ABSTRACT
My claim is that those within relations of dependency fall outside the conceptual perimeters of Rawls’s egalitarianism. I shall trace the concep tual shape of this exclusion in Rawls through an analysis of the five pre suppositions standing behind the concept of equality as we find it in Raw ls’s constructivism, and through a consideration of the principles selected in the OP in light of this analysis. I argue that the two principles of justice cannot accommodate the objections of the dependency critique unless Raw ls’s foundational assumptions are altered. In pointing to omissions in this theory, I contemplate ways in which the Rawlsian posi tion could be amended. Whether the suggestions put forward suffice to make the theory amenable to dependency concerns without introducing new incoherencies for the theory is a question I leave for Rawlsians. My aim is neither to reform Rawls’s political theory, nor to say that it can not be reformed. Rather, I offer the arguments of the dependency cri tique as a criterion of adequacy, one applicable to any political theory claiming to be egalitarian.
