ABSTRACT
We live in a world which contains profound inequalities along a number of key dimensions. Whereas some learn quickly to take luxury for granted – and even not to recognize it as such – many more people are faced with far inferior life chances, apparently because of the simple fact of the country they have been born into. Notwithstanding the high-profile economic growth of some Asian countries, these inequalities have shown little sign of abating over recent decades and may very well be intensifying. Some theories of global justice will object to those inequalities in their own right. But even if, at a moral level, we are untroubled by the stubborn facts of global inequality, we may find it harder to reconcile ourselves to a world which has as a constant feature deep and enduring poverty. Millions regularly go without access to clean water, or basic medicines or education. Though political theorists and economists disagree about the extent to which poverty is caused by national or global factors, there can be no doubt that many children are born into societies which offer them desperately few opportunities. Such a fact is hard to justify in any sense. Even those highly resistant to “cosmopolitan” projects of global justice are prepared to pronounce, with solemn understatement, that “We do not live in a just world” (Nagel 2005: 113). For many people the more pressing question will be what, if anything, can be done. The
lone individual, faced with a world of injustice, is likely to feel despair about the prospects for making even the smallest dent in that injustice by him-or herself. Although many will be persuaded of an individual obligation to do something to alleviate global injustice – by giving money to charity, for example – they may at the same time quite reasonably believe such measures to be insufficient. To be effective, our responses to injustice will need to be both more coordinated, and more likely to be accompanied by compliance on the part of others who may be less committed. This in turn gives rise to an interest in institutions as tools for discharging our duties of distributive justice, and bringing a more just world closer into reach. This chapter examines the role that institutions might play in securing (more) global justice.
We begin, in the first section, by identifying some of the different reasons why institutions might be thought important from a normative point of view. For our purposes the least controversial reason for emphasizing the importance of institutions is that they might be necessary or highly desirable in order to achieve global justice, and we briefly unpack why that might be. We then shift our focus to the kinds of institutions which scholars of global justice have suggested might be vested with the task of securing global justice. The second section examines arguments for using existing institutions to pursue global justice. Assuming that these will be
useful but not sufficient to deliver on many accounts of global justice, the third section then moves on to examine some prominent arguments for establishing new distributive institutions, and attempts a comparison of their various merits and drawbacks.
