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What's Special about the State?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 May 2011

HELENA DE BRES
HELENA DE BRES*
Affiliation:
Wellesley [email protected]
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Abstract

Many of us think that we have duties of distributive justice towards our fellow citizens that we do not have towards foreigners. Is that thought justified? This article considers the nature of the state's relationship to distributive justice from the perspective of utilitarianism, a theory that is barely represented in contemporary philosophical debates on this question. My strategy is to mount a utilitarian case for state-specific duties of distributive justice that is similar in its basic structure to the one that is standardly mounted for special duties towards the near and dear. I begin with a discussion of whether or not the co-citizen relationship can be justified in terms of its welfare consequences. I then consider what the answer to that first question implies concerning the duties of distributive justice that arise within that relationship.

Type
Research Article
Information
Utilitas , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , June 2011 , pp. 140 - 160
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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References

1 To take just one journal, see e.g.: Nagel, Thomas, ‘The Problem of Global Justice’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 33 (2005), pp. 113–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cohen, Joshua and Sabel, Charles, ‘Extra Rempublicam Nulla Justitia?’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 34 (2006), pp. 147–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Julius, A. J., ‘Nagel's Atlas’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 34 (2006), pp. 176–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Abizadeh, Arash, ‘Cooperation, Pervasive Impact and Coercion: On the Site (not Scope) of Distributive Justice’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 35 (2007), pp. 318–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sangiovanni, Andrea, ‘Global Justice, Reciprocity, and the State’, Philosophy & Public Affairs 35 (2007), pp. 2–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 More precisely, in the classical act-utilitarian form: an act (or policy, institution, motive, decision-procedure, etc.) is morally right if and only if the total amount of well-being for all minus the total amount of ill-being for all that is produced by that act (etc.) over the long run is equal to or greater than this net amount for any other available act (etc.).

3 Mill, James Stuart, On Liberty (London, 1921 [1859]), p. 25Google Scholar.

4 See Rawls, John, The Law of Peoples (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 124–8Google Scholar.

5 Scheffler, Samuel, Boundaries and Allegiances (Oxford, 2001), p. 49Google Scholar.

6 This is a move within the more general strategy known as ‘indirect’ utilitarianism. The idea is that, owing to the various difficulties that arise in applying the principle of utility directly in the context of everyday decision-making (lack of information, limited calculative ability, practical incapacity, coordination problems, ‘expectation effects’, and so on), utilitarians need to identify a distinct set of ‘secondary’ principles or duties, tailored to specific sorts of manageable decision problems, the general acceptance of which will maximize aggregate well-being over the long term. Special duties will be among these secondary duties, the positing of which conduces to the maximal overall good.

7 Part, but only part, of the difficulty here is that of identifying all of the relevant alternatives. As Sidgwick puts it, ‘when we abandon the firm ground of actual society we have an illimitable cloudland surrounding us on all sides, in which we may construct any variety of pattern states’ (Henry Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics (Indianapolis, 1981 [1907]), p. 22).

8 Of course, these too might turn out to be resistant. See Sidgwick, Methods, p. 473: ‘The utilitarian, in the existing state of our knowledge, cannot possibly construct a morality de novo either for man as he is (abstracting his morality) or for man as he ought to be and will be. He must start, speaking broadly, with the existing social order . . .’ Still, the claim that there is no room for movement in our moral attitudes in this area requires a strong argument.

9 Goodin, Robert, ‘What Is So Special About Our Fellow Countrymen?’, Ethics 98 (1988), pp. 663–86 (681)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 This type of argument finds one of its classic statements in Paley's, WilliamPrinciples of Moral and Political Philosophy (New York, 1824 [1786]), p. 201CrossRefGoogle Scholar: ‘The good order and happiness of the world are better upholden whilst each man applies himself to his own concerns and the care of his own family . . . than if every man, from an excess of mistaken generosity, should leave his own business, to undertake his neighbour's, which he must always manage with less knowledge, conveniency, and success.’ See also Sidgwick, Methods, pp. 433–4.

11 Goodin, ‘What Is So Special’, p. 685.

12 Scholars worry about the ability of the national welfare state to survive under conditions of globalization and multiculturalism: see e.g. the papers collected in Pranab Bardham, Samuel Bowles, and Michael Wallerstein, Globalization and Egalitarian Redistribution (Princeton, 2006). However, it is rare to suggest that the solution to the problem is to create a global welfare state.

13 Goodin's failure to acknowledge this is unfortunate. When he writes that ‘[t]erritorial boundaries are merely useful devices for “matching” one person to one protector. Citizenship is merely a device for fixing special responsibility in some agent for discharging our general duties vis-à-vis each particular person’ (‘What Is So Special’, p. 686, my italics), he gives a deflationary impression of the moral significance of states. This needlessly rubs people up the wrong way. See Tan, Kok-Chor, Justice Without Borders: Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism and Patriotism (Cambridge, 2004), p. 148CrossRefGoogle Scholar: ‘Just as it would be crass to reduce the worth of the relationship of friendship to the merely instrumental one of promoting the greater good, likewise it would be a serious misdescription of the moral worth of citizenship if we think it is merely an administrative device for discharging our general duties to humanity.’

