Relational and Non-Relational Approaches to Justice

I'm trying to puzzle something out in relation to the way in which I classify different approaches to distributive justice in the first section of my thesis. I've drawn a distinction between relational and non-relational approaches to justice (see earlier comments on this here). I make it following Sangiovanni, Julius, Nagel, Pogge, Caney and so on, but generalise somewhat from all of their accounts. I drew this distinction in the following way:

According to a relational approach, obligations of justice arise through association and relationships. Absent such interaction, considerations of justice are inappropriate. In other words, it is certain features of particular relationships and associations which make them justice-apt (which features of which types of relationship are relevant will vary). Accoring to the non-relational approach, by contrast, obligations of justice are not linked to interaction and associatin, existing prior to them and independently of them. considerations of jsutice are therefore appropriate even when no interaction has taken place - relationships and associations are not needed to make a situation justice-apt.

The distinction is relevan to global justice debates because it fundamentally alters the grounds of any kind of global justice. Rawlsian views are relational - they ground justice in relationships and interactions between people. On these views principles of (egalitarian) justice apply to the basic structure, and not before the basic structure exists. Competing (generally cosmopolitan) theorists of global justice, such as Kok Chor Tan, argue that egalitarian principles are relevant prior to and absent such interaction and insitutions.

I took these approaches to be differing answers to the question: 'How do relational facts determine principles of justice?' but I now see that this needs further clarification. The question they are answering is 'Are principles of justice relevant prior to or absent the existence or some kind of relationship or interaction between individuals?', or to put it in more person-specific terms, 'Can I owe any kind of egalitarian justice to someone with whom I have no interaction or relationship?' One, more general, way to understand this is, 'Are relational facts a relevant consideration when determining the scope of principles of justice?'. This is different, of course, the separate question ‘Are relational facts a relevant consideration when determining the content of principles of justice?’. To the first question the answer for the relational and non-relational approaches is clear – ‘yes’ and ‘no’ respectively. To the second question it seems to me that both approaches can answer either yes or no, depending on other aspects of the theory in question. A further related but separate question is ‘Are relational facts a relevant consideration for departing from general principles of justice?’. Again, both approaches can answer yes or no to this question.

The upshot of all this, it seems to me, is that the non-relational approach is not necessarily committed to some kind of universalism, or 'impartiality thesis', about the content of principles of justice. The relational approach is therefore not necessarily any better placed to provide principles of justice which account for our intuitively stronger obligations to those with whom we are in relationships, or with whom we share institutions.

I might be wrong, and non-relational approaches might be committed to excluding relational considerations from questions about both the scope and content of principles of justice. If this is so, then presumably it's because the justification for excluding relational considerations from questions about scope also implies excluding them from questions about content.

Nagel - The Problem of Global Justice

In 'The Problem of Global Justice' Nagel defends a political conception of (socioeconomic/redistributive) justice. A political conception of justice holds that justice is a political virtue: the existence of sovereign states '...is precisely what gives the value of justice its application, by putting the fellow citizens of a sovereign state into a relation that they do not have with the rest of humanity, an institutional standard of fairness and equality that fill out the content of justice' (p. 120). I define this type of view as a relational approach to justice, because it holds that justice considerations arise through relationships between persons, rather than prior to them.

Nagel contrasts the political conception with the cosmopolitan conception, under which justice is pre-political: '...the demands of justice derive from an equal concern or a duty of fairness that we owe in principle to all our fellow human beings, and the institutions to which standards of justice can be applied are instruments for the fulfillment of that duty' (p. 119). This conception of justice is non-relational, because justice considerations arise prior to the existence of relationships between persons. The political conception is typified by Rawls' view that justice is a political value.

Nagel agrees with the Hobbesian view that justice requires sovereignty (pp. 115-117), and so concludes that for both the cosmopolitan and political conceptions, global sovereignty is required for global justice (p. 122). My inclination is to dispute this conclusion, because I need further convincing that justice is impossible to achieve without sovereignty. I'll not go into this further here though, perhaps another time.

Under Nagel's political conception socioeconomic justice is 'fully associative' (p. 127). The relationship that we stand with to each other as fellow citizens is the basis of us having duties of justice towards each other. Why? For Nagel it is because the societal rules which govern our relationships with each other as fellow citizens are coercively imposed - the state is not a voluntary organisation (p. 128).

'Without being given a choice, we are assigned a role in the collective life of a particular society... thereby supporting the insitutions through which advantages and disadvantages are created and distributed. Insofar as those institutions admit arbitrary inequalities, we are, even though the responsibility has been simply handed to us, responsible for them, and we therefore have standing to ask why we should accept them' (p. 129).

Nagel argues that there are seperate humanitarian duties and basic rights which do not depend on this type of coercive community, but apply universally (p. 130-1). He maintains however that the obligations of socioeconomic justice remain restricted to within this type of community. He also rejects the claim that this type of coercive relationship now obtains at the international level, and so remains committed to socioeconomic justice being a matter for within states (p. 137).

This conclusion is clearly non-cosmopolitan. There are two different routes that a cosmopolitan can take to dispute it.

The first route involves accepting his relational conception of justice. There are then two seperate lines of argument that can be pursued. The first strategy for a relational cosmopolitan involves arguing that the coercive conditions under which considerations of justice arise do actually exist at a global level, and so socioeconomic obligations are relevant globally. The second strategy for a relational cosmopolitan involves arguing that Nagel's conception of coercive institutions giving rise to considerations of justice is false, and putting forward an alternative conception. This is a course that has been pursued by many of the commentators on Nagel whom I will be discussing at a later date.

The alternative route, which is the one I find most appealing, is to reject Nagel's relational approach to justice. If we pursure a non-relational, or 'cosmopolitan' approach, then as Nagel says, we will be committed to global redistributive justice. Nagel admits that this conception 'has considerable moral appeal' (p. 126) but does not spend any time attempting to defend he. He chooses the relational, or 'political' approach 'partly because I believe that the political conception is accepted by most people in the privileged nations of the world, so that, true or false, it will have a significant role in determining what happens' (p. 126). To me this seems like a reason not to go with this conception, not a reason to go with it - it's plausible that such a conception is accepted by people in the privileged nations because such a conception supports their continued privilege.

Recent Debate in Global Justice

The most influential debate in the global justice literature in the last few years has been taking place in the pages of Philosophy and Public Affairs. It was sparked by Thomas Nagel's 'The Problem of Global Justice' (2005). Subsequent additions to the debate include A. J. Julius's 'Nagel's Atlas' (2006), Andrea Sangiovanni's 'Global Justice, Reciprocity, and the State' (2007), Joshua Cohen and Charles Sabel's 'Extra Rempublicam Nulla Justia?' (2006), and Arash Abizadeh's 'Cooperation, Pervasive Impact, and Coercion: On the Scope (not Site) of Distributive Justice' (2007).
It's is now pretty much impossible to write on global distributive justice without referring to the discussion that has taken place in these papers. Given that, I'm planning on re-reading each of these papers and posting about them weekly on this blog. I predict that much of my discussion will centre on the way in which the debate has been framed (which I partially disagree with). I'll start next week with Nagel's paper.