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Global Egalitarianism and Practices of Citizenship

Chris Armstrong, Senior Lecturer Politics and International Relations, University of Southampton Southampton SO17 1BJ United Kingdom c.armstrong@soton.ac.uk Draft: please do not cite without permission

I. CITIZENSHIP-EGALITARIANISM AND GLOBAL JUSTICE Many contemporary defences of distributive egalitarianism hold the scope of egalitarian redistribution to be properly limited to co-citizens. Whilst we would expect theorists who would once have been called communitarian to adopt such a position, they are far from alone. Thomas Nagel has recently suggested that egalitarian distributive duties arise because of the particular nature of state institutions. Once the state exists, we are in a new moral situation, where the value of equality has purchase, he claims, and We are required to accord equal status to anyone with whom we are joined in a strong and coercively-imposed political community.1 Alternatively, citizens may owe each other egalitarian justice on account of the special ties and affinities between them, such as those of nationality.2 Some (though not all) so-called luck egalitarian theorists have argued that equality is a virtue owed by sovereigns to their citizens, rather than to any other category of persons,3 whilst in a rare point of agreement prominent critics of luckegalitarianism have also sought to explain the force and nature of egalitarian distributive duties by pointing to the links between equality and democratic citizenship.4 The defining characteristic of what I will call, for the purposes of this paper, citizenship-egalitarianism is that distributive equality is owed exclusively to citizens as citizens, although citizens might to be sure have some duties to outsiders, whether those are best understood as duties of distributive justice or humanitarianism. To put it in Nancy Frasers language, the compulsion towards specifically egalitarian redistribution depends upon the prior recognition of claimants as fellow citizens.5 Rawlss arguments in The Law of Peoples are certainly of this character,6 but he is far from alone. Whilst at the level of nations Miller is prepared to defend egalitarian distribution, at the global level he agrees with Joseph Raz7 that we only object, and should only object, to inequalities insofar as they point us towards absolute deprivation and suffering. The fact of inequality itself is not morally troubling in the global case.8 To put it another way, whilst comparative principles such as equality make sense when applied between fellow citizens, any valid

2 principles of justice at the global level must be non-comparative in character.9 As Blake puts it, relative principles such as equality may be appropriate at home, but only absolute principles (such as sufficientarian ones) are appropriate abroad.10 The recognition or non-recognition of others as citizens thus wholly determines the appropriateness of egalitarian redistribution. But this bracketing of egalitarian distributive duties exclusively to co-citizens is troubling. For there are issues which impact on citizens of different communities where the language of comparative distributive justice nevertheless seems appropriate. Simon Caney, for one, argues that explicitly comparative issues abound in the contemporary international scene. At the level of the European Union, decisions are regularly made on the contours of common agricultural or fisheries policies as an inevitable result of which comparative decisions are made about what size of the pie members are entitled to and what distributive criteria should be applied.11 Lest we consider the EU in this sense exceptional, Caney reminds us that a variety of global institutions must make decisions about how the benefits and burdens they create should be distributed. A further example would be the justice of climate change, where the suggestion that the capacity to sustainably pollute the atmosphere must be shared in a broadly egalitarian fashion has great intuitive appeal.12 For many it will seem plausible to claim that regardless of citizenship, any institution which governs the distributions of benefits and burdens arising from economic association, for instance, owes those whom its actions affect equal consideration; thus Aaron James claims that The basic moral demand that existing institutional and social structures treat those they affect in an equitable way generates real limits on socio-economic inequality across societies.13 Raising these arguments is not supposed to settle the issue in favour of global egalitarianism, but it is supposed to show that drawing a tight connection between equality and citizenship (at least as currently understood; see Section IV:C), seems not to capture the full range of egalitarian aspirations. This paper seeks to ascertain whether citizenship-egalitarians can accommodate these concerns or not. As a first step, the next section demonstrates how a number of leading citizenship-egalitarian accounts in fact fail to give good grounds for restricting egalitarian duties to co-citizens in practice.

II. CITIZENSHIP-EGALITARIANISMS BOUNDARY PROBLEMS

3 The task of this section is to demonstrate how a number of leading citizenshipbased arguments for egalitarian redistribution fail to rule out egalitarian distribution across borders. I will deal with three accounts, each of which claims that egalitarian relations are appropriate between individuals who exist in a specific kind of social relationship, and not otherwise. The accounts I will discuss are those of David Miller (who argues that egalitarian duties are appropriate solely between individuals who share a nationality), Thomas Nagel (who argues that a certain kind of relationship of coercion provides the trigger for egalitarian duties), and Andrea Sangiovanni (who argues that a certain brand of reciprocal relations is crucial). To begin with, though, two points need to be made about the significance of the arguments presented here. The first point is that the three positions discussed in this section are not exhaustive of the arguments that have been presented in favour of limiting egalitarian duties to co-citizens.14 But I would contend that they are reasonably representative of the arguments that have been advanced. Coercion-based views have been presented not just by Nagel, but also by Richard Miller, Michael Blake, Mathias Risse and Jon Mandle,15 and in many ways appear to represent the most forceful argument for citizenshipegalitarianism. Sangiovannis reciprocity-based argument is an important recent contribution to this ongoing debate,16 whereas Millers work provides the clearest argument for restricting egalitarian distributive justice on the basis of ties of nationality. Whilst it might appear a notable omission, I will not directly address Rawlss arguments for associating distributive equality with citizenship of peoples for two reasons. The first is that these have already been the subject of extensive and capable criticism.17 The second is that Rawlss arguments for restricting egalitarianism to citizens in any case overlap substantially with, and in some cases partly inspire, the more recent arguments which are canvassed.18 The second clarification that needs to be made concerns the nature of the counter-arguments that will be presented in this section. The three accounts that are discussed could be criticised at the level of ideal theory. Thus, we could ask quite why the kind of coercion Nagel concentrates on should be held to be normatively significant; we could ask whether Sangiovanni is correct to suggest that the mutual provision of two, and only two, collective goods is normative significant for the egalitarian; and finally we could question whether Miller has drawn a tight enough link between feelings of national belonging, and egalitarian distributive duties. Such arguments might be interesting and worthwhile, but the arguments presented in this section are not of that character. Rather,