14 Some have claimed that democracy would in fact be much better realized in the world if it were to be instituted at the fully global level. This suggestion draws on the ‘principle of affected interests’, according to which democracy requires that all those affected by a decision ought to have a say in making it. (For the principle, see Dahl, Robert, Democracy and its Critics (New Haven, 1989)Google Scholar.) This principle is certainly violated in our world, by virtue of the fact that the decisions of individual states on such matters as environmental, health and trade policy now, more than ever, have consequences that extend far beyond the borders of those states themselves. Pogge argues that this fact ‘requires democratic centralization of political decision-making’ at the international level (Pogge, Thomas, World Poverty and Human Rights (Cambridge, 2002), p. 187Google Scholar). In response, I should emphasize that my argument is not intended to rule out supplementing democracy at the level of subglobal political communities with something in some respects like democracy at the regional or global level. Instead I am claiming that political communities smaller than the entire global population are necessary, although perhaps not sufficient, for achieving the full measure of democratic agency.

15 For the classic statement, see Mill's On Liberty. Political scientists have also argued for a connection between democracy and economic prosperity. Olson argues that prosperity depends on secure property and contract rights, the latter of which depend on the very same conditions – a reliable court system, independent judiciary and respect for law, and individual rights – that underlie a lasting democracy (Olson, Mancur, ‘Dictatorship, Democracy and Development’, American Political Science Review 87 (1993), pp. 567–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar). Przeworski makes the different argument that prosperity requires effective state intervention in the market and that the latter requires democratic accountability (Adam Przeworski, ‘A Better Democracy, A Better Economy’, Boston Review (April/May 1996)). Since the connection between economic prosperity and welfare is indirect, these arguments are, even if successful, at best suggestive.

16 The modern conception of territoriality, in particular, is such a familiar and central feature of global political organization that it might be difficult to imagine alternatives to it. But, as Ruggie points out, systems of rule need not be territorial at all (they could be, and have been, kin-based instead), territorial systems need not be territorially fixed (as evidenced by nomadic societies), and the concept of territoriality need not entail mutual exclusion (persons might instead be permitted to move freely across borders). See Ruggie, John Gerard, ‘Territoriality and Beyond: Problematizing Modernity in International Relations’, International Organization 47 (1993), pp. 139–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Ruggie, ‘Territoriality and Beyond’, p. 150.

18 Pogge, World Poverty and Human Rights, p. 183.

19 Pogge, World Poverty and Human Rights, p. 178.

20 Security considerations of this kind are sometimes used to argue for a ‘world state’ possessed of a global monopoly of coercive power, on the reasoning that in an anarchical world – especially one containing weapons of mass destruction – political communities need a Hobbesian ‘power to keep them all in awe’. Not only do the considerations given earlier in favor of a plurality of distinct political communities seriously undermine the case for a world state, but it is unclear how it would even serve peace. Such a massive concentration of power would plausibly invite tyranny by its wielders and violent competition for its control.

21 Thomas Pogge, ‘Eradicating Systemic Poverty: Brief for a Global Resources Dividend’, in Pogge, World Poverty and Human Rights, pp. 196–215.

22 Pritchett, Lant, Let Their People Come: Breaking the Gridlock on Global Labor Mobility (Washington D.C., 2006)Google Scholar.

23 Macedo, Stephen, Universal Jurisdiction: National Courts and the Prosecution of Serious Crimes under International Law (Philadelphia, 2006)Google Scholar.

24 Of course, there is also the question, touched upon earlier, of whether or not revolution is even practically possible. If it isn't, and if ‘ought’ implies ‘can’, we would have yet another reason to reject the revolutionary argument.

25 The argument that I give here is similar in form to that offered in Risse, Mathias, ‘What to Say about the State’, Social Theory and Practice 32 (2006), pp. 671–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and James, Aaron, ‘Equality in a Realistic Utopia’, Social Theory and Practice 32 (2006), pp. 699–724CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Risse writes: ‘In the light of what we are ever likely to know, in our current and expected historical position, any radical move away from the state system will not be justified given likely costs to collective, national self-determination – one of the state system's main advantages. For whatever the potential advantages for peace, security, legitimacy, and democracy, we are likely to be too uncertain about whether such gains really do require revolution as opposed to mere reform.’ James accepts the basic form of argument, but argues that Risse's version is weakened by its reliance on the controversial value of national self-determination. Instead, James advocates replacing that value with the much more widely endorsed value of effective poverty reduction (p. 707). My version of the argument substitutes the value of poverty reduction with the broader value of welfare, which (given plausible assumptions) will include both poverty reduction and collective self-determination amongst its key components.

