While the lives of millions of people are overshadowed by poverty and destitution, a relatively small subset of the world's population enjoys an unprecedented level of wealth. No doubt the world's rich have duties to address the plight of the global poor. But should we think of these as duties of egalitarian justice much like those applying domestically, or as weaker duties of humanitarian assistance? In this book, Laura Valentini offers an in-depth critique of the two most prominent answers to this question, cosmopolitanism and statism, and develops a novel normative framework for addressing it. Central to this framework is the idea that, unlike duties of assistance--which bind us to help the needy--duties of justice place constraints on the ways we may legitimately coerce one another. Since coercion exists domestically as well as internationally, duties of justice apply to both realms. The forms of coercion characterizing these two realms, however, differ, and so the content of duties of justice varies across them. Valentini concludes that given the nature of existing international coercion, global justice requires more than statist assistance, yet less than full cosmopolitan equality.
Author: Laura Valentini Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA Published: 03/02/2012 Pages: 232 Binding Type: Hardcover Weight: 1.15lbs Size: 9.30h x 6.10w x 0.80d ISBN: 9780199593859
About the Author
Laura Valentini obtained a first degree (Laurea) in political science from the University of Pavia (Italy), and a Master's and PhD in political theory from University College London. She was a postdoc at the Center for Human Values (Princeton University) and a Junior Research Fellow in Politics at The Queen's College (Oxford). From January 2012 she will be a Lecturer in Political Philosophy at University College London, Department of Political Science. Her research focuses on international political theory, democratic theory, and methodologies in normative theorizing. Her work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in journals such as the Journal of Political Philosophy, Politics, Philosophy & Economics, the Review of International Studies, Political Studies and the American Political Science Review.
