Luis Cabrera

Political Theory of Global Justice : A Cosmopolitan Case for the World State

1. Priorities 2. Consequences 3. Moral Reciprocity and Self-Development Rights 4. The Cosmopolitan Imperative 5. Democratic Distance 6. Citizenship, Armed Tyranny and the Democratic Peace 7. Possibilities

The Practice of Global Citizenship

Introduction Part I. Theoretical Concerns: 1. Global citizenship as individual cosmopolitanism 2. Rights, duties, and global institutions 3. Defining and distributing duties Part II. Global Citizenship in Practice: 4. Minutemen and desert samaritans: citizenship practice in conflict 5. Mobile global citizens 6. Global citizen duties within less-affluent states Part III. Advocacy and Institutions: 7. Regional citizenship and global citizenship 8. Advocacy duties and global democracy 9. Education and motivation for global citizenship Conclusion: the practice of global citizenship.

Review article: World government: Renewed debate, persistent challenges:

World government has, very recently, resumed its place as the subject of serious investigation by leading scholars in International Relations, economics and political theory. Prompted variously by global economic integration, the persistence of the nuclear weapons threat and a US hegemony that ostensibly functions as a form of world state, some empirically oriented scholars have found themselves pursuing discrete lines of inquiry to the common possibility of global political integration. The main empirical currents, especially those focused on security, have important precedents in the world state ‘heyday’ of 1944—50, and some are open to the kinds of critiques previously levied at such arguments. Normative arguments advocating gradual expansions of core rights through political integration may offer the most plausible and defensible route to deep global integration, but not necessarily one that will end at some comprehensive world state modelled on the nation-state.

Global Citizenship as the Completion of Cosmopolitanism

A conception of global citizenship should not be viewed as separate from, or synonymous with, the cosmopolitan moral orientation, but as a primary component of it. Global citizenship is fundamentally concerned with individual moral requirements in the global frame. Such requirements, framed here as belonging to the category of individual cosmopolitanism, offer guidelines on right action in the context of global human community. They are complementary to the principles of moral cosmopolitanism — those to be used in assessing the justice of global institutions and practices — that have been emphasised by cosmopolitan political theorists. Considering principles of individual and moral cosmopolitanism together can help to provide greater clarity concerning individual duties in the absence of fully global institutions, as well as clarity on individual obligations of justice in relation to emerging and still-developing trans-state institutions.

The Cosmopolitan Imperative: Global Justice through Accountable Integration

Cosmopolitan political theorists hold that our obligations to distribute resources to others do not halt at state borders, but most do not advocate a restructuring of the global system to achieve their distributive aims. This article argues that promoting democratically accountable economic and political integration between states would be the most effective way to enable cosmopolitan, or routine, tax-financed, trans-state distributions. Movement toward a more integrated global system should encourage the view that larger sets of persons have interests in common that should be protected and promoted in common. Democratically accountable integration also should enable those within less-affluent states to more vigorously press trans-state distributive claims. The still-evolving E.U. is examined as a partial model for the integrated alternative in other geographic regions, as well as, in the much longer term, for some form of democratic global government capable of ensuring that any person born anywhere would have access to adequate resources and life opportunities.

Minutemen and Desert Samaritans: Mapping the Attitudes of Activists on the United States' Immigration Front Lines

While the immigration attitudes of those in societal and ethnic minority groups have been well documented, the attitudes of immigration activists on specific issues have seen little systematic study. This article reports the findings of surveys on US immigration and trade-liberalisation policy conducted with members of the civilian border-patrol Minuteman group, and border humanitarian groups such as Samaritans and No More Deaths. Previous surveys have found relatively high levels of support for the Minuteman effort in US border states. This study finds significant divergence on actual attitudes between such activists and non-activists, the majority of whom in both groups reside in Arizona, the border state with the highest reported traffic of unauthorised immigrants. Survey findings also suggest that the relationship between attitudes toward immigration and trade liberalisation is more complex than has been presumed. The specific provisions of liberalisation agreements, in particular those on labour and the environment, can play a major role in determining support for them, including support from those with strong attitudes on related issues such as immigration.

