Moral and Political Cosmopolitanism: Distinction
Without a Difference?
Justice Between Global Democracy and a World State
Pavel Dufek
Loughborough, 6th December 2012
Plan of the presentation
1. Context of Global Justice Theorizing
2. Moral and Political Cosmopolitanism: The Distinction
3. Moral Cosmopolitanism Proving Too Little
4. Moral Cosmopolitanism Proving Too Much
5. International Organizations and the EU
6. Towards a Proper Middle Ground
1. Context of Global Justice Theorizing
 Justice: What each human being (or collectivity) is due as a matter of
rights, needs, membership etc.
 There are certain universal and general moral norms that should be best
understood as norms of justice – that is, what every person or
collectivity in the world is due – and that the institutionalisation of
political activity on the supra-state level should reflect these norms
 Guidelines for political action
 Either extension of existing “domestic” theories/principles (esp.
Rawls‘s) or formulating new ones – human rights as the usual proxy
 Liberal egalitarianism
 Critique of contemporary status quo (poverty, wars, HR violations,
dictatorial regimes… state sovereignty, LIEO)
2. Moral & political cosmopolitanism
(about justice)
 (A) Moral (MC): all human beings are ultimate units of moral concern; share certain
morally relevant features that should always bear upon philosophical considerations
about justice; at least some of our duties and obligations somehow concern all human
beings and not only our compatriots; territorial state borders are morally arbitrary; all
individuals are morally equal in some essential respect
=> moral community of mankind
 Weak and strong versions - scope or depth of moral considerations, as regards
socioeconomic justice and equality, or the contents of the list of human rights
 (B) Political (PC): realization of requirements of justice, as specified by moral
cosmopolitanism, should be entrusted to global political institutions with legitimate
coercive power, which in turn would rest on a global system of positive law
=> cosmo-polis (globalised modern state)
Cosmopolitans: (a) and (b) both analytically and practically separate and independent
vs.
Me: it is the very distinction that allows cosmopolitans to claim middle ground, and the distinction itself
carries little difference if one retains strong MC
2. MC & PC (about justice)
 I. Kant – Categorical Imperative (corresponds with MC) as the
philosophical embodiment of human dignity
 Circumstances of justice: interaction and injury
 A duty to enter into a „civil condition“ and defer to the decision-making
and coercive powers of political authority
 Dilemma of global right: Rights and freedoms of both individuals and
states can be secured only through hard law backed by coercive power of
a world republic (state)
It is precisely by granting these unprecedented powers to the potential
government of the “state of states”, or even a “universal monarchy”, that
there arises the twin danger of global despotism (abusing power) and
paternalism (disrespecting peoples’ right to autonomy, even if led by good
intentions)
League of states
Right to/obligation of hospitality
 B. Barry: „there is no inconsistency in counting the interests of
everyone in the world equally and concluding that those interests
will tend to be best advanced by a state-centered system with only
weak international authority”
 S. Caney: „cosmopolitan moral claims are compatible with, or even
require, states or some alternative to global political institutions…
[thus] critiques of a world state or global political authorities do not
impugn the moral convictions that all persons are of equal moral
worth and that everyone has duties to other human beings.
 T. Pogge: „[M.C. is] a requirement that imposes limits upon our
conduct and, in particular, upon our efforts to construct
institutional schemes (...) [This is] a more abstract, and in this
sense weaker [view] than legal cosmopolitanism.”
 C. Beitz: „ there is no necessary link between moral and
institutional cosmopolitanism (…) [moral cosmopolitans] are not
necessarily committed to the belief that the world should be
reorganized as a unitary or stateless political and legal order (…)
the widely alleged undesirability of world government is
[therefore] not a good reason to reject the ethical aspiration it
represents”
 What‘s wrong with the disctinction?
 (1) MC proving too little
 (2) MC proving too much
Label vs. Content: Proving Too Little
 D. Miller: moral equality = platitudinous element in MC
 „polite disinterest“ => set of negative duties plus minimal positive duties
(hospitality, hunger…)?
