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REPUBLICANISM AND GLOBAL INSTITUTIONS: THREE DESIDERATA IN TENSION

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 June 2017

Miriam Ronzoni
Miriam Ronzoni*
Affiliation:
Political Theory, University of Manchester
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Abstract:

Recently, republicans have been increasingly arguing that the ideal of nondomination can ground both a more plausible account of global justice and better insights for global institutional design than liberal egalitarianism does. What kind of global institutions, however, does nondomination require? The essay argues that a global institutional blueprint based on the republican ideal of nondomination is a multifaceted endeavor. Republican institutions should aim to fulfill three different desiderata: 1) avoiding excessive concentration of power; 2) bringing informal asymmetrical power under institutional control; 3) furthering an active, vigilant citizenry. The three desiderata often pull in different directions. At the global level in particular, they do not converge on a verdict over whether we should switch to a cosmopolitan institutional order, stick to a world of states, or opt for something altogether different. As a result, there is no straightforward pathway leading from the vindication of nondomination as the central principle of global justice to a clear vision for a global institutional order. The issue is, instead, a matter of careful balancing.

Keywords

Global justicerepublicanismnondominationpowerglobal democracyglobal institutional design
Type
Research Article
Information
Social Philosophy and Policy , Volume 34 , Issue 1 , Summer 2017 , pp. 186 - 208
Copyright
Copyright © Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation 2017 

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Footnotes

*

I am grateful to audiences at the MANCEPT (Manchester Centre for Political Theory) seminar, the Cambridge Seminar in Contemporary Political Thought, and the Ethics Centre in Zurich, as well as the other contributors to this volume for helpful comments on an earlier draft. Receiving written notes on discussion of the essay, wonderfully summarized by Jacob Barrett and Sarah Raskoff, was a luxury. Thanks to them, I could retrieve important insights and remember that I owe special thanks to Jacob Levy, Fred Miller, Jonathan Wolff, Mark Pennington, Linda Radzik, James Otteson, and David Schmitz. Chad Van Schoelandt also provided extremely useful and detailed written suggestions. Finally, David Owen provided some crucial insights on the penultimate version of this essay.

References

1 The debate has reached an astounding level of complexity and sophistication. For a survey, see Blake, Michael and Smith, Patrick T., “International Distributive Justice,” in Zalta, Edward N. ed., The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2015 edition), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2015/entries/international-justice/>>Google Scholar.

2 The locus classicus on this is Philip Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997).

3 See, for instance, Kramer, Matthew H., “Liberty and Domination,” and Ian Carter, “How are Power and Unfreedom Related?” in Laborde, Cécile, and Maynor, John, eds., Republicanism and Political Theory (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), 31–57 and 58–82Google Scholar, respectively.

4 For an account of the distinction between moral and institutional cosmopolitanism, see Ronzoni, Miriam, “Justice, Injustice, and Critical Potential Beyond Borders: A Multi-Dimensional Affair,” Journal of Applied Philosophy, Early View (2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Thus, increased global interdependence, for republicans, is relevant not because it widens the scope of social justice or makes our obligations toward outsiders more demanding – but because it has implications for the kind of institutional structures that are needed to secure nondomination for all.

6 Pettit, Republicanism; Lovett, Frank, A General Theory of Domination and Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Lovett, A General Theory of Domination and Justice.

8 Ibid.; Laborde, Cécile, “Republicanism and Global Justice: A Sketch,” European Journal of Political Theory 9, no. 1 (2010): 48–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 Garrau, Marie and Laborde, Cécile, “Relational Equality, Nondomination, and Vulnerability,” in Fourie, Carina et al., eds., Social Equality: On What It Means to Be Equals (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 45–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 Pettit, Republicanism.

11 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, The Social Contract or Principles of Political Right [1762], trans. Cole, G. D. H. (Whitefish: Kessinger Publishing 2004), 33Google Scholar.

12 On republicanism and subsidiarity, see also Laborde, Cécile and Ronzoni, Miriam, “What is a Free State? Republican International and Globalisation,” Political Studies 64, no. 2 (2016): 279–96, at 286CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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15 Lovett, Frank, “Republican Global Distributive Justice,” Diacrítica 24, no. 2 (2010): 13–30.Google Scholar

16 Traditionally, nondomination has also being mobilized to advocate the severance of institutional ties (for instance, in the form of secession or de-colonization). However, this has not been justified on the basis that one does not have obligations of nondomination toward those from whom one decides to part ways. On the contrary, granting independence to a people that has being subjugated or kept under a wider polity against its own will might be the best way to honor precisely those obligations. This is fully compatible with nondomination requiring new institutional ties in different contexts.

17 Laborde, “Republicanism and Global Justice: A Sketch”; Lovett, “Republican Global Distributive Justice.”

18 Bohman, James, “Republican Cosmopolitanism,” Journal of Political Philosophy 12, no. 3 (2004): 336–52;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and “The Democratic Minimum: Is Democracy a Means to Global Justice?” Ethics and International Affairs 19, no. 1 (2005): 101–116; Pettit, Philip, “A Republican Law of Peoples,” European Journal of Political Theory 9, no. 1 (2010): 70–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Bohman, “Republican Cosmopolitanism”; Buckinx, Barbara, “Domination in Global Politics: Reflections on Freedom and an Argument for Incremental Global Change,” in Cabrera, Luis, ed., Global Governance / Global Government: Institutional Visions for an Evolving World System (Albany, SUNY Press, 2011), 253–82Google Scholar.