Individual rights and the democratic boundary problem

Boundary problems arguably are primary in democratic theory. Until we settle who ‘the people’ are, numerous questions around rule by the people cannot themselves be settled. Recent accounts have advocated extending participatory boundaries outward, up to the fully global level, in order to better match decision makers to decision takers in a more integrated global system, or to appropriately account for coercion to which all are said to be subjected. Some critics of these accounts would give much stronger emphasis to national or other bonds between democratic participants. They would limit inclusion and participation accordingly. Defended here is an approach that is focused on enhancing individual rights protections through extending political boundaries. It would challenge the idea, implicit in ‘all-affected’ and ‘all-subjected’ approaches, that expanding the franchise is the appropriate tool for protecting participants’ vital interests. It challenges also any strong necessity claims for shared national sentiment to sustain democratic rule. The case of Turkish accession to the European Union is given some attention, for ways in which it highlights issues around the rights protections at stake, as well as ways in which some problematic identity questions lie at the root of much resistance to boundary extensions. While the application of a rights-based approach to the boundary problem will not be so straightforward in all cases, the approach can significantly inform participatory inclusion and institutional design at various levels of governance.

An archaeology of borders: qualitative political theory as a tool in addressing moral distance

Interviews, field observations and other qualitative methods are being increasingly used to inform the construction of arguments in normative political theory. This article works to demonstrate the strong salience of some kinds of qualitative material for cosmopolitan arguments to extend distributive boundaries. The incorporation of interviews and related qualitative material can make the moral claims of excluded others more vivid and possibly more difficult to dismiss by advocates of strong priority to compatriots in distributions. Further, it may help to promote the kind of perspective taking that has been associated with actually motivating a willingness to provide aid by individuals. Illustrative findings are presented from field work conducted for a normative project on global citizenship, including interviews with unauthorized immigrants and the analysis of artefacts left behind on heavily used migrant trails.

Outreach, Impact, Collaboration: Why Academics Should Join to Stand Against Poverty

Abstract: This article offer reasons why academics should feel compelled to play a more direct role in the alleviation of global poverty, specifically through participation in a new international network, Academics Stand Against Poverty (ASAP). Academics have the specialized training and knowledge, and the societal role, that make them particularly well equipped to make a significant contribution. They also have responsibilities to answer sometimes spurious or misleading claims made about aspects of global poverty by others in the profession, and to highlight ways in which their own governments are implicated in the perpetuation of severe global poverty. By joining forces with like-minded others in a group such as ASAP, they can enhance their own impact on poverty dialogue and policy outcomes. Those academics already playing prominent direct roles—for example, as government consultants, in public discourse, or through leadership in professional associations—can deepen their influence through sharing their insights and expertise with other ASAP members.

Dalit cosmopolitans: Institutionally developmental global citizenship in struggles against caste discrimination

Besides stating that global or cosmopolitan citizenship is an incoherent concept in the absence of a global state, some critics assert that it represents a form of Western-centric moral neoimperialism. This article develops some responses to such objections through examining the efforts of Indian activists who have undertaken intensive international engagement in their struggles against caste discrimination. The National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights has sought to close domestic rights-implementation gaps for Dalits (formerly called untouchables) in part through vertical outreach to United Nations human rights bodies. This mode of outreach is shown to represent an important practice of global citizenship, and to challenge a view of South agent as primarily passive recipients of moral goods within a global citizenship frame. Further, the Dalit activists’ global citizenship practice is shown to be significantly ‘institutionally developmental’, in that it highlights implementation gaps in the global human rights regime and can contribute to pressures for suprastate institutional transformation and development to address them. NCDHR actions are, for example, highly salient to the recently renewed dialogue on creating a World Court of Human Rights.