Globalisation and Equality

Keith Horton, Haig Patapan, Keith Horton, Haig Patapan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• ISBN:
  9781134342891
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Subtopic: Politica

Is globalisation creating a more unequal world? Is it creating new forms of inequality? Does it make certain pre-existing forms of inequality more morally or politically significant than they would otherwise have been?
Globalisation and Equality examines these and related questions, exploring the way increasing globalisation is challenging our conceptions of equality. The contributors explore these themes from both theoretical and empirical perspectives. Some adopt a more abstract approach, exploring foundational questions concerning the meaning of equality, its social and political dimensions, and more specifically its moral implications in a global context. Others engage the general themes of globalisation and equality by focusing on specific topics, such as welfare, citizenship, gender, culture, and the environment.
Original in the questions it poses, and interdisciplinary in its approach, this collection of essays will appeal to all those with an interest in globalisation and equality.

1    Introduction

Keith Horton and Haig Patapan

It has become increasingly common, in recent years, to raise concerns linking the two main themes of this volume, globalisation and equality. It is often claimed, for example, that globalisation is exacerbating social and economic inequalities both within and between countries. Another claim is that, as well as exacerbating pre-existing inequalities, globalisation is creating new forms of inequality, such as inequalities in power to shape the rules which regulate the emerging global order. And a third is that, whether or not it is exacerbating pre-existing inequalities, or creating new forms of inequality, globalisation makes certain inequalities more morally or politically significant than they would otherwise have been. According to those who make this third claim, there is more reason to be concerned about certain inequalities in a more globalised world than there would be in a less globalised world.

Claims like these raise a great variety of questions. Some of those questions are conceptual or semantic. Thus one needs to ask, for example, what precisely those who make such claims are referring to when they talk about ‘globalisation’, and what the ‘metric’ or ‘currency’ of the relevant comparisons are. Equality or inequality of what, exactly? And then there are a variety of empirical questions. Does the available data actually support the claim that economic inequalities within countries have increased during the period of globalisation, for example? And if so, does it also support the claim that globalisation – on one or another specification of that term – is a major causal factor in such change?

But perhaps the deepest questions raised by the kinds of claims sketched earlier are normative questions concerning exactly why such inequalities might be taken to matter, morally or politically speaking. For example, take the case of inequalities in income between people living in the world’s richer and poorer countries. These inequalities are extreme, and growing. To quote from the 1999 United Nations Development Report, ‘The income gap between the fifth of the world’s people living in the richest countries and the fifth in the poorest was 74 to 1 in 1997, up from 60 to 1 in 1990 and 30 to 1 in 1960’ (UNDP 1999: 3).

Just about everyone finds these statistics disturbing. But what exactly is it that is so troubling about them? A variety of different answers might be given to this question. And each of those answers raises further questions. Thus one might find the statistics in question troubling, for example, because one thinks that everyone in the world should have roughly equal life chances, and that rough equality of income is necessary in order to assure this. But if that is the source of one’s concern, then the next question to ask is why one thinks that everyone should have roughly equal life chances. Does one think that such an equal distribution of life chances would be good in itself? And if so, again, why does one think this? Or does one think that such a distribution, rather than being good in itself, would be good in virtue of its consequences? But if so, what consequences?

Alternatively, instead of stemming from the thought that an equal distribution of something or other would be good, one’s concern about such statistics might stem from the thought that we should not let anyone slip below some minimum standard. Whether or not equality of income would be good, surely extreme poverty is bad. But if that is the source of one’s concern, then why should the inequality in particular between the rich and the poor matter? Because one takes it as a rough measure of how little it would cost the rich to bring the poor up to the minimum standard, and thus of how callous the rich are? Or does the extreme inequality matter because it exposes the poor to the risk of exploitation by the rich?