4 the arguments presented here are conceptual-empirical: the central claim is that certain complexities of the contemporary world mean that Nagel, Sangiovanni and Miller will fail in their stated political goal of limiting egalitarian duties to co-citizens alone. Thus the point is not to refute citizenship-egalitarianism at the level of fundamental principle, but to suggest that certain apparently inescapable boundary problems leave its defenders unable to justify limiting egalitarian duties to citizens in the non-ideal world. A) Common Nationality David Miller has argued that whereas we are rightly troubled by poverty and deprivation on a global scale, this does not translate into a concern for equality per se.19 Instead, a concern for equality rightly applies within a community whose members share an identity, common purposes, and a single institutional structure. Whilst principles of justice may apply across borders, and whilst these will at times push the distribution of benefits and burdens in a more egalitarian direction, their objective and justification will not be egalitarian in character.20 More particularly, Miller has devoted a good deal of attention to how nationality makes social justice exclusively appropriate, insofar as it provides, amongst other things, the bonds of solidarity necessary to get it off the ground, and a stock of shared understandings that make principles of social justice intelligible. Taken together, these considerations indicate that the scope of social justice should be limited by the boundaries of national political communities.21 Thus we might say, with Nagel, that though we have general but non-egalitarian duties to all persons, we have special egalitarian duties towards co-citizens. However, it appears that in the contemporary world Millers nationality-based position can offer at best limited support for citizenship-egalitarianism. On the one hand, Miller tells us that nationality makes social justice appropriate, and on the other hand he tells us that equality is the relevant distributive principle between citizens. But the precise relationship between the two arguments matters, because citizenship and nationality are clearly not perfectly contiguous. Do co-nationals only owe each other egalitarian justice when their shared nationality is confirmed by the existence of bounds of citizenship? Does citizenship only motivate egalitarianism where co-citizens also share a single nationality? One case where the precise answer matters is that of multinational states, where it is not entirely clear on Millers account why members of different nationalities owe each other equality.22 A closely connected case is that of people from minority nationalities who are

5 nevertheless citizens of a given state. As Miller himself puts it, citizenship is frequently extended to residents of the state who acknowledge a different nationality from the majority.23 But do such citizens therefore owe each other equality, in the absence of a shared nationality, and if so why? Here, Miller wants to argue that In practice, protective and welfare services are normally provided to all citizens of the state in question, regardless of national identity. But their justification - in particular the justification of their redistributive elements - rests on the idea that they are a way of discharging obligations that fellow nationals owe to one another.24 This is distinctly suspect: after all, we do not owe equality to nationals of bordering states, precisely because they do not share our nationality. So why should we owe equality to co-citizens who do not share our nationality either? If we do owe equality to co-citizens who do not share our nationality, then it must be the case that, despite Millers insistence that nationality still conditions their form,25 nationality is of little or no import in the defining the scope of egalitarian duties.26 Either a single shared nationality is crucial to triggering egalitarian duties, in which case many citizens of multinational (and even, in some cases, multicultural) states do not owe each other equality, or it is not crucial, in which case distributive egalitarianism must be triggered by some other relationship, or combination of relationships, between citizens. B) Joint Authorship of a Coercive Order Thomas Nagels account of the trigger for egalitarian distributive duties focuses on the strong political relations between fellow citizens. As Rawls suggested, citizens taken collectively sustain and support an institutional structure that in turn conditions their own individual life-chances.27 For Nagel it is because we are joint authors of a scheme that affects our life chances that the special requirements of justice apply to us: because they are jointly responsible for the coercive institutions of the state, co-citizens owe each other a normative justification for those institutions. Thus according to Nagel it is clear that the Rawlsian injunction against arbitrary inequalities has moral force because, and only because, arbitrary inequalities are thrown up by a coercive institutional structure that we together jointly author.28 Egalitarian duties arise once and only once three conditions are met: coercive institutions are present; we are involuntarily subject to those institutions; and we can properly be viewed as joint authors of such institutions. For Nagel, this suggests that egalitarian duties are exclusively appropriate between co-citizens.

