Avia Pasternak

SHARING THE COSTS OF POLITICAL INJUSTICES

It is commonly thought that when democratic states act wrongly, they should bear the costs of the harm they cause. However, since states are collective agents, their financial burdens pass on to their individual citizens. This fact raises important questions about the proper distribution of the state’s collective responsibility for its unjust policies. This article identifies two opposing models for sharing this collective responsibility in democracies: first, in proportion to citizens’ personal association with the unjust policy; second, by giving each citizen an equal share of the costs. Proportional distribution is compatible with the principle of fairness. And yet, both in the literature and in political praxis we find many supporters for the equal sharing of the costs of unjust policies in democracies. How can equal distribution be defended on normative grounds? This article develops a defense that is grounded in citizens’ associative obligations. I argue that, at least in some democracies, one of the intrinsic values of the civic bond revolves around the joint formation and execution of worthy political goals. This social good generates the political associative obligation to accept an equal distribution of the costs of unjust policies.

The Collective Responsibility of Democratic Publics

1 I should like to thank Paul Gowder, Rob Jubb, Roland Meeks, David Miller, Emre Ozcan, Thomas Pogge, Adina Prada, Debra Satz, Zofi a Stemplowska, Peter Stone, Leif Wenar, Stuart White and Steve Winter for their very helpful comments on earlier versions. Special thanks go to Paul Sheehy and to Zofi a Stemplowka for illuminating conversations, and to the editor and two anonymous referees of CJP for their constructive reports. Earlier versions of the paper was presented at the Nuffield Political Theory Workshop 2006 and at the ALSP annual Conference at Keele, 2006. Much of my work on this article was conducted while I was a post-doctoral fellow at the Program on Global Justice and the Center on Ethics at Stanford University. I am grateful for the support and the excellent research environment that these centers provided.

Cosmopolitan justice and the league of democracies

Cosmopolitan justice calls for extensive institutional transformations at the international level. But in the absence of a global enforcing authority, such transformations are bound to be hampered by a range of obstacles, including non-compliance and coordination problems. What solutions can a cosmopolitan thinker offer to address these challenges? In answering this question, the paper focuses on the role that international cooperation between the world’s democracies can play in promoting cosmopolitan aspirations. It argues that such cooperation has a crucial role to play in executing global justice reforms; and furthermore, that the world’s democracies have a moral duty to lead the way in implementing cosmopolitan justice. The paper then suggests that a ‘League of Democracies’ – an intergovernmental organization which is open exclusively to the world’s democracies – could potentially facilitate the type of democratic cooperation that is necessary for cosmopolitan justice.

Sanctioning Liberal Democracies

This article examines when economic sanctions should be imposed on liberal democracies that violate democratic norms. The argument is made from the social-liberal standpoint, which recognises the moral status of political communities. While social liberals rarely refer to the use of economic sanctions as a pressure tool, by examining why they restrict military intervention and economic aid to cases of massive human rights violations or acute humanitarian need, the article is able to show why they are likely to impose strong restrictions on the use of economic sanctions as well. After reconstructing the social-liberal case against economic sanctions, the article develops the argument that liberal democracies have reasons to support sanctions on other liberal democracies, even when they perpetrate injustices on a smaller scale. Liberal democracies share especially strong ideological, cultural and institutional bonds, and these peer group relations open them to mutual influence. When one liberal democracy commits serious injustices while still proclaiming allegiance to the democratic ethos, it can adversely affect the vitality of the democratic culture in those other liberal democracies with which it maintains close relations. Other liberal democracies therefore have the right and the obligation to condemn this behaviour, in order to preserve their allegiance to their values. The article defends the use of economic sanctions in light of some recent critiques, and concludes by providing an overall assessment of the factors which liberal democracies ought to take into account when they consider imposing economic sanctions on other liberal democracies.

Intending to benefit from wrongdoing

Some believe that the mere beneficiaries of wrongdoing of others ought to disgorge their tainted benefits. Others deny that claim. Both sides of this debate concentrate on unavoidable beneficiaries of the wrongdoing of others, who are presumed themselves to be innocent by virtue of the fact they have neither contributed to the wrong nor could they have avoided receiving the benefit. But as we show, this presumption is mistaken for unavoidable beneficiaries who intend in certain ways to benefit from wrongdoing, and who have therefore done something wrong in forming and acting on such an intention.

Fair Play and Wrongful Benefits

According to the fair play defense of political obligations citizens have a reciprocity-based duty to share the costs involved in the production of public goods. But sometimes, states produce collective goods through wrongdoing. For example, sometimes states’ wrongful immigration policies can contribute to the welfare of their own populations. Do citizens have duties of reciprocity in light of such wrongful benefits? I argue that the answer to this question is negative. Drawing on the observation that beneficiaries of wrongdoing incur compensatory duties to the victims of that wrongdoing, I argue that, rather than having a duty of reciprocity for wrongful benefits, citizens have a duty to disgorge the benefits in compensation. Furthermore, the fair play defense of political obligations entails that citizens can be justified in disobeying the law in order to comply with their compensatory duties to victims of their state’s wrongdoing.