Talk of exploitation raises yet another reason why one might be concerned about the statistics cited earlier. One’s concern might stem not so much from the thought that such inequalities offer great scope for exploitation, as from the thought that they have arisen, in large part, through exploitation or other forms of injustice. And this thought too, of course, would raise many further questions. What instances of injustice does one have in mind? Is one thinking primarily of colonial history and its consequences, for example? Or is one thinking of phenomena that took place in the more recent past and continue into the present, such as certain of the processes that tend to be associated with the term ‘globalisation’? If so, which of those processes in particular warrant the label ‘exploitation’, and why?

Of course, these are only a few of the reasons why one might be concerned about the kinds of statistics cited above. And equally clearly, similar questions might be asked about many other global inequalities. These include inequalities affecting many different subjects, apart from individuals – subjects such as states, classes and genders. And they also include inequalities measured in terms of many different metrics, apart from income – metrics such as power, security, well-being and so on. In each case, one needs to ask why the inequality in question might be taken to matter. And in each case, a variety of answers to that question might be available.

Even the little we have said so far is enough to indicate the number and variety of issues which arise when one starts to think about the connections between globalisation and equality. It will also be clear that these issues do not respect traditional inter-disciplinary divisions in academia. Specialists in a number of different disciplines can be expected to have something to say about them, and what such specialists say is likely to be all the more enlightening if they are brought together with specialists in other relevant disciplines. With this in mind, we thought that it would be helpful to bring together individuals from many different disciplines and backgrounds – both academics and active politicians, and from different disciplines within academia – to discuss some of these issues. The first result of this enterprise was the Workshop referred to in the acknowledgements. The second result is this book.

Our contributors approach the issues concerning globalisation and equality from many different perspectives. This diversity we consider to be one of the strengths of this book. Some of the contributors adopt a more abstract approach, exploring foundational questions concerning the meaning of equality, its social and political dimensions and more specifically its moral implications in a global context. Others engage the general themes of globalisation and equality by focusing on specific topics, such as welfare, citizenship, gender, culture and the environment. This distinction between the theoretical and the specific informs the overall structure of the book. The book starts with the broader, more theoretical contributions that introduce and examine the major issues and arguments before moving on to those that take up specific topics. Each chapter, however, stands alone, advancing its own argument. This can be seen clearly when we turn to the details of each contribution.

To what extent should our concern for social equality be politically bounded? And what difference does globalisation make to these boundaries? Garrett Cullity’s contribution, ‘Equality and globalization’, is focused on these two questions. He begins by arguing that certain kinds of social inequality are bad in themselves, as opposed to being bad merely because of the deprivation they involve. He then surveys arguments for the claim that the scope of proper concern for such inequalities, and of distributive justice in general, should be politically bounded. Most of these arguments, he argues, are undermined by the ‘globalist challenge’: given that our significant social relationships now extend globally, so too does the scope of distributive justice. He then focuses on what he takes to be the strongest reply to the globalist challenge, based on the argument from self-determination developed recently by John Rawls. Cullity finishes, however, by arguing that, even if such a Rawlsian view is correct, the scope of proper concern about the forms of social inequality referred to above is still importantly affected by globalisation.

Tom Campbell begins his contribution, ‘Globalising equality: the Equal Worth Project’, by making a number of distinctions between what he calls the ‘descriptive’, ‘evaluative’ and ‘prescriptive’ aspects of equality discourse. He then goes on to discuss the relation between these three aspects, with particular reference to the claim that all humans have equal worth. He points out that it is common to assume this claim without specifying exactly what the properties are in virtue of which it holds. Doing so, however, leaves us unable to resolve many important issues. Indeed, he suggests that establishing some kind of ‘foundational descriptive equality’ among all humans – equality, that is, in the properties that give them worth – may be a necessary basis for transnational obligations.