Objection: the retreat to negative duties makes ultimately no difference
because upholding even the most basic of these (such as not physically
harming, not exploiting or stealing, not using others for one’s own ends)
would necessarily entail a radical transformation of international
economic and political structures
 (A) T. Pogge: a negative duty not to participate in upholding unjust social-
economic international order (Art. 28 of the UDHR)
 => we are neither polite nor disinterested but causally responsible for poverty and
suffering
 => causal responsibility
 (B) set of unconditional obligations: human rights, equality of opportunity…
 Ad (A): multicausal phenomenon; argument cuts both ways;
difficult empirical calculations
+ problems with counterfactual assessment: Getting the logic
backwards; unintended consequences
 Ad (B): stricter observation of existing rules
 Fair trade vs. free trade vs. theft (Wenar & resource curse)
 Question of social integration, motivation to uphold rules
 It is the nature and scope of moral claims that are put forward on behalf of
cosmopolitan justice that count, not the label
 Coercive power will have to be frequently deployed if MC visions are not to
remain empty manifestos (resistance expected)
Label vs. Content: Proving Too Much
 B. Barry: taxing rich people wherever they lived for the benefit of
the poor whenever they lived”
 advantages of entering such scheme of international cooperation
and staying in there will be enough to ensure compliance via some
kind of enlightened Hobbesian self-interested reasoning (although
moral motivation has to come into play as well)
 the extensive and even-expanding administrative apparatus of the modern state
however yields at least a reason for doubting that administration of the
global tax-based redistribution scheme would be possible without the parallel
existence of global bureaucracy and global political authority which would
provide both legitimacy and control for this proposed global “authoritative
allocation of values”
 EU
 Conceptual link between taxation and sovereign political authority
Label vs. Content: Proving Too Much
 D. Moellendorf: (a) global fair equality of opportunity; (b) globalized
difference principle
armed intervention represents “a violation of sovereignty if and only if
the intervention will not attempt to advance the cause of justice either in
the basic structure of the state or in its international policies”
mere strengthening of democratic accountability of both the existing
and future multilateral agreements and/or regimes insufficient,
especially with regard to distributive justice
Centralized yet multi-level system of state, regional and global
institutions subject to mechanisms of democratic accountability
Functional delegation of powers
 Delegation of powers ultimately implies dependence
 Who is “the people” who these institutions shall be accountable to – the
regional people or the global people?
Label vs. Content: Proving Too Much
 K.-C. Tan: goals of MC could be best achieved within the
borders of national communities
 Comprehensive liberalism: (a) moral autonomy; (b) rejection of
toleration as fundamental principle; (c) liberal nationalism
OK
Current institutional framework + yet undetermined set of
institutional norms and institutions
Circumscription of cultural and moral pluralism, so that all
communities will have acquired, prospectively, liberal (egalitarian)
character
Tobin Tax, Global Resource Tax (Pogge), „bit tax“
Label vs. Content: Proving Too Much
 Re: KC Tan
Tan’s moral ideal is in fact constituted by a global extension and application of
Rawls’s principles of justice – especially the Difference Principle but also the
Principle of Fair Equality of Opportunity
Strong moral conception, weakly changed structure
Retaining political autonomy? Example: Property rights
Interests of great powers not conductive
Sleight of hand?: While “moral cosmopolitanism” would cover all the ambitious
moral ideals and principles of justice, which have not yet been realised even on
the domestic (state) level, “weak” suggestions for institutional arrangements
would seemingly support the asserted realistic nature of cosmopolitan theory
by listing only moderate and relatively uncontroversial examples
Label vs. Content: Proving Too Much
 S. Caney: (1) disaggregating the concept of sovereignty: legality – supremacy –
territoriality – comprehensiveness
 Cosmopolitan political structures: Democratic political institutions, economic
super-organisation for coordinating the workings of the International Monetary
Fund, the World Trade Organisation and the World Bank, global volunteer force
(perhaps under the UN auspices) and international courts of justice dealing with
not only human rights but also corporate grievances and injustices
 Absence of supremacy and comprehensiveness => spectre of a “sovereign
world-state” is ruled out
 (2) no duty to bring about a given moral ideal in its entirety
 Above a basic minimum defined by protection of “fundamental interests” of
human beings, conditions should be secured for fair mediation among rival
ideals of global justice
Label vs. Content: Proving Too Much
 Re: S. Caney
 Previous concerns apply here
 On the one hand, Caney speaks about “international institutions” or a “basic
minimum” of cosmopolitan justice, in order to signal his opposition to overambitious institutional proposals. On the other, however, he loads his global
system of governance with a plethora of sanctioning and enforcing tasks in all
the mentioned areas, openly conceding that these institutions will have coercive
powers to impose sanctions, levy fines, punish wrongdoers and so on
 Implausible to assume consensus of all decisive agents on almost any of the hot
issues, as there will always be “ruthlessly instrumental” or plainly stupid or
irresponsible actors – not to mention those who “merely” pursue their national
interests
 The notion of “fundamental human interests” seems to be substantively on par
with the full contemporary package of international human rights, and it is
difficult to see how this might be considered a “basic minimum” of morality
Label vs. Content: Proving Too Much
 J. Habermas: “constitutionalisation” of global politics
 Avoids strong normative claims on the global level; also employs a multi-layered
conception of political agency, dispersing political decision-making among the
supranational, transnational and national levels
 Functional distribution of decision-making powers, tied to the ideal of deliberative
democratic structures and processes
 W. Scheuerman: JH “appears to want to have the cake and eat it as well” - even if the
reformed UN would be charged only with maintaining peace and securing human rights
and would be refused formal monopoly of legitimate use of force, it would need
“substantial political and military muscle” to bring uncooperative states into line
 Issues of socioeconomic justice which are ordinarily cast in substantive and
comparative terms (relative inequalities among countries and/or individuals)
 How can the power of powerful, unjust, instrumental actors be dispersed, and power
of the weak and vulnerable strengthened, unless one possesses even greater power?