6 Similar coercion-based accounts have been suggested by Blake and Richard Miller, but have also tended to attract the response that coercive institutions do exist across state borders.29 This represents what I have elsewhere called the continuum objection,30 which states that the kind of relationship that triggers egalitarian duties cannot be shown to exist within, and not without, state borders. In Nagels case, there are good reasons for accepting that global institutions such as the World Trade Organisation meet the criteria of coerciveness and involuntary membership, at least if we connect the voluntariness or otherwise of membership to the costs of declining it.31 But what of Nagel's joint authorship criterion? This suggests that the existence of a coercive institution only triggers egalitarian duties if those affected by it can be considered joint authors of its rules. Nagel argues that this is simply not true of global institutions, which are disconnected from the will of ordinary citizens.32 This is sadly true, but there is more to be said yet on the issue of joint authorship. If we define joint authorship strongly in terms of active engagement, then Nagels conclusion undoubtedly follows. But this strong conception is implausible, for it suggests, amongst other things, that nondemocratic states do not owe their members equality; that citizens who do not participate actively in political life (perhaps because of infirmity) do not deserve distributive equality; and that rulers may divest themselves of the duty to uphold egalitarianism merely by excluding some of those affected by their decisions from political participation. Nagel himself expresses doubt about at least some of these conclusions, and we should indeed reject the strong conception as a result. If instead we modify the joint authorship requirement to suggest that all those whose life-chances are affected by an institutional structure should be considered joint authors (insofar as they have a right to participate in its decision-making), then organisations such as the WTO will certainly meet Nagels three criteria of coerciveness, involuntariness and joint authorship, and hence their existence will trigger egalitarian duties.33 On the joint authorship issue, Nagel is trapped between a strong stipulation of when egalitarian duties are owed (with the implication that some citizens are not owed equality) and a weaker stipulation (which would see equality owed more broadly). Either way, citizenship-egalitarianism fails to follow. C) Reciprocity and Collective Goods Andrea Sangiovanni has recently suggested a third basis for settling the proper scope of equality. For Sangiovanni, reciprocity in the mutual provision of the basic

7 collective goods necessary for acting on a plan of life conditions the content, scope, and justification of distributive equality.34 Rather than defining the normative centrality of citizenly relations in terms of the presence of coercion, as Nagel does, Sangiovanni suggests we focus instead on the way in which they embody a certain kind of reciprocity. The state, as the locus of institutionalised relations between citizens, demonstrates a form of reciprocity in the mutual provision of the key collective goods necessary for forming and acting on a plan of life. What is special about relations between citizens (and residents, see below) is that these relations are necessary for the production and maintenance of firstly a property system, and secondly of the good of physical security. Egalitarian duties are appropriate between individuals engaged in collectively producing and maintaining these two collective goods, and not otherwise. Whilst other forms of interdependence which may span state borders can have their own intrinsic normative significance, they do not suffice to trigger specifically egalitarian distributive duties.35 Here I want to raise two problems. The first reprises what I have called the continuum objection, and the second concerns the subjects of egalitarian justice. Firstly, then, are we convinced that the two collective goods Sangiovanni focuses on are in fact provided exclusively within, rather than across, individual states? In the case of physical security, an obvious counter-example would be bilateral or multi-lateral defence pacts, involving for instance the sharing of military technology and the basing of military sites on other states territory. In this instance, it would appear to be the case that the provision of security is at least partly an inter-state endeavour. In the case of a system of property relations, even Sangiovanni's own account offers counter-examples, as when he argues that various trans-national institutions have a crucial impact on the property regime governing the distribution of benefits and burdens in the modern economy, andso it would be implausible to arguethat only states exert authority over property entitlements.36 Secondly, Sangiovannis position is that egalitarian duties are owed between both citizens and residents.37 Ascribing such duties to citizens and residents is significant, because attributing them exclusively to citizens would raise a serious problem. This problem lies in specifying why equality is appropriate between citizens, given that nonresident citizens may not be contributing to the provision of important collective goods, whereas resident aliens (who are not, by definition, citizens), do contribute to their provision. But Sangiovanni still faces a version of this problem: for if he wants to retain the link between equality and citizenship, on what basis, if any, might we owe equality to

8 non-resident citizens? There appear to be three options open to him. Firstly, he could hold firm to the view that all citizens deserve egalitarian treatment simply as citizens. But if he took this option we would need an argument why non-resident and non-contributing citizens are due egalitarian justice, and it is hard to imagine what a plausible argument would be on Sangiovannis account. For according to Sangiovanni, non-contributing disabled resident citizens are not due egalitarian justice,38 so it is hard to see why noncontributing non-resident citizens should be. A second option is to abandon the contention that citizens are owed egalitarian justice qua citizens, and provide a more clear argument for why residency alone generates claims for egalitarian justice. Finally, a third option is to abandon the formulation residents and citizens entirely, and make it clear that contribution (to the provision of collective goods) is the only thing that matters from the perspective of egalitarian justice, regardless of an individuals geographical location or legal status. But whereas the first option seems to be implausible, the second and third options entail accepting that citizenship does not define the subjects of egalitarian justice, and hence Sangiovanni could then offer no support for citizenshipegalitarianism.