In ‘Moral universalism and global economic justice,’ Thomas Pogge draws attention to an asymmetry in the way national and global economics orders are commonly assessed. We tend to think that any national economic order, in order to be just, must meet the following two standards: its rules must be under democratic control, and it must preclude life-threatening poverty as far as is reasonably possible. But we do not tend to think that our global economic order must meet these standards. Can this asymmetry be justified? Can it be justified, in particular, in the light of ‘moral universalism’ – the idea, roughly speaking, that moral assessment must be based on fundamental principles that do not discriminate arbitrarily against particular persons or groups? If it cannot, Pogge argues, then we are guilty of a form of covert and arbitrary discrimination against the global poor.

In ‘Reclaiming equality in a globalised world’, Duncan Kerr argues that the ‘golden straitjacket’ of social, economic and political measures imposed on nation-states is leading to increasing inequality within and between states. As a consequence the state’s ability to provide a foundation for common provision is being eroded, resulting in ‘post-welfare’ states. Kerr suggests that the conventional responses to such inequality – attempts to strengthen local communities and the private sector – are not sufficient to meet this challenge. What is needed to address these concerns is to shift the focus of democratic debates to the international sphere. Accordingly he advocates a global social democracy, with greater strengthened transnational representative institutions to resolve the twin issues of growth and fairness, allowing alternative conceptions of citizenship and equality to be reasserted into our increasingly globalised world.

Contending notions of equality are at the foundations of modern welfare systems. This starting point allows Sheila Shaver in ‘Welfare, equality and globalisation: reconceiving social citizenship’, to examine the restructuring of modern welfare systems to reveal the way globalisation is shaping equality. Because of the significance of globalisation in Australia, Shaver’s case study of Australian welfare reform allows her to discern a shift in the conception of equality. Employing T. H. Marshall’s concept of ‘social citizenship’, Shaver sees the transformation of welfare from a limited social right to support provided on condition as a redefinition of social citizenship that challenges its conception of equality as equal citizenship.

Gillian Youngs, in ‘Gender, equality and globalisation’, argues that feminism provides a distinctive and valuable perspective in addressing questions of equality and the differences in social relations of power. Globalisation, understood as a masculinised phenomenon of capital and finance and a feminised phenomenon of supporting services defines and accounts for women’s differentiated experience of globalisation. In seeking to understand the inequalities among women, as well as between men and women, the chapter confronts both the new inequalities and opportunities created by globalisation.

In his contribution, ‘Globalisation for a multicultural world’, Bhikhu Parekh focuses on the cultural dimensions of globalisation. He discusses, among other things, the different ways in which multiculturalism impacts on Western and non-Western societies, the conditions under which it may be appropriate for a society to take steps to defend its culture against global forces, and the reasons why each society needs other cultures. He finishes by arguing that, since the culture of a society cannot be dissociated from its economic and political life, each country needs to be able to choose its own path to economic and political development. Under the set of policies embodied within the Washington Consensus, however, it is impossible for countries to do this. Thus cultural considerations provide a further reason for instituting a programme of global justice.

The influence of globalisation on the environment and its implications for equality is the theme of Giorel Curran’s chapter, ‘Environment, equality and globalisation’. Curran notes that globalisation has exacerbated environmental risks by increasing levels of pollution and toxic waste, as well as reducing biological diversity. Significantly, this increasing risk has been distributed unequally, both domestically and internationally. In addition to the increasing risk, however, globalisation has come to challenge, and perhaps transform, conventional notions of equality, principally in its conceptions of intra-generational, inter-generational and inter-species equality. In light of these developments Curran suggests cosmopolitan democracy, planetary citizenship and ecological democracy as useful models for thinking about, and addressing, environmental equality and justice.

