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The Value of Global Justice: Realism and Moralism
Abstract
It is a noticeable feature of the contemporary revival of interest in realist political thought that it has very much hesitated from exploring its implications for international political theory. This is interesting both because realism is one of the dominant intellectual traditions in international relations, but also as much of the recent debates surrounding global justice have engaged with themes that are at least germane to those of realism. This article will therefore try and extend some of the themes of realist political thought into the realm of global justice. While there might be several areas worth exploring, the focus here shall be on the realist emphasis on making sense of politics as a sphere of activity that has internal sources of normativity which cannot be reduced to moral first principles, the relationship between politics and legitimacy, and how these pose fundamental questions for the political nature of global justice. It ends by arguing that, viewed through the realist lens, the question of the legitimacy of international institutions should take greater priority in global justice debates insofar as this is fundamental to enabling us to understand justice in political and not exclusively moral terms.
... concerns about their own source of normativity (Erman and Möller 2015a, 2015bLeader Maynard and Worsnip 2018). Some realists have responded to such concerns by moving from criticism to positive contributions (Hall 2017;Horton 2012;Rossi 2013;Sleat 2013Sleat , 2016aSleat , 2016bSleat , 2016c. Politics, they argue, is an autonomous, independent domain with its own evaluative standards (Rossi 2013: 559;Rossi 2015a, 2015b). ...
Political realists’ rejection of the so-called ‘ethics first’ approach of political moralists (mainstream liberals), has raised concerns about their own source of normativity. Some realists have responded to such concerns by theorizing a distinctively political normativity. According to this view, politics is seen as an autonomous, independent domain with its own evaluative standards. Therefore, it is in this source, rather than in some moral values ‘outside’ of this domain, that normative justification should be sought when theorizing justice, democracy, political legitimacy, and the like. For realists the question about a distinctively political normativity is important, because they take the fact that politics is a distinct affair to have severe consequences for both how to approach the subject matter as such and for which principles and values can be justified. Still, realists have had a hard time clarifying what this distinctively political normativity consists of and why, more precisely, it matters. The aim of this paper is to take some further steps in answering these questions. We argue that realists have the choice of committing themselves to one of two coherent notions of distinctively political normativity: one that is independent of moral values, where political normativity is taken to be a kind of instrumental normativity; another where the distinctness still retains a justificatory dependence on moral values. We argue that the former notion is unattractive since the costs of commitment will be too high (first claim), and that the latter notion is sound but redundant since no moralist would ever reject it (second claim). Furthermore, we end the paper by discussing what we see as the most fruitful way of approaching political and moral normativity in political theory.
... Al., 2014;Papaioannou et. al., 2009;Sleat, 2016;Tan, 2014;de Bres, 2013). The case of the Tintaya Mine in Peru (De Echave et. ...
... Al., 2014;Papaioannou et. al., 2009;Sleat, 2016;Tan, 2014;de Bres, 2013). The case of the Tintaya Mine in Peru (De Echave et. ...
For more than 40 years hydrocarbons activities have degraded the indigenous habitat in the Pastaza, Corrientes, El Tigre and Marañon river basins in the Peruvian northern Amazonia. Negotiations between indigenous peoples and the state have been going on for more than twenty years with unfortunately scarce results. From
... Recently, however, realists have turned their attention to substantive issues (e.g. Jubb, 2015b;Sleat, 2016b). These explorations offer little systematic guidance. ...
The prospect of a Brexit illustrates that the European Union’s legitimacy deficit can have far-reaching political consequences. In normative political theory, realists take a keen interest in questions of legitimacy. Building on Bernard Williams’ realist writings, I propose a two-step method of normative political theorization. Each step contains both a practice-sensitive phase and a practice-insensitive phase. First, the conceptualization of a norm should draw on conceptual resources available to agents within their historical circumstances. Second, the prescriptions that follow from this norm should take into account whether political order can be maintained. Applying this method to the European Union’s democratic deficit yields, first, based on public opinion research, the norm of European deep diversity and, second, a set of prescriptions for a demoicratic confederacy. Thereby, I demonstrate that this realist method is able to yield political theories distinct from other philosophical approaches. Moreover, I contribute a realist theory to the normative literature in European Union studies.
... We now witness a shift in realist thought from criticism to positive theory. Most notably, several interesting accounts of political legitimacy have been developed (Sleat 2013(Sleat , 2016a(Sleat , 2016bRossi 2013Rossi , 2016Horton 2012;Hall 2015). ...