26 An advantage of this argument from the status quo is that it helps to diminish the suspicion that any utilitarian defense of the modern state system must be implausibly Panglossian. It would, after all, be a little surprising if we had just happened to settle in 1648 upon the very best of all of the many global institutional options available at that time.

27 See Rawls, Law of Peoples, pp. 11–12.

28 The first kind of pragmatism might well be appropriate for other purposes. See Brandt, Richard, Morality, Utilitarianism and Rights (Cambridge, 1992), p. 351Google Scholar: ‘It looks as if morality has to operate on two levels, on one level being free to criticize and attack the institution of private property (marriage, etc.) – this is the level proper for reformers – and on another level being required to accept this institution as a going concern and to support principles regulating behavior on the assumption the institution is there – the morality for everyday life.’

29 The claim that egalitarian redistribution is in some circumstances welfare-maximizing, owing to the supposed fact of the diminishing marginal utility of resources, has long been a staple of utilitarian political thought and has equally long had its detractors. For a relatively recent example of the latter, see Schmidtz, David, ‘Diminishing Marginal Utility and Egalitarian Redistribution’, Journal of Value Inquiry 34 (2000), pp. 263–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 Goodin's paper ends with the claim that ‘in the present world system it is often – perhaps ordinarily – wrong to give priority to the claims of our compatriots’, given that the global division of moral labor has in fact been poorly effected and special responsibilities have been assigned to some states that are either unable or unwilling to discharge them effectively (Goodin, ‘What Is So Special’, p. 686). This conclusion, as stated (particularly the ‘ordinarily’ claim), seems to me to be overly strong. Some degree of ongoing co-citizen favoritism is required to maintain the basic functioning of the state system. If we accept my argument that the state system, suitably reformed, is the best way of implementing the global division of moral labor under current conditions, and unless we mean to rescind Goodin's earlier arguments about the welfarist importance of that general device, we will want to continue our practice of ‘ordinarily’ giving priority to the claims of our compatriots. What we will want to change is the extent and content of that priority.

31 See van Parijs's similar claim that existing liberal states demonstrate ‘that a strongly redistributive economy is more than a fancy dream . . . thereby provid[ing] a tangible model . . . for redistributive strategies in each country’ (Van Parijs, Philippe, ‘Commentary: Citizenship Exploitation, Unequal Exchange and the Breakdown of Popular Sovereignty’, Free Movement: Ethical Issues in the Transnational Migration of People and Money, ed. Barry, B. and Goodin, R. (University Park, 1992), p. 164Google Scholar).

32 Or, better, they are claimed by their proponents to have that implication. In the more prominent versions of such arguments, we are pointed to a form of associative relation between persons that is said to be the exclusive ‘ground’ of distributive justice and we are then told that the relation in question is, as a matter of fact, confined within the borders of the state. It proves difficult to render the confinement claim plausible. Any associative relation sufficiently abstract in nature to apply to millions of people who have never and will never meet each other is always going to be vulnerable to detection across borders as well as within them, especially given the contemporary density of international political and economic activity. So the same arguments that purport to tell us that the state is entirely special in relation to distributive justice eventually end up telling us that it isn't. Cohen and Sabel (‘Extra Rempublicam, Nulla Justitia’) identify this problem in Nagel (‘The Problem of Global Justice’); Pogge (Realizing Rawls (Ithaca, 1989)) and Charles Beitz (Political Theory and International Relations (Princeton, 1979)) attempt to do the same in the case of Rawls.

33 The recent literature in development economics and political science has evinced considerable skepticism concerning the extent to which poverty in the developing world can be effectively addressed by foreign aid (see, especially, Easterly, William, The White Man's Burden (Harmondsworth, 2006)Google Scholar). But, while past efforts have not been spectacularly successful and some have been positively harmful, there is no evidence that either aid interventions taken individually or the aid industry as a whole are by their very nature useless or counter-productive. (For a philosophically sophisticated discussion of this point, see Cullity, Garrett, The Moral Demands of Affluence (Oxford, 2004), ch. 3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar) Moreover, even if the aid skeptics were right, there are ways other than simple cash or food grants for affluent countries to promote decent living conditions for the global poor. Among the more promising are the sharing of technological expertise; an effective solution to the third world debt problem; reform of developed country trade policy; and increases in labor migration to the developed world.

34 This suggestion might be disputed on the ground that such poverty-related requirements are best understood as duties of ‘humanity’ rather than of ‘justice’. It is hard to accord this well-worn distinction much significance within utilitarianism. For utilitarians, duties characteristically cast as ‘humanitarian’ and duties characteristically cast as ‘justice-based’ will both be secondary principles (if they make the grade), and there seems to be no great theoretical gain to be had in treating them as categorically different. I am inclined to think it an advantage of the utilitarian approach that it does not give much weight to the distinction between duties of justice and duties of humanity, which is difficult to draw on a basis that both allows for a crisp categorization of duties and has evident moral significance.

35 Many thanks to Matthew Barrett, Joshua Cohen, Sally Haslanger, and several audiences who heard earlier versions of this article for their helpful comments.