III. THE PERVASIVENESS OF BOUNDARY PROBLEMS The previous section of the paper has pointed to some general problems in specifying quite why equality might be owed to citizens alone, on the basis of the relationships that co-citizens share. It was suggested that prominent recent arguments to this effect encounter the same kind of boundary problem. All three accounts discussed experience difficulties when it comes to specifying the subjects of egalitarian justice according to the normatively relevant relationship (be it nationality, coercion or reciprocity). Troublingly, each of the three accounts, when applied to the complex contemporary world, threatens both to exclude some citizens from equality and to extend equality to some non-citizens. The specific kind of relationship which is held to trigger egalitarian duties, be it nationality, reciprocity or common subjection to coercive institutions, in fact fails to reliably demarcate citizens from non-citizens. Perhaps with a similar concern in mind, Miller has suggested that the strongest argument for the restriction of social justice to bounded groups is likely to draw on a mixture of three possible reasons. The first is that egalitarian relations are appropriate between those who

9 share a system of economic interaction; the second is that egalitarian relations are appropriate between those who are subject to the same set of coercive political institutions; and the third, finally, stipulates that egalitarian relations are appropriate between those who share a common identity.39 It is not clear, though, how this intervention helps the citizenship-egalitarian, for the tension sketched out above reappears. After all, if egalitarian distributive justice is owed only to those who meet all of these criteria, this produces counter-intuitive results: we will end up owing equality to only some citizens, and not to those who do not share a common identity with us, or who do not participate in economic life, for instance. But if we owe egalitarian justice to people who meet any one of the criteria, then egalitarian justice will certainly be owed to many non-citizens, since economic association, shared identities and coercive institutions span the boundaries of existing citizenship regimes. These boundary problems are very likely to be enduring in effect. The expansion of relations of reciprocity across borders, including increased international cooperation to secure the conditions of international trade, is continuing apace. Similarly, cooperation to secure physical security is not only continuing, but intensifying, as security cooperation increasingly adumbrates issues of international crime, and health or bio-security, as well as traditionally military issues. Restricting the duty of distributive equality to citizens of discrete states is going to be a more, rather than less difficult endeavour over time for advocates of a reciprocity-based position. Similar points can be registered about coercion-based accounts, for the spread of international, trans-national or truly global institutions with (some degree of) coercive power is widely recognised by contemporary commentators, albeit amidst disagreement about the precise implications for state sovereignty. The situation with regards to nationality is different insofar as it relates not to trans-national or global institutions, but to individual identities. But the mismatch between citizenship and nationality is also likely to be enduring: for although it is theoretically possible that citizenship might be rendered wholly contiguous with nationality (perhaps by closing state borders and evacuating non-nationals, and / or somehow extending citizenship to all external co-nationals), it is hard to see how such a situation could endure over time without extensive (and presumably highly illiberal) coercion. If anything, the contemporary world is seeing further pressure placed on the identification of citizenship with nationality, as a result for instance of the increasing incidence of dual or multiple nationality, the growth of multi-layered citizenships, and the continuing phenomenon of mass migration.40

10 If the boundary problems diagnosed do indeed prove to be unavoidable in practice, one possible response to them would be to make recourse to a distinction between principles of justice and principles of regulation.41 It would be open to Miller, Nagel or Sangiovanni to argue that, whereas relations of nationality, coercion or reciprocity are what matter at the level of ideal theory, when implementing principles of justice it is characteristically necessary to make rough-and-ready administrative decisions. Pure principles of justice, after all, tell us what is just. But they do not provide us with a full account of what we should do in particular circumstances, for implementing them purely might be unduly onerous or expensive when we confront facts about the real world. Principles of regulation, on the other hand, tell us how to structure our social and political world all-things-considered, and may point us towards quite different policies in practice.42 For instance, egalitarian duties might be extended to all citizens, regardless of whether they meet the relevant criterion, on the basis that it might be too costly or difficult to tailor distribution more carefully to the right candidates. Thus citizenship acts as a pragmatic place-holder for the subjects we would ideally like to extend distribution to: nationality (or reciprocity, or coercion) is what matters at the level of ideal theory, but citizenship, when all things are considered, is the appropriate measure for the range of egalitarian duties. Miller, Nagel and Sangiovanni have not explicitly described their principles as principles of regulation, or defended their positions on an all-things-considered basis. Sangiovanni,43 in fact, has been most clear that he would not, all-things-considered, extend equality to citizens who do not engage in relations of reciprocity. But such a move is at least theoretically open to them, and it is worth considering whether it might be successful in rescuing the attempt to restrict egalitarian duties to co-citizens. For the response to be successful, it would be would necessary to provide compelling reasons why extending equality to citizens would be preferable all-things-considered to any policy that extended equality more purely on the basis of nationality, coercion or reciprocity. The credit side of the argument will be the more plausible: it might indeed serve justice better, all things considered, to extend equality to non-contributing or non-national citizens. The alternative might prove either unduly expensive, or unduly divisive. But what of the debit side of the argument? Can compelling all-things-considered reasons be provided for not extending equality to non-citizens who nonetheless do share nationalities, or contribute reciprocally to the production of key collective goods, or who do fall within the purview of coercive trans-national or global institutions?

11 Making this argument successfully is a much taller order. It would initially appear to be hardest to make in the case of coercion-based accounts, for reasons already discussed: is it really plausible to suggest that individuals whose life-chances are significantly affected by the actions and policies of global institutions are not owed duties of equality by those institutions? However, note that this is an implication not solely of coercion-based accounts, but also of reciprocity- or nationality-based accounts, each of which deny that considerations of distributive can be triggered beyond the state by any of the characteristics of the contemporary world. Accordingly, the reciprocal contribution to systems of economic production, distribution and exchange must be denied any egalitarian significance by proponents of each of the accounts under inspection. Each of the three accounts must also deny that, when even existing global institutions divide up the benefits and burdens of the (albeit limited) global cooperation that does pertain in the contemporary world, or the burdens of dealing with global problems such as climate change for that matter, egalitarian distributive principles should play any part in our moral reasoning. This, I have been suggesting, is not morally plausible even all-thingsconsidered.