Este trabajo analiza la presencia de un racismo multidimensional, de carácter social y político, padecido porlos migrantes haitianos en República Dominicana. La experiencia directa del autor en República Dominicanamotiva la búsqueda de un análisis empírico y teórico que pueda interrogarse sobre una posible correlaciónentre el nacionalismo en la política dominicana y el apoyo popular hacia la exclusión de los migranteshaitianos en el sistema nacional dominicano. A través de una inicial revisión de la literatura de referenciadel campo sociológico y migratorio, se define el concepto de Homo Sacer expuesto por Agamben. El aporteteórico de Agamben es útil para identificar la voluntad estatal de excluir a los migrantes haitianos. Además,se tomará el concepto de pensamiento de Estado identificado por Sayad, mientras que el foco histórico en lacuestión identitaria dominicana cuenta con aportes procedentes de las obras de Rappaport. La marginalizacióny exclusión de los migrantes haitianos se estudia también cuestionando la ausencia de datos y registrosactualizados por el Gobierno dominicano, queriendo proponer eventuales correlaciones entre la ilegalizaciónestatal de los migrantes haitianos, con el aval de la política dominicana, y una forma social de nacionalismoracial. Utilizando también un enfoque propio de las Relaciones Internacionales y la Ciencia Política, sedescribe cómo el actual gobierno de República Dominicana, encabezado por el presidente Luis Abinader,muestra una tendencia hacia pasados elementos de realismo político y nacionalismo en las relaciones bilateralescon Haití, donde, cabe incluir, encuentra un efectivo consenso por parte de la sociedad dominicana
A prevailing understanding of realism, chiefly among its critics, casts realists as those who seek a ‘distinctively political normativity’, where this is interpreted as meaning nonmoral in kind. Moralists, on this account, are those who reject this and believe that political normativity remains moral. Critics have then focused much of their attention on demonstrating that the search for a nonmoral political normativity is doomed to fail which, if right, would then seem to fatally undermine the realist endeavour. This paper makes the case that casting the difference between realism and moralism in these terms is a mistake, one which overlooks the substantial body of realist work which is clear that it has no such aspirations to develop a nonmoral political normativity. The hope is that in drawing attention to this mistake a line can be drawn under these unhelpful debates, and we can move on to more fruitful constructive and critical discussions between realists and their critics.
Although often cast by realists as an exemplar of moralist or rationalist thinking, Jürgen Habermas and certain commentators on his work reject this characterisation, highlighting elements of his thought that conflict with it. This article will examine dimensions of Habermas’s work that relate to many realist concerns in political theory. I argue that while he escapes the commonplace caricature of an abstract thinker who is inattentive to real world affairs, Habermas’s claims in relation to communication, historical and empirical context, and the development of rights in history, reveal a narrow consideration of what defines context and a progressivist narrative of history that fails to address seemingly outdated beliefs and political forces. An analysis of these issues can serve to inform understandings of these topics in realist thought and in political theory more broadly.
The article reconstructs Shklar's thoughts on war. It argues that these thoughts constitute a crucial pillar of her political theory. Of particular significance is the interpretation of her book Legalism, where Shklar criticised efforts to streamline the complex issue of the causes of war into a simple theory of power and aggression, and her work on Montesquieu, which ultimately allowed her to link thoughts on war and extraordinary cruelty to her interest in cruelty as an ordinary vice. In this way, the article answers the question about the relationship between Shklar's explicit cosmopolitanism and her negative political theory. It demonstrates that her thoughts on war were politically cosmopolitan, while allowing her to eschew the type of global ethics that underwrites just war theorising, she was critical of. The article makes a case for considering Shklar's work as a contribution to Global Political Theory, calling for the latter to look beyond the just war tradition to pursue its interests in both theoretical prescription and political reality. This because Shklar's thoughts on war successfully combined empirical analysis of world affairs with normative dismissal of human actions that place others in situations of existential fear.
