Gillian Brock

I examine how reforming our international tax regime could be an important vehicle by which we can begin to realize global justice. For instance, eliminating tax havens, tax evasion, and transfer pricing schemes are all important to ensure accountability and to support democracies. I argue that the proposals concerning taxation reform are likely to be more effective in tackling global poverty than Thomas Pogge's global resources dividend because they target some of the central issues more effectively. I also discuss many particular proposals for global taxes that have already been floated and implementation prospects and successes.

Many people believe in what can be described as a 'concentric circles model of responsibilities to others' in which responsibilities are generally stronger to those physically or affectively closer to us - those who, on this model, occupy circles nearer to us. In particular, it is believed that we have special ties to compatriots and, moreover, that these ties entail stronger obligations than the obligations we have to non-compatriots. While I concede that our strongest obligations may generally be to those family and friends with whom we have close personal relationships, those often thought to occupy the inner core, what I want to challenge is the idea that our obligations diminish in strength when we move beyond the boundary of the circles occupied by compatriots and proceed to those more geographically or culturally distant from us. The weight that is typically placed on the boundary between compatriots and non-compatriots in determining the strength of our obligations to others cannot withstand critical scrutiny. In this paper I show that arguments that are supposed to work to justify stronger obligations to compatriots than non-compatriots do not succeed in the ways imagined. I also present the framework of a contractarian-style model which aims to give us a more systematic way to think about our obligations to 'non-core' others, both distant and near. While we can certainly have different kinds of obligations, my analysis shows that our basic obligations to others do not diminish with distance. In addition, my account aims to flesh out what our basic obligations to others are.

Frankfurt argues that there are two categories of needs that are at least prima facie morally important (relative to other claims). In this paper I examine Frankfurt's suggestion that two categories of needs, namely, nonvolitional and constrained volitional needs, are eligible for (at least prima facie) moral importance. I show both these categories to be defective because they do not necessarily meet Frankfurt's own criteria for what makes a need morally important. I suggest a further category of needs as being a more promising 'moral importance indicator'.

My primary goals in this article are to show: first, that we can identify and justify which basic freedoms are important ones to protect in the global context; second, that we can monitor whether we are making progress with respect to whether more or fewer people are enjoying the important freedoms; third, that we can identify some key institutions that play a central role in fortifying those freedoms; fourth, that we can help build or fortify local capacity with respect to protecting basic freedoms; fifth, that external support and building international institutions can play an important role in securing local capacity to protect basic liberties. The emphasis is on trying to construct local capacity to protect basic freedoms. However external support has a key role to play. I argue that protecting press freedom and building institutions of international justice play crucial roles in securing local capacity to protect basic liberties. We have obligations to support those institutions that would facilitate progress with respect to protection of basic liberties. So, for instance, we have a range of responsibilities to support press freedom in all countries, along with international efforts to bring to justice violators of basic liberties.

In his recent review essay, Stan van Hooft raises some interesting potential challenges for cosmopolitan global justice projects, of which my version is one example.1 I am grateful to van Hooft for doing so. I hope by responding to these challenges here, others concerned with developing frameworks for analyzing issues of global justice will also learn something of value. I start by giving a very brief synopsis of key themes of my book, Global Justice,2 so I can address van Hooft’s concerns about the structure of the book. I then outline the normative thought experiment that yields the global justice framework I endorse, in order to address five main concerns van Hooft has with it. These center around problems he foresees about what it would be reasonable to agree to in the face of quite different worldviews. There are five specific concerns he identifies related to reasonableness and I address these in the third and fourth sections of this paper. (Published: 26 May 2010) Citation: Ethics & Global Politics, Vol. 3, No. 2, 2010, pp. 155-170. DOI: 10.3402/egp.v3i2.5175

In this article I present four central challenges for Hennie Lötter’s book Poverty, Ethics and Justice. The first criticism takes issue with Lötter’s focus on social rather than global justice. Though he seems to be concerned with poverty everywhere, he takes social rather than global justice as the primary unit of analysis and this leads to a certain blindness to the ways in which discharging duties to the poor is a global not just society or state level project. My alternative perspective also gives us more insights into the nature of our duties to one another and can accommodate a wider range of duties. A second set of concerns revolves around what we must do to discharge our duties to the poor and what we need to know to help effectively. We come to appreciate that helping effectively is no easy matter and supplying more guidance would be helpful. Third, after discussing some relevant empirical research, I also discuss the kinds of initiatives that deserve support, that can act as rough guidelines for would-be assisters. These more simplified guidelines do not place such heavy epistemic demands on those aiming to help. Fourth, I explore whether we can offer some more guidelines for determining which of many plausible policy initiatives we should support, given that there are many good ideas and limited resources. I offer one guideline for choosing among what appear to be plausible policies to support.

In a period of rapid internationalization of trade and increased labor mobility, is it relevant for nations to think about their moral obligations to others? Do national boundaries have fundamental moral significance, or do we have moral obligations to foreigners that are equal to our obligations to our compatriots? The latter position is known as cosmopolitanism, and this volume brings together a number of distinguished political philosophers and theorists to explore cosmopolitanism: what it consists in, and the positive case which can be made for it. Their essays provide a comprehensive overview of both the current state of the debate and the alternative visions of cosmopolitanism with which we can move forward, and they will interest a wide range of readers in philosophy, political theory, and law.

The facts of global poverty are staggering. Consider, for instance, how 1.5 billion people subsist below the international poverty line, which means about a quarter of the world's current population lives in poverty. There is much talk about how freer markets will help the situation of these people, in particular how it will help the worst off. So far the evidence for this claim is fairly unclear. ‘At any rate, on several accounts, alleviating the worst aspects of poverty would impose fairly small costs on us in more affluent countries, yet we continue to do very little about alleviating this situation. For instance, a 1 per cent tax on world product would make enormous inroads in lifting people out of poverty. Alternatively, simply a shift in priorities could do this without any added taxes: a 1 per cent decrease in military spending in the developed world and a 10 per cent decrease in military spending in the developing world could have the same effect.

Self-determination does and should play an important role in our conceptions of what it is to treat persons and peoples justly. I write at a time when the Middle East is erupting with demands for more appropriate rule by and for the people. Indigenous peoples around the world have been demanding better control over their traditional lands, over the last few decades in particular. And a serious global recession has affected all local economies since 2008, raising pertinent issues about the wisdom of having a global economy as interlinked as ours has become. Would we not do better to "de-link" from the global economy? Would more robust ideals of self-determination and political and economic autonomy provide better guidance than those that seem to dominate the current discussion of models of global justice?

Do any needs defensibly make claims on anyone? If so, which needs and whose needs can defensibly do this? What are the grounds for our responsibilities to meet others' needs, when we have such responsibilities? The distinguished contributors to this volume consider these questions as they evaluate the moral force of needs. They approach questions of obligation and moral importance from a variety of different theoretical perspectives, including contractarian, Kantian, Aristotelian, rights-based, egalitarian, liberal, and libertarian perspectives.

Are consumers in high-income countries complicit in labor exploitation when they buy good produced in sweatshops? To focus attention we consider cases of labor exploitation such as those of exposing workers to very high risks of irreversible diseases, for instance, by failing to provide adequate safety equipment. If I purchase a product made under such conditions, what is my part in this exploitation? Is my contribution one of complicity that is blameworthy? If so, what ought I to do about such participation? I address these questions at fi rst by applying a comprehensive account recently offered by Chiara Lepora and Robert Goodin, and analyzing the results in light of some important empirical issues.