Nagel argues that sovereignty is the missing link in discussions of global justice.
Justice, he suggests, applies only to a form of organisation that claims political
legitimacy and the right to impose decisions by force, and not to voluntary
associations (Nagel, 2005: 140). Both cosmopolitans and particularists fail to
recognise this, and Rawls does not make it sufficiently clear. Sovereignty puts the
‘political’ into justice. As an empirical observation unjust and illegitimate regimes
have for the most part been the necessary precursors of progress towards democracy
and legitimacy because they created the centralised power that became the object
of contest (Nagel, 2005: 146). In itself this argument is not persuasive against
cosmopolitanism, but if we follow Hobbes and argue that even an unjust state fulfils
a coordination role then we have made the first step towards separating the domestic
and global spheres. The state answers the need for a solution to the prisoner’s
dilemma, such that an extra level of morality – a specifically political morality – is
generated.
To illustrate this we briefly digress from Nagel’s discussion to an argument for
political obligation advanced by Richard Hare. Hare asks us to imagine that we
are part of a 100-strong group that finds itself stranded on a desert island with no
prospect of being picked up (1989: 11). In short, we are stuck there and so have
to make some decisions about how we are going to organise ourselves. Hare argues
that we have a pre-political duty to wash and delouse ourselves to prevent the spread
of typhus. That duty is most effectively exercised by creating hygiene laws which
must necessarily be coercively enforced, and so requires the creation of a state. If
we then survey the reasons why we obey the law they break down, first, into
prudential (that is, self-interested) reasons: (a) you do not want to catch typhus,
and (b) you do not want to be punished for disobeying the law. Second, there are
moral reasons unrelated to the existence of law and the state: (c) you will harm
others if you do not delouse, and (d) if you get typhus you will be a burden to
others. Third, there are moral reasons that are related to the existence of law and
the state: (e) the existence of a law significantlyincreases – relative to (c) – the harm
you cause to others by not delousing; (f) you impose costs on the law enforcement
agencies by disobeying the law; (g) you will encourage others to break laws; (h)
you are taking advantage of those who obey the law (Hare, 1989: 11). Crucially,
the third group of reasons depend for their force on the second group – we create
law to solve a moral problem and to augment pre-political moral duties. It should
also be noted that Hare’s argument is universalist: the second class of reasons hold
irrespective of nationality.
Hare is concerned with the problem of political obligation rather than global
duties, but his argument usefully illustrates how the political duties can be moral
and yet distinct from ‘general’ moral duties. Much of Nagel’s work has been
concerned with elaborating two standpoints: the partial and the impartial. We
briefly discussed this distinction in Chapter 12 on Nationalism. The chief point
made there was that the two standpoints are mutually entangled: a parent who
cares for his child is committed to the recognition that other parents stand in a
special relationship to their children. The weakness of MacIntyre’s particularism
lay in his failure to recognise that partiality points beyond itself to impartiality, and
a fully socialised moral agent recognises this. Of course, it is also the case that the
standpoints conflict – recognising the claims of other parents does not resolve the
conflict between the distribution of resources between children. The exercise of
Chapter 22 Global justice 495