In this work, I argue that the poverty debate, particularly the one based on qualitative research, has yet to go global due to the exclusion of ideas from scholars in the Global South. For example, despite the great insight of the Kenyan philosopher Odera Oruka on poverty leading to his theory of “the human minimum”, and despite the fact that his works are available in libraries around the world, there is a noticeable exclusion of his views in the contemporary debate on global poverty. In this chapter, I will discuss the state of global poverty research. I will present Oruka’s views on poverty and show not only their implications for sub-Saharan Africa, but also for the world as a whole. I will argue that the exclusion of voices from the Global South amounts to what Miranda Fricker calls epistemic injustice. In the last section, I will conclude by proposing conversational thinking—a form of inclusive, fair, intercultural epistemic engagement for globalizable poverty research.
In Carr’s ethics, there is a link between the rise of the socialised nation and the crisis of laissez faire due to its loss of legitimacy among the lesser privileged. How far is this link in Carr’s ethics relevant today? There are two aspects to this relevance – theoretical and empirical. Theoretically, the article argues, Carr’s analysis is relevant to the statist-cosmopolitan debate on global justice. It highlights the political vacuum in which this debate operates in the absence of a framework of rights and obligations under laissez faire. Consequently, statist and cosmopolitan arguments are implicit in their acceptance of the violence committed by the status quo and lack the legitimacy Carr deemed necessary for international justice in the age of the socialised nation. The article then turns to highlight the empirical relevance of this critique. Here, it argues that the resurgence of nationalism in world politics shows that the problem of legitimacy is especially pressing today. The article thus calls for the debate on global justice to engage more seriously with Carr’s analysis of the crisis of laissez faire – specifically the legitimacy problem it raises in the twenty-first century.
A common denominator of recent proposals suggested by political realists has been a rather pessimistic view of what we may rightfully demand of political authorities in terms of legitimacy. In our analysis, three main justificatory strategies are utilized by realists, each supposedly generating normative premises for this “low bar conclusion.” These strategies make use of the concept of politics, the constitutive features of politics, and feasibility constraints, respectively. In this article, we make three claims: first, that the two justificatory strategies of utilizing the concept of politics and the constitutive features of politics fail, since they rely on implausible normative premises; second, that while the feasibility strategy relies on reasonable premises, the low bar conclusion does not follow from them; third, that relativist premises fit better with the low bar conclusion, but that this also makes the realist position less attractive and casts doubt on several of its basic assumptions.
In this paper, I consider how the discourse on global epistemic justice might be approached differently if some contributions from the African philosophical place are taken seriously. To be specific, I argue that the debate on global justice broadly has not been global. I cite as an example, the exclusion or marginalisation of African philosophy, what it has contributed and what it may yet contribute to the global epistemic edifice. I point out that this exclusion is a case of epistemic injustice. I observe that the absence of a philosophical technique that prevails on philosophers to engage with others from other traditions might be responsible for this epistemic lopsidedness and marginalisation. I go beyond the re-statement of this problem of marginalisation of African philosophy to point out relevant doctrines from the African place. I show how they are united under the methodological and ideological disposition of conversationalism. I argue that this ideology might be a better model for realising the goal of global epistemic justice which is the overcoming of all forms of exclusions and lopsidedness in global epistemic discourses through fair allocation of intellectual spaces.
In this article, I explore recent work on realist political theory and international politics. I discuss how scholarship on the topic emanates from two different fields—International Relations and political philosophy—and argue that there is a good case for greater engagement between them. I open by delineating various kinds of realism, showing that the term covers a wide variety of methodological and political approaches. In particular, I suggest, it is important to recognize the difference between liberal and radical approaches. The remainder of the essay examines assorted examples of realist international political theorizing, work that ranges from attempts to rewrite the canon of 20th century political thought to contributions to the vibrant global justice debates.
This article reviews the recent debate on realism in political theory (including the articles in this symposium) and examines its implications for global political theory. It distinguishes two versions of realism – contrasted, respectively, with political utopianism and political moralism – and argues that the second of these realisms fails to be sufficiently realistic by the standards of the first. In particular, it exaggerates the extent of political disagreement within domestic societies and underestimates the unifying force of national identities. In international relations, by contrast, disagreement over values runs deeper, and the pursuit of national interest remains a serious obstacle to co-operation, as classical international realists insisted. Current proposals for global democracy and global distributive justice therefore run into serious difficulties over agency and legitimacy: who might have reason and capacity to create the institutions needed to deliver these goals, and how could these institutions be rendered legitimate in the eyes of global publics?
