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Equality of Opportunity Globalized?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 July 2015

Darrel Moellendorf
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Extract

The principle of global equality of opportunity is an important part of the commitment to global egalitarianism. In this paper I discuss how a principle of global equality of opportunity follows from a commitment to equal respect for the autonomy of all persons, and defend the principle against some of the criticism that it has received. The particular criticisms that I address contend that a moral view based upon dignity and respect cannot take properties of persons-such as their citizenship-as morally arbitrary, that any justification of what counts as equal opportunity sets must be based upon national cultural understandings, that a positive account of equality of opportunity cannot adequately handle the fact of value pluralism across the globe, and that the principle of equality of opportunity is incompatible with national self-determination. In the course of defending the principle of equality of opportunity from these criticisms, I make revisions to my previously published defense of the principle.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Law & Jurisprudence , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , July 2006 , pp. 301 - 318
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence 2006

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References

I am grateful to Gillian Brock, Thomas Pogge, Kok-Chor Tan, and Mark Wheeler for comments on an earlier version of this paper.

1. John Rawls refers to this principle as fair equality of opportunity in contrast to formal equality of opportunity. See Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice, rev. ed. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999) at 63–64 and 73-78Google Scholar.

2. Baker, John, Arguing for Equality (London: Verso, 1987) at 43–52.Google Scholar

3. Rawls, supra note 1 at 57, 64-65.

4. Several writers defend a globalized difference principle. See for example Beitz, Charles, Political Theory and International Relations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979)Google Scholar; Moellendorf, Darrel, Cosmopolitan Justice (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2002)Google Scholar; Pogge, Thomas, Realizing Rawls (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989)Google Scholar; Peffer, R.G., Marxism, Morality and Social Justice (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5. See also my “Equal Respect and Global Egalitarianism,” Soc. Theory & Practice [forthcoming in 2006] and Beitz, Charles, “Cosmopolitanism and Global Justice” (2005) 9:1-2 J. Ethics 11 at 17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6. Cohen, G.A. raises a fourth possibility, namely normatively possible consent, but I am unclear what precisely this means. See his “Self-ownership: Assessing the Thesis” in his Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) at 229 CrossRefGoogle Scholar-44.

7. See also Sandel, Michael J., Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982) at 114.Google Scholar

8. Nussbaum, Martha C. discusses this in great detail (albeit within the limited framework of mounting a critique of welfarism) in Women and Human Development: the Capabilities Approach (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000) at ch. 2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9. O’Neill, Onora, “Between Consenting Adults” in Constructions of Reason: Explorations of Kant’s Practical Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989) at 112-17Google Scholar.

10. Rawls, supra note 1 at 15-19, 102-05. See also Dworkin, Ronald, “The Original Position” in Daniels, Norman, ed., Reading Rawls (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1989) at 16–53 Google Scholar and Blake, Michael, “Distributive|Justice, State Coercion, and Autonomy” (2001) 30:3 Phil.& Pub. Affairs at 282–85 Google Scholar. Although I disagree with Blake that duties of egalitarian justice exist only if a legal structure of coercion exists, his reading of the original position as a device for hypothetical consent seems to me correct.

11. Rawls, supra note 1 at 16-17.

12. See O’Neill, supra note 9 at 109. One can detect traces of this criticism also in Nozick’s rejection of the hypothetical constraints of the original position that requires ignorance of persons’ talents, abilities, character, and social starting position. See Nozick, Robert, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974) at ch. 7, sec. II.Google Scholar

13. There is a long line of cosmopolitan criticism of Rawls including (but not limited to) the following: Beitz, Charles, Political Theory (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979)Google Scholar; Kuper, Andrew, “Rawlsian Global Justice: Beyond the Law of Peoples to a Cosmopolitan Law of Persons” (2000) 28:5 Pol. Theory at 640 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Moellendorf, Darrel, “Constructing the Law of Peoples” (1996) 77 Pac. Phil. Q. 132 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and his Cosmopolitan Justice, supra note 4; Peffer, Marxism, supra note 4; Pogge, Realizing Rawls, supra note 4; T.M. Scanlon, “Rawls’ Theory of Justice” in Norman Daniels, ed., supra note 10 at 202; and Tan, Kok-Chor, Toleration, Diversity, and Global Justice (University Park: Pennsylvania State University, 2000).Google Scholar

14. See, for example, Rawls, supra note 1 at 89.

15. Nozick, supra note 12 at 214.

16. Ibid. at 216-24.

17. Miller, David, “Against Global Egalitarianism” (2005) 9:1-2 J. Ethics 55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18. Ibid. at 68.

19. Moellendorf, supra note 4 at 49.

20. See my Cosmopolitan Justice, supra note 4 at 30-36; and “Persons’ Interests, States’ Duties, and Global Governance” in Brighouse, Harry & Brock, Gillian, eds., The Political Philosophy of Cosmopolitanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005) at 148-63Google Scholar; and “Justice and Associations,” Philosophiques [forthcoming in 2006].