IV. OPTIONS FOR THE CITIZENSHIP-EGALITARIAN In Section II, it was suggested that citizenship-egalitarianism encounters serious boundary problems in specifying the appropriate subjects of egalitarian distributive justice. The three accounts experience the same general kind of problem: on any strong view of the relationship in question, whether it be one of nationality, coercion or reciprocity, then equality will not be owed to citizens as citizens at all (but in fact, only to some citizens). On a weak view of the relationship in question, then egalitarian duties are going to be owed to at least some non-citizens. Unless this boundary problem is categorised as essentially either trivial or contingent and I have argued that it should not be then a response is required. In this final section, I shall argue that the citizenship-egalitarian must either renounce her citizenship-egalitarianism, substantially modify it by incorporating non-citizenship-regarding egalitarian principles, or argue for a major reorganisation of contemporary citizenship practices.

12 A) Renouncing Citizenship-Egalitarianism The first (and most theoretically radical) response to the problems raised is to renounce the idea that the presence of bonds of citizenship motivates egalitarian redistribution. What if what motivates citizenship-egalitarians is in fact another, underlying ideal which properly understood will have broader salience than they have realised? Critics of statist positions on justice have already made extension arguments to this effect, claiming that the underlying impulses of some prominent egalitarian accounts should give rise to arguments with more global application. One such argument (which could be called the brute luck extension argument) suggests that, properly understood, what motivates accounts such as those of Rawls is the idea that morally arbitrary factors such as race or sex should not be allowed to affect the distribution of resources. The adequacy of this as an interpretation of Rawls, and as an organising principle for egalitarian thought have been the topic of much discussion,44 but the challenge suggests that if race and sex are morally arbitrary in this sense, then so too must be nationality, and hence distribution should not be affected by the brute luck of ones country of birth.45 Interestingly, even the arguments of critics of such luck egalitarian principles may be vulnerable to the slide into global egalitarianism. For instance, Elizabeth Anderson suggests that what egalitarians should really be concerned by is not the influence of brute luck, but the way in which domination and oppression distort relations between citizens.46 But if so, then why do the domination and oppression experienced by those outside of state borders not matter in the same way as what takes place inside them? Why, to put it bluntly, is it acceptable for relations between citizens and outsiders to be distorted by domination or oppression? We could call this the domination extension argument: if we are concerned with the corrosive effects of distributive inequalities on self-respect, on the quality of social interaction or on the potential for political equality, for instance, then we might ask why such considerations should not apply beyond the state too. Thus Charles Beitz suggests that a significant strand of egalitarian theory has challenged the debilitating effects of material deprivation on selfrespect and the capacity for self-direction.47 The egalitarian objects to social relations in which the advantaged exercise an unreasonably large degree of control over others (for instance); but if this is a legitimate grounds of complaint about inequality at the domestic level, then prima facie it seems equally so at the global level.48

13 Chris Bertram, who develops an account of egalitarianism which is close in spirit to that of Anderson, has provided one possible reason why defenders of that kind of view should nevertheless be sceptical of global egalitarianism.49 If the maintenance of self-respect is important to us as egalitarians, then we have a strong reason to be wary of global egalitarianism. For in practice, the institutional frameworks necessary for its achievement could scarcely be democratic in nature - in fact, they would likely be unwieldy and unresponsive to the desires of individual citizens. In the face of the gulf that would arise between local citizens and global political institutions as a result, citizens of nation-states could not maintain their self-respect.50 This is an important corrective to any institutional, as opposed to moral cosmopolitan account. But two things need to be said in response. Firstly, if self-respect is what matters, then it should be acknowledged that the current global order displays extremes of inequality which are also inconsistent, for many in the so-called Third World, with a sense of oneself as an active agent, capable of taking effective command of the conduct of ones life.51 Thus the self-respect of national citizens can be used to place a veto on global egalitarianism only at the cost of denying any significance to the damage to the self-respect of many citizens done by contemporary global inequalities; at best, the two need to be balanced. Secondly, it should be clear that Bertrams point counts as a (partial) corrective to some forms of global egalitarianism but not to others. For instance, whilst it could have some bearing for inter-personal egalitarian principles such as global equality of opportunity52 if it were supposed that such principles required hugely powerful global institutions, it is not clear how it could be used to object to the egalitarian restructuring of the existing global institutional order, such as to more fairly distribute the benefits and burdens arising from global interdependence. To the contrary, many global egalitarians will place emphasis on democratising the global institutional architecture at the same time as making it more egalitarian in nature: the drive to eradicate bargaining inequalities between rich and poor states clearly serves both goals simultaneously,53 and cannot be said to do unreasonable damage to self-respect.54 We could also imagine a second, more limited, response to the domination extension argument. It might be empirically true that distributive inequalities within states are more likely to undermine political equality than distributive inequalities between states.55 Perhaps, since most interaction (including supposedly democratic political interaction) takes place between co-citizens, it is here that we should be most concerned about the potential for domination. As such, even though domination exists across the

14 globe in some form or another, citizenship-egalitarians may be justified in devoting their primary attention to the domination that afflicts relationships between citizens. Whether or not this is true, the difference is only one of degree, however, for it can scarcely be denied that states too experience political inequality in their interactions together, and that this political inequality is importantly conditioned by the differences in economic wealth between them. Whereas an objection along these lines might tell us that certain inequalities are especially pressing, it still allows that at least some global inequalities matter too: it cannot serve as a rejection of global egalitarianism. To sum up, then, the first option involves accepting an extension argument, to the effect that the influence of brute luck on distribution, perhaps, or else domination, matter wherever they occur. Such an acceptance involves abandoning citizenship-egalitarianism, for even if it could be established, for instance, that domination matters more when it corrodes relationships between citizens, accepting the extension argument entails a principled objection to global inequalities too. Whilst this might lead in practice to a variegated form of global egalitarianism, it will still be a form of global egalitarianism. B) Equality with and without Citizenship If there do turn out to be good reasons for arguing that the relations between citizens should be given some prominence within egalitarian accounts, then a second option is to attempt to render this compatible with a global egalitarianism. Strictly speaking, this second option also requires us to abandon citizenship-egalitarianism, if we define that formally as the claim that egalitarian distributive duties are only owed to cocitizens. But there is nevertheless something distinctive about this second option, insofar as it may be compatible (unlike the first option) with the view that some egalitarian duties are only ever owed between citizens as citizens. This second alternative, in effect, suggests that citizenship-egalitarians should become pluralists. They should accept that egalitarianism is a complex commitment, or set of commitments, some of which will be captured by the ideal of equal citizenship and some of which will extend beyond that ideal. The nature of that pluralism is obviously open to a variety of interpretations. Thus one could say that the states (and via them, citizens) of the world need to accept collective responsibility for the nature of the global system of trade, and ensure that it treats those it affects equally, but still maintain that co-citizens have to recognise additional requirements of justice towards one another on account of the particularly dense

15 constraints they place on one another. If we were convinced by this, we would still expect a form of egalitarianism to apply to all qua individuals, but would also allow and expect that to be supplemented by citizenship-regarding egalitarian principles. At the level of ideal theory at least this would not be accepted by those who argue for equal opportunities for all individuals, such as Caney, but other global egalitarians are less troubled by the idea that different forms of egalitarianism might apply in different contexts. Thus Darrell Moellendorf has briefly suggested that The distributive demands of compatriots derive from a common political association, those to noncompatriots from the global economic association.56 The bases and (most likely) the ideals of equality are different. The devil is undoubtedly in the detail, but from an institutionalist perspective at least the idea that different institutional settings motivate different forms of egalitarianism, or give reasons for the egalitarian distribution of different kinds of goods or opportunities, cannot be ruled out. C) Reorganizing Citizenship It has been suggested both that our egalitarian intuitions extend beyond the borders of individual states, and that the relationship-based reasons given for citizenshipegalitarianism can be taken to suggest a broader extension of distributive egalitarianism than its adherents have recognised. If this is the case, a third option open to the citizenship-egalitarian is to hold firm to the claim that egalitarian duties are owed exclusively to citizens, but argue for a revision of current citizenship practices. Although the contemporary legal order of citizenship does not neatly delineate those people we owe equality to from those we do not, an alternative citizenship regime might. There is no intrinsic reason why the citizenship-egalitarian is obliged to accept the contemporary boundaries of citizenship regimes, which have often been imposed with little regard for the complexities of identity and belonging,57 and fail to neatly track the human relationships that trigger egalitarian duties (whether those relationships are those of nationality, reciprocity or subjection to coercion). What form might a revised citizenship regime take? There have been a variety of arguments for the necessity of either trans-national or global regimes of citizenship. There has also been extensive disagreement about whether a putative trans-national or global citizenship regime would augment or replace existing nation-state based citizenship regimes or whether such citizenship regimes would be transformative or

16 additive. There are (at least) two possible moves here: a first would be to argue for a global citizenship-regime as a replacement of all existing regimes. Some egalitarians have expressed scepticism about whether a move towards global citizenship is either possible or desirable,58 but regardless of its potential problems it would represent, at the theoretical level, a neat solution to citizenship-egalitarianisms boundary problems: egalitarians duties would be owed to all, and they would be owed exclusively to citizens as citizens. Secondly, the citizenship-egalitarian could remind us that some form of additive trans-national citizenship looks like becoming a reality, at least for Europeans. If it makes sense to use the term citizenship to refer to a multi-layered system of rights and responsibilities,59 there is no obvious reason why different levels of citizenship should not motivate different forms of egalitarian redistribution. For an institutionalist, any structure governing the distribution of benefits and burdens between a given set of citizens owes equal respect to those citizens, and this in turn generates at least an initial presumption in favour of egalitarianism in both procedures and substantive distributive principles.60 Under a regime of multi-layered citizenship, different institutional structures may govern the distribution of different goods (or else determine different policy areas), and hence the substantive content of egalitarian practice would be somewhat variegated. Assuming that some citizens will fall subject to the decisions of some institutions and not others, different citizens could be expected to have different sets of rights and responsibilities. The challenge, if this third option were to be pursued by the citizenshipegalitarian, would be to ensure that all of our egalitarian entitlements, whether local or global, were simultaneously entitlements of citizenship.