Theories of global justice are sometimes criticized for being idealistic in extending the idea of justice to a domain in which it cannot be realized. This criticism is in one sense beside the point, for one can still ask what a just global order would look like, assuming it could be realized. But it is also mistaken because there is in fact an emerging global order. This order is evident not only in economics, culture, and communication but also in a public realm in which global issues are debated. In this context, political theorizing is not unrealistic in trying to understand this emerging order and the ways in which it is just or unjust. Its defect is not idealism but fuzziness about the idea of justice. Too often the word ‘just’ is used as if it were a synonym for ‘moral’ or ‘desirable’. A theory of global justice must define the idea of justice more precisely if it is to achieve coherence and explanatory power.
When the nation-state loses many of its traditional powers, Daniele Archibugi argues, democracy requires a cosmopolitan political authority above it. But current 'humanitarian' interventions do not fulfil such higher norms-they betray them, as the self-arrogated prerogatives of the few.
According to what has recently been labeled ‘political realism’ in political theory, ‘political moralists’ such as Rawls and Dworkin misconstrue the political domain by presuming that morality has priority over politics, thus overlooking that the political is an autonomous domain with its own distinctive conditions and normative sources. Political realists argue that this presumption, commonly referred to as the ‘ethics first premise’, has to be abandoned in order to properly theorize a normative conception of political legitimacy. This article critically examines two features of political realism, which so far have received too little systematic philosophical analysis: the political realist critique of political moralism and the challenges facing political realism in its attempt to offer an alternative account of political legitimacy. Two theses are defended. First, to the extent that proponents of political realism wish to hold onto a normative conception of political legitimacy, refuting wholesale the ethics first premise leads to a deadlock, since it throws the baby out with the bathwater by closing the normative space upon which their account of political legitimacy relies. This is called the ‘necessity thesis’: all coherent and plausible conceptions of political legitimacy must hold onto the ethics first premise. Secondly, accepting this premise – and thus defending an ethics first view – does not entail that the political domain must be seen as a subordinate arena for the application of moral principles, that political normativity is reduced to morality or that morality trumps other reasons in political decision making, as claimed by political realists. Rather, the ethics first view is compatible with an autonomous political domain that makes room for an account of political legitimacy that is defined by and substantiated from sources of normativity specifically within the political. This is called the ‘compatibility thesis’.
This paper provides a critical overview of the realist current in contemporary political philosophy. We define political realism on the basis of its attempt to give varying degrees of autonomy to politics as a sphere of human activity, in large part through its exploration of the sources of normativity appropriate for the political and so distinguish sharply between political realism and non-ideal theory. We then identify and discuss four key arguments advanced by political realists: from ideology, from the relationship of ethics to politics, from the priority of legitimacy over justice and from the nature of political judgement. Next, we ask to what extent realism is a methodological approach as opposed to a substantive political position and so discuss the relationship between realism and a few such positions. We close by pointing out the links between contemporary realism and the realist strand that runs through much of the history of Western political thought.
Many contemporary political thinkers are gripped by the belief that their task is to develop an ideal theory of rights or justice for guiding and judging political actions. But inPhilosophy and Real Politics, Raymond Geuss argues that philosophers should first try to understand why real political actors behave as they actually do. Far from being applied ethics, politics is a skill that allows people to survive and pursue their goals. To understand politics is to understand the powers, motives, and concepts that people have and that shape how they deal with the problems they face in their particular historical situations. Philosophy and Real Politicsboth outlines a historically oriented, realistic political philosophy and criticizes liberal political philosophies based on abstract conceptions of rights and justice. The book is a trenchant critique of established ways of thought and a provocative call for change.
Reviewing Daniele Archibugi's case for a 'cosmopolitical democracy' in NLR 4, Geoffrey Hawthorn argues nation-states can neither be wished away, nor shadowed in parallel by a global civil society: they remain the Hobbesian precondition of a realistic politics, which Kantian prospects set aside at their peril.
The cosmopolitan idea of justice is commonly accused of not taking seriously the special ties and commitments of nationality and patriotism. This is because the ideal of impartial egalitarianism, which is central to the cosmopolitan view, seems to be directly opposed to the moral partiality inherent to nationalism and patriotism. In this book, Kok-Chor Tan argues that cosmopolitan justice, properly understood, can accommodate and appreciate nationalist and patriotic commitments, setting limits for these commitments without denying their moral significance. This book offers a defense of cosmopolitan justice against the charge that it denies the values that ordinarily matter to people, and a defence of nationalism and patriotism against the charge that these morally partial ideals are fundamentally inconsistent with the obligations of global justice. Accessible and persuasive, this book will have broad appeal to political theorists and moral philosophers.