20 Of course, at a given time and under specific circumstances, the requirement to minimize nondomination might speak in favor of prioritizing one desideratum above all others, on a variety of grounds. The claim I am making here is that, other things being equal and as a matter of principle, a republican ideal should not be primarily animated by one of them and neglectful or short-sighted concerning the others. I am grateful to Chad Van Schoelandt for prompting me to add this qualification.

21 For a demanding view, see Bellamy, Richard, Political Constitutionalism: A Republican Defence of the Constitutionality of Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for a modest one, see Pettit, Philip, On the People’s Terms: A Republican Theory and Model of Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013)Google Scholar.

22 Most famously, James Madison argues that the separation of different branches of government is a way of achieving a republic as opposed to a democracy, whereas the latter, as unfiltered rule by the majority, can itself lead to a disproportionately unbalanced power — and for instance, to the oppression of minorities (Madison, James et al, The Federalist Papers [1788] [London: Penguin, 1987])Google Scholar.

23 On bureaucratic domination and how to avoid it, see Richardson, Henry, Democratic Autonomy: Public Reasoning about the Ends of Policy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004)Google Scholar.

24 Martì, José L., “A Global Republic to Prevent Global Domination,” Diacritica 24, no. 2 (2010): 31–72.Google Scholar

25 Bellamy, Political Constitutionalism.

26 Pettit, “On the People’s Terms.”

27 Skinner, Quentin, “On the Slogans of Republican Political Theory,” European Journal of Political Theory 9, no. 1 (2010): 95-102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28 Both Martì and Laborde and Ronzoni distinguish four models, assigning the label of statism only to those models which are here defined as strongly statist and defining what I here call weak statism as the republican law of peoples model and republican internationalism, respectively. While I still endorse that taxonomy, I here use a tripartite distinction for reasons of simplicity. See Martì, “A Global Republic to Prevent Global Domination”; and Laborde and Ronzoni, “What is a Free State?”.

29 Martì, “A Global Republic to Prevent Global Domination.”

30 Pettit, “A Republican Law of People.”

31 Ibid.

32 Martì, “A Global Republic to Prevent Global Domination.”

33 Ibid., 53.

34 Pogge, Thomas W., “Cosmopolitanism and Sovereignty,” Ethics 103 no. 1 (1992): 48–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

35 Bohman, James, “From Demos to Demoi: Democracy across Borders,” Ratio Juris 18, no. 3 (2005): 293–314;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Samantha Besson, “Institutionalizing Global Demoi-cracy,” in Lukas H. Meyer et al., eds., Legitimacy, Justice, and Public International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 58–91.

36 Ibid., passim.

37 The concept of “decentered democratic federalism,” advocated by Iris Marion Young, has features both of the static and of the dynamic model (Global Challenges: War, Self-Determination, and Responsibility for Justice (London: Polity, 2006), 140–44.

38 See, for instance, Martì, “A Global Republic to Prevent Global Domination”; Buckinx, “Domination in Global Politics”; and Laborde and Ronzoni, “What is a Free State?” Some readers might fail to be persuaded that this constitutes a genuine case of domination. However, there is sufficient consensus on it in the republican literature itself to warrant its use here.

39 For a similar analogy between the call for more domestic regulation and the call for not yet existing transnational regulation (though not explicitly framed in a republican language) see Ronzoni, Miriam “Two Concepts of Basic Structure, and their Relevance to Global Justice,” Global Justice: Theory Practice Rhetoric 1, no. 1 (2008): 68–85;Google Scholar and “The Global Order: A Case of Background Injustice? A Practice-dependent Account,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 37, no. 3 (2009): 229–56.

40 The locus classicus for this concern is, of course, Immanuel Kant (see, in particular, “Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose”; and “Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch,” in Reiss, Hans, ed., Political Writings [1784 and 1795 respectively], trans. Nisbet, H. B. [New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991]: 41–53 and 93–130)Google Scholar. See also Bellamy, Political Constitutionalism.

41 Advocates of the transformative models might object, of course, that we simply do not know all these things. These models are too different from what we know for us to be able to make reliable judgments as to whether they would be compatible with sustained forms of active citizenship or the regulation of informal power. However, precisely this might be a problem. In other words, there might be a modest case to be made for a certain reliance on incrementalism when it comes to global institutional design in a republican spirit. Incremental change is more modest than radical change, but has two key advantages from a republican perspective: 1) it has the form of a controlled — i.e., reversible — experiment; and 2) it brings us from the status quo to a superior, if not ideal, state of affairs, while minimizing the danger of unexpected highly counterproductive consequences. The same might be true, mutatis mutandis, for the cosmopolitan model. For a detailed analysis of this, see Buckinx, “Domination in Global Politics.”

42 This concern is not absent from republican domestic theorizing. Some early modern republicans, such as Rousseau, advocated small polities to be able to ensure a meaningful level of democratic self-determination. Others, such as Madison, advocated large, federal and diverse republics so as to avoid “tyranny of the majority” dynamics and other negative effects of partisan factions within smaller, more homogeneous polities.

43 Arguably, this challenge is not completely absent at the domestic level, for there too questions of separation of sovereign competences arise. The first desideratum, for instance, might call for a highly decentralized polity.

44 I am grateful to Chad Van Schoelandt for drawing my attention to this point.

45 More thoughts on this issue are offered in Laborde and Ronzoni, “What Is a Free State?”.

46 Skinner, “On the Slogans of Republican Political Theory,” 99.

47 For a specific example of how this might work in a specific area (namely tax competition) see Ronzoni, Miriam, “Global Tax Governance: The Bullets Internationalists Must Bite — and those They Must Not,” Moral Philosophy and Politics 1, no. 1 (2014): 37–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar