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Simon Caney Cosmopolitan Justice and Institutional
Design: An Egalitarian Liberal Conception of Global
Governance Social Theory and Practice, 32.4 (2006): 525-546. Free access
to this article is provided by kind permission of the author and the editors
and publishers of Social Theory
and Practice.
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the article: http://international-political-theory.net/3/Caney.pdf Abstract My aim in this paper is to address the question: What kind of
political institutions should there be? Should there be a system of states?
Should there be global institutions? If there should be global institutions,
what should their roles be and what powers should they possess? These are all
questions of what one might call "global institutional design."
They are, no doubt, rather grandiose questions, but they are questions to
which we need answers. We currently face enormous injustices--global poverty
and inequality, exploitation, AIDS, accelerating global warming, warfare and
imperialism--and it is important to know what kind of global political
framework there should be in light of these very grave wrongs. We inhabit a
world characterized by what some have termed "negative
integration"--there are fewer barriers to trade, communication, and
interaction--and yet there is relatively little "positive
integration" (by which is meant prominent and effective international
institutions that link all together). (1) It is an open question whether more
"positive integration" is a desirable goal or whether the kind of
decentralization offered by a system of states is more desirable. In what follows I argue that there should be suprastate
institutions charged with protecting persons' fundamental rights (including,
for example, their interest in security, a healthy environment, and not
suffering from poverty) and mediating fairly between competing ideals of word
order. This preferred world order thus posits a multilevel system of
governance--one, that is, in which there are state-like political systems
that possess considerable autonomy but are not fully sovereign, and in which
authoritative decision-making powers are also held by regional organizations
(akin to the EU), global institutions, and substate political authorities.
(2) I begin by examining two competing principles of institutional
design--an instrumental view, which maintains that one should design
institutions so as to realize the most plausible conception of justice, and a
democratic view, which maintains that one should design institutions so as to
enable persons to participate in the decisions that impact their lives. I
argue for a mixed view that combines these two principles. In the second
stage of the argument, I draw on this principle of institutional design to
argue for the need for suprastate institutions. These are required to protect
persons' core basic rights and, over and above that, they are needed to
provide fair and legitimate procedures for choosing which rules should govern
the global economy and environment. The third stage of the argument develops
this account by elaborating on what features global institutions must possess
for them to perform these two distinct kinds of roles. I then (section 4)
draw attention to the ways in which the responsibilities of international
institutions differ from those of other actors. |