What, if anything, can realism say about the normative conditions of political legitimacy? Must a realist political theory accept that the ability to successfully employ coercive power is equivalent to the right to rule, or can it incorporate normative criteria for legitimacy but without collapsing into a form of moralism? While several critics argue that realism fails to adequately differentiate itself from moralism or that it cannot coherently appeal to normative values so as to distinguish might from right, this article seeks to help develop a realist account of legitimacy by demonstrating how it can successfully and stably occupy this position between moralism and Realpolitik. Through this discussion, however, the article also argues that political rule necessitates the use of coercive power which is (at best) imperfectly legitimated, and that this blurs the distinction between politics and successful domination which lies at the heart of many recent accounts of political realism. In at least this sense, realism retains important and under-acknowledged affinities to Realpolitik.
Realist political philosophy has enjoyed a remarkable revival in recent years, with prominent intellectual figures (for example, Raymond Geuss, Bernard Williams) promoting an identifiably ‘realist’ alternative to neo-Kantianism. Yet contemporary Realists either ignore or caricature mid-century (or classical) international realists (for example, E.H. Carr, Hans Morgenthau, Reinhold Niebuhr), whose theoretical contributions have also recently generated a substantial revival of interest among international political theorists. However, they have done so at a high cost: recent philosophical-minded realists unwittingly reproduce conceptual ambiguities plaguing mid-century international realist contributions to political ethics. Unlike its mid-century predecessor, realist political philosophy also fails to analyze political ‘realities’ in any but the most abstract fashion. Realist political philosophy still primarily constitutes an anti-Kantian gesture, but by no means a cogent theoretical alternative.
International institutions have developed into a site of political authority of their own as can be seen by looking at a number of authority indicators. The concept of international authority, however, is intimately bound to the concept of legitimacy. The stronger the role that international institutions play in policymaking, the stronger the demands for their legitimacy that can be expected to arise. Against this background, we ask which of the state powers analysed in this special issue prefer which form of legitimation of international institutions, whether their general conceptions of legitimacy diverge or converge, and what this means for the future of global governance.
Samuel Freeman was a student of the influential philosopher John Rawls, he has edited numerous books dedicated to Rawls' work and is arguably Rawls' foremost interpreter. This volume collects new and previously published articles by Freeman on Rawls. Among other things, Freeman places Rawls within historical context in the social contract tradition, and thoughtfully addresses criticisms of this position. Not only is Freeman a leading authority on Rawls, but he is an excellent thinker in his own right, and these articles will be useful to a wide range of scholars interested in Rawls and the expanse of his influence.
This article assesses two contending global theories of justice (cosmopolitanism and statism) in light of the role that ideal and non-ideal considerations should play in political theory. It starts with a distinction between ideal and non-ideal and it proceeds to show how both statists and cosmopolitans are ideal when non-ideal considerations should prevail and how both are non-ideal when ideal theorising is required. This view is assessed with reference to two issues on which statists and cosmopolitans appear particularly divided: the relevance of states and the principles of global justice. With regard to the former, the article shows that the discussion on states is ideal (discussing the place of special associative relations in normative justifications of distributive equality) when it should be non-ideal (emphasising the role of states as the most relevant agents of justice in real-world circumstances). On the second issue, it illustrates how the discussion on principles is non-ideal (limited to assessing the consequences of global poverty in unfavourable conditions) when it should be ideal (investigating the grounds of injustice at the appropriately fundamental level). The article concludes by sketching an alternative analysis of global justice which is able to accommodate some statist and cosmopolitan concerns but which avoids the criticisms that each theory usually attracts.
The literature on global justice contains a number of distinct approaches. This article identifies and reviews recent work in four commonly found in the literature. First there is an examination of the cosmopolitan contention that distributive principles apply globally. This is followed by three responses to the cosmopolitanism, – the nationalist emphasis on special duties to co-nationals, the society of states claim that principles of global distributive justice violate the independence of states and the realist claim that global justice is utopian and that states should advance national interest.
Technology strategy and the uses of force
- R Art
- Waltz
Cosmopolitan liberalism and the state system
- C R Beitz
Realism, liberalism and non-ideal theory: Or, are there two ways to do realistic political theory?
- M Sleat
- Weber M
- Philp M