CONCLUSION Arguments for restricting egalitarian distributive duties to co-citizens are very common, but the relations that are supposed to make citizens special, and hence deserving of egalitarians attention, turn out not to delineate citizens from non-citizens at all. This boundary problem can not plausibly be defined away as a mere problem of implementation, and furthermore it accords with our intuition that equality is owed to at least some non-citizens at least some of the time. Perhaps citizenship-egalitarians have been mistaken all along, and there is nothing special about citizens after all. Or perhaps equality between citizens does deserve our (non-exclusive) attention, precisely because of

17 the specific ways in which it is vulnerable. What is clear is that, if we want to hold on to the idea that there is anything special about citizens, we need to either supplement our citizenship-egalitarianism with at least some egalitarian principles of global scope, or else argue for a systematic restructuring of citizenship practices so that those to whom we owe equality are reimagined as citizens. Either way, the scope of egalitarian principles turns out to be (at least partly) global, rather than purely local.

Thomas Nagel, The Problem of Global Justice, Philosophy and Public Affairs 33

(February 2005), 133. See also Michael Blake, Distributive Justice, Coercion, and Autonomy, Philosophy and Public Affairs 30 (2001), 257-96. Richard Miller, Cosmopolitan Respect and Patriotic Concern, Philosophy and Public Affairs 27 (1998), 202-224.
2 3

See e.g. David Miller, On Nationality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). See e.g. Ronald Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue: the Theory and Practice of Equality

(Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2000).

4

Elizabeth Anderson, What is the Point of Equality?, Ethics 109 (1999), 287-337;

Andrew Levine, Rethinking Liberal Equality: From a Utopian Point of View (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998).
5

Nancy Fraser, Social Justice in an Age of Identity Politics, in Nancy Fraser and

Axel Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition? A Political-Philosophical Exchange (London: Verso, 2003), 7-108.
6

John Rawls, The Law of Peoples with the Idea of Public Reason Revisited

(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Pres, 1999).

7 8 9

Joseph Raz, The Morality of Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986). Miller, On Nationality, 191, n.6. David Miller, Principles of Social Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University

Press, 1999), 19.

10 11

Blake, Distributive Justice, 258. Simon Caney, Entitlements, Obligations and Distributive Justice: the Global

Level, in Daniel Bell and Avner de-Shalit (eds) Forms of Justice: Critical

18

Perspectives on David Millers Political Philosophy (Lanham MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003), 292.
12

For an argument to this effect, see Peter Singer, One World: the Ethics of

Globalization (Second Edition, Yale: Nota Bene, 2002).

13

Aaron James, Equality in a Realistic Utopia, Social Theory and Practice 32

(2006), 700; see also Wilfried Hinsch, Global Distributive Justice, Metaphilosophy 32 (2001), 62-3. A commitment to equal respect does not, of course, automatically require substantive distributive egalitarianism. For Darrel Moellendorf, though, interpreting the ideal of equal respect to suggest that rules and institutions must be acceptable by all then generates a presumption towards distributive egalitarianism, which is defeasible if, and only if, all can reasonably accept departures from equality; Darrel Moellendorf, Equality of Opportunity Globalized? Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence 19 (2006), 304. The assumption shared by Hinsch, James and Moellendorf is that many of the global distributive inequalities that characterise the contemporary world would not pass this test. For a critical-theoretical account of the limits placed on transnational inequalities by the requirement of the justification of justice, see Rainer Forst, Towards a Critical Theory of Transnational Justice, Metaphilosophy 32 (2001), 160-179.
14

For a more exhaustive survey, see Simon Caney, Distributive Justice and the

Moral Relevance of Global Inequalities (draft, ask for permission to cite later).
15

See Richard Miller, Cosmopolitan Respect, Blake, Distributive Justice,

Mathias Risse, What to Say About the State, Social Theory and Practice 32 (2006), 671-698; Jon Mandle, Coercion, Legitimacy, and Equality, Social Theory and Practice 32 (2006), 617-625.
16

Andrea Sangiovanni, Global Justice, Reciprocity, and the State, Philosophy and

Public Affairs 35 (2007), 3-39.

17

See especially Allen Buchanan, Rawlss Law of Peoples: Rules for a Vanished

Westphalian World, Ethics 110 (2000), 697-721, and Andrew Kuper, Rawlsian Global Justice: Beyond The Law of Peoples to a Cosmopolitan Law of Persons, Political Theory 28 (2000), 640-674.
18

Thus for instance Sangiovannis position on when inequalities are correctly

appraisable as morally arbitrary builds upon a partly Rawlsian foundation, as does Nagels account of when the requirements of justice apply. Finally, Millers

19

argument that the common sympathies of nationality make distributive justice pertinent builds upon a claim also found in John Rawls, The Law of Peoples, in Steven Shute and Susan Hurley (eds) On Human Rights: the Oxford Amnesty Lectures (New York: Basic Books, 1993), 23-5.
19

David Miller, Justice and Global Inequality, in Andrew Hurrell and Ngaire

Woods (eds) Inequality, Globalization and World Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 189.
20 21 22

Miller, Justice and Global Inequality, 207-9. Miller, Principles of Social Justice, 20. It may be worthwhile to distinguish here between multinational states where there

is an overarching shared national identity (so that citizens have, in effect, two nationalities), and one where there is not. The question posed applies more clearly to the latter case.
23 24

Miller, On Nationality, 72. David Miller, Holding Nations Responsible, Ethics 114 (2004), 263, n.33; see

also On Nationality, 72.

