophers would
answer by falling back on Rawls’s (1999: 99) natural duty ‘to support and to
comply with just institutions that exist and apply to us ... [and to] further just
arrangements not yet established’. Although this duty is often invoked as a ‘nor-
mative bridge’ translating the demands of justice applying to complex institutional
agents – like the state – into responsibilities falling on individuals, not much work
has been devoted to unpacking its content.
This neglect may seem unsurprising. After all, in the ideal case (Sweden Plus) the
demands of the natural duty coincide with institutional directives: citizens simply
ought to obey the law. Even in non-ideal cases, like United Kingdom and Global
Arena, what the duty requires – one might think – is straightforward: each agent
should do their fair share in reforming and bringing about just institutions.
And when injustices are serious enough – say, people’s lives are at stake – some
may be required to do more than their fair share (e.g. Ashford, 2003).
Though intuitively appealing, these convictions do not withstand scrutiny.
In this article, I argue that, counter-intuitively, the more unjust the status quo is
due to non-compliance with the demands of justice, the less demanding the natural
duty of justice becomes. Contrary to what is commonly assumed, appeal to this duty
rarely succeeds in building a ‘normative bridge’ between (i) the principles of
distributive justice that apply to institutions and (ii) individuals’ responsibilities
in non-ideal circumstances. The news is not all bad, however. Acknowledging
the weakness of the natural duty of justice has the positive upshot of drawing
attention to another natural duty: that of mutual aid or beneficence (Rawls,
1999: 98). Even if, in non-ideal circumstances, distributive justice may demand
surprisingly little of individuals, there remains a lot that they are required to do
on grounds of beneficence. This conclusion sharpens our understanding of
the moral relations between the bearers of institutional-reform duties and their
beneficiaries, and counters the current tendency in political theory to over-inflate
the concept of justice and thereby devalue its normative currency.
The article is structured as follows. In the next section, I advance some
preliminary considerations on principles of justice – focusing on distributive just-
ice in particular – and duties of beneficence. I then turn to exploring what
the natural duty of justice requires in cases of justice deficits; namely, where
institutional agents exist, but are in need of reform (the third section), and
where they do not exist in the first place (the fourth section). I take United
Kingdom as paradigmatic of the former case, and Global Arena of the latter.
The fifth section concludes.
46 European Journal of Political Theory 20(1)
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