 Kantian paradox of global right rides again
5. International Organizations
 M. Barnett, M. Finnemore (2004): IOs are bureaucracies of a necessarily
hierarchical nature
They acquire agency, i.e. become partially autonomous actors. As agents possessing
legitimate authority and capable of defining “problems” and mobilizing resources
for their solution, IOs wield power (e.g. creating and enforcing obligatory rules
regarding HR, or humanitarian intervention ).
Power of constitution (echo of their largely constructivist approach to
international relations), but also power of domination, i.e. the ability to force other
actors behave in a way they otherwise would not

If we set “huge, aspirational tasks” for global political structures, as strong MC
unambiguously and consciously does, then these structures stand in need of much
greater power than is presently the case with IOs

Problem of legitimacy and political accountability: by definition irrelevant to
bureaucracies
 Organizational pathologies – who is to take blame?
 what use of a “world legislative body” and “global bureaucracy” without a world
executive body?
The European Union
 The example of an emerging postsovereign stateless polity with a cosmopolitan
vision?
 strong and centralized executive body, i.e. the Commission, which at the same
time has a de facto monopoly over legislative initiative
 EU law, as interpreted by the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU), is based on
principles of supremacy and direct effect, meaning that if certain procedural
conditions are met, European laws take priority over member states’ legislation
 promoting and enforcing ambitious principles of justice, such as those proposed
by moral cosmopolitans would require the given policy arenas (such as fiscal,
social, or immigration policy) to be moved to the group of EU’s exclusive
competence
 It is controversial to take the EU as a model case of transnational democratic
polity – issues of input legitimacy
6. Towards a Proper Middle Ground
 Dilemma of cosmopolitan justice: Either bite the bullet, retain strong MC and
admit that the institutional solution points to a centralised global political authority, or
back off from deep moral demands in the first place and keep flirting with the idea of a
multilayered system of global governance with states as still the principal actors
It precisely the overblown moral requirements of moral cosmopolitanism that lead to
uncomfortable feelings of a “dead end”
 the existing interstate system of governance should be supplemented, not subverted or
supplanted by whatever institutional design comes with international (weak
cosmopolitan) morality
 The morality to be sanctioned and enforced by the system of international institutions
should be decidedly weak or thin
 Core subset of human rights (Walzer, Rawls, Miller)
 Legislative and judicial globalization vs. legal polycentrism/pluralism: Only the former
available for MC
 Extra-statal sources and scope of law: stability and legitimacy depends on whether they
conform to the actors’ expectations and normative convictions
Towards a Proper Middle Ground
 My argument dopes not imply that a move towards some
kind of transnational political authority backed by a system of
law is intrinsically wrong
 The promise of constructivism: the theoretical bridge
between normative reasoning and empirical research?
 too easily leads one to endorse strong forms of moral
cosmopolitanism =>checks from both outside (logic of
consequences) and inside (awareness of dilemmas)
 Mutual interdependence of politics and morality
English School in IR: balancing justice and order
 Epistemological scepticism + (Hartian) rules of respect for life, property,
truth, keeping promises etc.
 Problem of normative (public) justification

 Diverting attention from substantive issues to “sterile”
metatheoretical debates?
If there is no thick normative consensus among the key actors of
international or global politics, it seems prima facie reasonable to
work our way up from some kind of minimal normative foundations
– rather than trying to ram demanding moral principles down the
throats of global humanity. Substantively weaker moral claims about
the nature of a cosmopolitan political community are a more
promising departure point when looking for an institutional “middle
road” between the spectre of the status quo and the spectre of the
world-state.