21. United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report 2005 at 26 Google Scholar. Available at http://hdr.undp.org/reports/global/2005/pdf/HDR05_chapter_1.pdf. Accessed 28 October 2005.

22. Ibid. at 28.

23. Ibid. at 27, 33.

24. Ibid. at 24.

25. Brock, Gillian, “Egalitarian Ideals, and Cosmopolitan Justice” (2005) 36:1 Phil. Forum at 18–19 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also her “What Does Cosmopolitanism Demand of Us” (2004) 104 Theoria at esp. 180-84.Google Scholar

26. Brock argues that Simon Caney commits this error. See “Egalitarian Ideals”, supra note 25 at 16-19. But although Caney argues that global equality of opportunity should focus on the general ideal equalizing opportunities “to positions of a commensurate standard of living.” He unpacks “standard of living” so that it includes a list of specific goods that may have more purchase in various cultures than Brock admits. See his “Cosmopolitan Justice and Equalizing Opportunities” (2001) 32:1-2 Metaphilosophy at 120-21.

27. Brock, “Egalitarian Ideals,” supra note 25 at 16.

28. The term “free-standing” in this context is analogous to Rawls’s requirement for domestic justice. “Political Liberalism, then, aims for a political conception of justice as a freestanding view. It offers no specific metaphysical or epistemological doctrine beyond what is implied by the political conception itself. As an account of political values, a freestanding political conception does not deny there being other values that apply, say, to the personal, the familial, and the associational; nor does it say that political values are separate from, or discontinuous with, other values.” Rawls, John, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993) at 10.Google Scholar

29. UNDP, Human Development Report 2005 at 25.Google Scholar

30. The example is drawn from Moellendorf, supra note 4 at 49.

31. Miller, supra note 17 at 59-60.

32. Ibid. at 60-61.

33. Ibid. at 62.

34. Ibid.

35. See Dwyer, James G., Religious Schools v. Children’s Rights (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998).Google Scholar

36. Miller, distinguishes nations from ethnic groups in On Nationality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995) at 15–21.Google Scholar

37. Miller seems to have this view in On Nationality, ibid. at 15-31, 49-80.

38. Smith, Adam, An Inquiry Into the Nature and Cause of the Wealth of Nations (New York: The Modern Library, 1937) at 31.Google Scholar

39. The list of primary goods that I employ is more extensive than Rawls, but more or less Rawlsian. I cannot defend this list here.

40. Political Liberalism, supra note 28 at 106.

41. Ibid. at xvii-xviii.

42. Ibid. at xvi.

43. Ibid. at 136-37.

44. Ibid. at 8.

45. This line of criticism is probably not one that Miller would endorse since he advocates a non-authoritarian conception of national identity, which requires a procedural commitment to liberal freedoms to facilitate the open ended discussion of what constitutes the national identity. Cf. Miller, supra note 17 at 127-28.

46. See Cosmopolitan Justice, supra note 4 at 20-23.

47. Universal Declaration of Human Rights, United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, http://www.unhchr.ch/udhr/lang/eng.htm. Accessed 18 Feb. 2005. Also http://193.194.138.190/udhr/lang/eng.htm

48. United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, http://www.unhchr.ch/udhr/miscinfo/carta.htm. Accessed 18 Feb. 2005.

49. “The African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights” in Brownlie, Ian, ed., Basic Documents on Human Rights, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992) at 553.Google Scholar

50. There are various formulations of this idea. See, for example, Mill, John Stuart, Utilitarianism at ch. v. in Mill, John Stuart & Bentham, Jeremy, Utilitarianism and Other Essays (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1987) at 327 Google Scholar, and cf. Hart, H.L.A., “Are There any Natural Rights?” (1955) LXIV: 2 Phil. Rev. 175.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

51. Rawls, John, Justice as Fairness (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001) at 23.Google Scholar

52. Miller, supra note 17 at 70.

53. Miller, supra note 36 at 49-80.

54. Cf. Moellendorf, supra note 4 at 39-50, and Moellendorf, “Persons’ Interests, States’ Duties, and Global Governance”, supra note 20.

55. The tensions between equal educational opportunity and the family are thoroughly explored in Brighouse’s, Harry School Choice and Social Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), see esp. at 151–61.Google Scholar

56. This is not the place to discuss the moral reasons for the state. But a variety of non-nationalist reasons have been adduced. See, for example, Follesdal, Andreas, “Federal Inequality Among Equals: A Contractualist Defense” (2001) 32:1-2 Metaphilosophy 236 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Goodin, Robert E., “What Is So Special About Our Fellow Countrymen” (1988) 98:4 Ethics 663 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Moellendorf “Persons’ Interests, States’ Duties, and Global Governance”, supra note 20.

57. Miller, supra note 17 at 71.

58. Nozick, supra note 12 at 163.

59. See also my Cosmopolitan Justice, supra note 4 at 102-27, and “Is the War in Afghanistan Just” (2002) 6 Imprints, available on line at http://eis.bris.ac.uk/plcdib/imprints/moellendorf.html.