Unfair Terms of Global Cooperation and the Fair Equality of Liberty Between Peoples

Abstract

In this chapter, I turn from undocumented populations to the global poor, as subjects of representative claim making by more affluent disobedient actors from both liberal and hierarchical societies. Indeed, I develop the idea of civil disobedience as representative claim making by such actors to compensate for the inability of the poorest and most desperate inhabitants of the planet to exercise any influence over the multiple structures and agencies of global governance. These structures and agencies range from different types of nation states to International Governmental Organizations (IGOs), International Financial Organizations (IFOs), International Non-Governmental Organizations (INGOs), and so on. Here, a global perspective represents concern for the poorest, the sickest, and the hungriest at different sites and locations of global rule making. Such a perspective combines multinational coalitions of cosmopolitan citizens challenging the rulings and decisions of this or that IGO or IFO with states challenging the structure of international law as differentially impacting rich and poor. The approach I take in this chapter offers a third way between duties of assistance to the poor and global distributive justice. It does so by highlighting instead the normative equality assigned to peoples in Law of Peoples (2001). It does so by justifying disobedience by cosmopolitan citizens and states as contesting the unfair value of liberty between peoples in international rule making. In this respect, my approach offers a significant reinterpretation of the duty of assistance. It reinterprets the duty as prescribing assistance or help in the creation of a well-ordered international community of peoples, based on the fair value of their liberty in international agreements on trade and economic justice. However, it does not rule out progress towards egalitarian global distributive justice. My primary concern is with justifying disobedience by cosmopolitan citizens and states in the circumstance of piecewise global justice in which the value of liberty for peoples is unfair. It does not take a stand on particular schemes or policies of distributive justice, regarding these important policy matters as separate from the justification for resorting to civil disobedience.