‘International’ Distributive Justice

Abstract

Contemporary political philosophers have explored issues related to global justice, such as global inequality and absolute poverty. In particular, they have mainly concerned with the ‘scope’ of distributive justice. Whereas Statism have stressed that the scope is limited within domestic realms, Cosmopolitanism have claimed that it is applicable at the global scale.
  By rejecting accounts from both camps, this paper explores the possibility of distribution among the nations as international distributive justice. As cosmopolitans have aptly criticized, statists have overlooked that institutional relations which are presumed to trigger distributive justice are not limited to those within states. Cosmopolitan, however, have also failed to provide us with grounds by which they have denied the role of state as one of crucial institutional relations. If we understand institutional relations as a precondition for distributive justice, it is necessary to seek international distributive justice which compatibles with domestic distributive justice. Also, because of the interdependency between domestic and international distributive justice, latter is as important as former.