On the Moral Irrelevance of a Global Basic Structure: Prospects for a Satisficing Sufficientarian Theory of Global Justice
On the Moral Irrelevance of a Global Basic Structure: Prospects for a Satisficing Sufficientarian Theory of Global Justice

Summary/Abstract: Many important criticisms to the possibility of global justice are advanced following one or another operationalization of the Rawlsian concept of a basic structure. The purpose of this paper is twofold: i) to show that the existence of a global basic structure is irrelevant from the standpoint of justice; ii) to set the stage for a cosmopolitan theory of global justice that employs satisficing sufficientarianism as a distributive principle. One of the main contentions is that the institutional - interactional cut in the recent literature should be transcended. That is, the site of justice should be extended to incorporate both the efficiency of discharging one’s duties through a just institutional scheme and the moral value of promoting a good state of affairs through one’s own efforts. In order to avoid the over-demanding objection, however, the selected principles of justice ought to belong to the sufficientarian family. Towards the end of the paper I sketch one such theory, satisficing sufficientarianism.

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