25 26

See e.g. On Nationality, 71. Miller does point out that in practice multinational states often witness welfare

services being devolved to subnational units; Holding Nations Responsible, 263, n. 33. Whilst this is empirically true, the question under discussion is whether, and if so why, members of different nationalities within a multinational state nevertheless owe each other equality, and this qualification leaves the answer unclear.
27 28 29

John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971). Nagel, Problem of Global Justice, 128. See e.g. Moellendorf, Equality of Opportunity Globalized? James, Equality in a

Realistic Utopia.
30

Chris Armstrong, Coercion, Reciprocity and Equality Beyond the State,

unpublished paper.
31

See e.g. Joshua Cohen and Charles Sabel, Extra Rempublicam Nulla Justitia?

Philosophy and Public Affairs 34 (2006), 147-75, Kok-Chor Tan, The Boundary of Justice and the Justice of Boundaries: Defending Global Egalitarianism, Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence 19 (2006), 319-344.
32

Nagel, Problem of Global Justice, 141.

20

33

This of course moves us towards the all affected interests approach to defining

the scope of democracy. For a recent defence of that controversial idea, see Robert Goodin, Enfranchising All Affected Interests, and Its Alternatives, Philosophy and Public Affairs 35 (2007, 40-68.
34 35

Sangiovanni, Global Justice, Reciprocity and the State, 22. Sangiovanni accepts that some distributive duties are appropriate between members

of the European Union, for instance, on the basis of the distinctive way in which that institution pools risks and advantages. But he maintains that those duties are not egalitarian ones (Andrea Sangiovanni, The Bounds of Reciprocity, forthcoming).
36 37 38 39

Sangiovanni, Global Justice, Reciprocity and the State, 13-4, fn. 20. Sangiovanni, Global Justice, Reciprocity and the State, 3-4. Sangiovanni, Global Justice, Reciprocity and the State, 29, 31. David Miller, Justice and Boundaries, paper presented at Oxford University

Centre for Social Justice, November 26th 2005.

40

See Chris Armstrong, Rethinking Equality: the Challenge of Equal Citizenship,

Manchester: Manchester University Press, chapter 7.

41

See e.g. G.A. Cohen, Facts and Principles, Philosophy and Public Affairs 31

(2003), 211-245.
42

Robert Goodin, Designing Constitutions: the Political Constitution of a Mixed

Commonwealth, Political Studies 44 (1996), 635-646.

43 44 45

Sangiovanni, Global Justice, Reciprocity and the State, 29-31. See e.g. Armstrong, Rethinking Equality. See e.g. Simon Caney, Justice Beyond Borders (Oxford: Oxford University Press,

2005).
46 47 48 49

Anderson, What is the Point of Equality? Charles Beitz, Does Global Inequality Matter? Metaphilosophy 32 (2001), 105. Beitz, Does Global Inequality Matter? 106. Christopher Bertram, Global Justice, Moral Development, and Democracy, in Brock and Harry Brighouse (eds) The Political Philosophy of

Gillian
50 51 52

Cosmopolitanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,2005), 75-91. Bertram, Global Justice, 77, 83. Beitz, Does Global Inequality Matter? 105. See e.g. Caney, Justice Beyond Borders.

21

53

See e.g. Thomas Pogge, World Poverty and Human Rights (Cambridge: Polity,

2002).
54

As Allen Buchanan has argued, states might seek egalitarian principles for the

global institutional order precisely for the kinds of reason suggested by Bertram. Firstly, they would demand a global institutional order that justly distributed the benefits and burdens arising from interdependence, since otherwise they would not be able to preserve their own self-determination: as Buchanan puts it, any given state will be concerned to ensure that the global basic structures distributional effects do not impede [its] societys capacity to achieve its own conception of justice or of the good. Secondly, states would opt for a global basic structure that would at least rule out those inequalities among peoples that are incompatible with preserving the social bases of self-respect for all peoples Buchanan, Rawlss Law of Peoples, 708, 709. For Buchanan, this commitment to an egalitarian basic structure does not impinge on the capacity for internal self-determination, interpreted as the ability to pursue whatever distributive scheme fits within ones culture in fact it better secures it.
55 56

Chris Bertram, Cosmopolitanism and Inequality, Res Publica 12 (2006), 333. Darrel Moellendorf, Equal Respect and Global Egalitarianism, Social Theory and

Practice 32 (2006), 615. Kok-Chor Tan also implies that a thin global egalitarianism (whereby one discharges ones general duties to support a just global basic structure) leaves space for additional special duties towards co-citizens, some of which, by extension, may be egalitarian in character (Tan, The Boundary of Justice).
57

It is notable that Sangiovanni and Nagel do not address the issue of the legitimacy

of existing citizenship regimes. Miller does give this issue greater attention: see Miller, On Nationality. But it should also be noted that the nationalist will necessarily find option C less appealing, precisely because, as suggested in section III, there appears to be no palatable way of rendering nationality contiguous with citizenship over time. Option C is a more feasible option for reciprocity- or coercion-based accounts though current advocates of such positions will not necessarily find it appealing either.
58 59

See e.g. David Miller, Citizenship and National Identity (Cambridge: Polity, 2000). See e.g. David Held, The Transformation of Political Community: Rethinking

Democracy in the Context of Globalization, in Ian Shapiro and Casiano Hacker-

22

Cordon (eds) Democracys Edges (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 84-111.
60

Moellendorf, Equality of Opportunity Globalized.