Henry Shue also focuses on the environment in his contribution, ‘Legacy of danger’, with particular reference to the problem of climate change. He points out that the greatest inequality of power of all is that between current and future generations. And he shows how two connected tendencies shift burdens greatly from the former to the latter. The first is the tendency to pursue least-cost-first policies. And the second is the tendency to continue using fossil-fuel technologies until doing so is no longer cost-effective for the then-current generation, while failing to invest much in research or development of alternative energy technologies. These tendencies, Shue argues, function so as to postpone the ‘date of technological transition’ – the date at which the transition from a predominant reliance on fossil-fuel-driven technologies to a reliance on alternative energy technologies will occur. But the later the date of technological transition, the more dangerous the world is likely to be. In pursuing the tendencies referred to earlier, then, we are imposing risks of great harm on future generations. Shue finishes by showing how a particular aspect of the Kyoto Protocol – the ‘Clean Development Mechanism’ – is likely to exacerbate both of those tendencies, and thus to increase further the risks to future generations.

Clearly each of these contributions raises a range of complex, subtle and difficult questions. It is our hope that this volume encourages such further deliberation and debate, allowing a more profound engagement with the important themes of globalisation and equality.

2 Equality and Globalization

Garrett Cullity

When we ask what kind of equality we should be morally concerned about, it is natural to look for answers in three different directions. First, we can cite the fundamental moral equality of each individual person. The second direction to look in concerns equality of political and legal status – equality of political representation, equality of opportunity to occupy political office and equality before the law. And the third concerns what we might broadly call equality with respect to how well off each person is.

In the current philosophical debate about equality, equality of the first of these kinds is not at issue. Taking our fundamental moral equality as given, the debate concerns its proper social expression: how we ought to take account of it in structuring our social institutions.¹ The thought that our moral equality should be reflected in equality of political status is itself largely uncontroversial – although that still leaves room for debate over whether modern Western forms of democracy succeed in embodying the ideal of equality of political representation, and just what should be taken to count as satisfying the ideal of equality of opportunity to occupy political office. It also leaves open the question of whether the moral equality of persons can be respected by endorsing manifestly undemocratic forms of political organization as intended staging posts on the way to realizing the democratic ideal later. The main focus of recent discussion, however, has been equality of the third kind: ‘equality with respect to how well off each person is’. What is the good to be equalized in this category? Is it the resources that each person has at his or her disposal (Dworkin 1981a,b)? Is it personal welfare – how well a person’s life goes for her? Is it rather opportunity for welfare (allowing that inequalities in welfare are not objectionable insofar as they result from different uses and misuses of the same opportunities) (Arneson 1989)? Or is it instead what Cohen calls ‘access to advantage’ – ‘access’, not opportunity, in order to cover shortfalls in personal capacity that do not diminish opportunity (Cohen’s examples: weakness and stupidity); and ‘advantage’, not welfare, in order to span both resource deficiencies (such as poverty and physical weakness) and welfare deficiencies (such as despondency and failure to achieve one’s aims)?² Perhaps all these options should be rejected: the other view to be considered is that there is no sense in which it is morally desirable to equalize how well off everyone is (Nozick 1974). Notice, however, that even this last view does not depart from the assumption of the fundamental justificational importance of moral equality. Rather, the thought is that our fundamental equality is appropriately reflected in the attribution to us of equal liberty-rights, the free exercise of which leads to some people being much better off than others.

Taking this debate as its background, the aim of this chapter is to examine a question about the scope of equality. To what extent should our concern for equality be politically bounded, and what difference do contemporary facts about globalization make to those boundaries?

An answer to this question needs to start by giving a fuller account of the kinds of equality that do have moral significance. The first section does this, identifying four morally important kinds of social equality. Defending this account fully is beyond the scope of this chapter; but I shall at least give a preliminary argument in its support. In the second section, I survey arguments that our concern to eliminate social inequality should be politically bounded. The third section introduces what I shall call the ‘globalist’ challenge to these arguments, and shows the reply to this challenge that can be developed along lines recently set out by John Rawls. The fourth section then asks what difference the facts of globalization make to the scope of each of the four different kinds of morally significant social equality identified in the first section. Globalization makes an important difference, I shall argue, in relation to all of them.

Four Kinds of Social Equality

Is social inequality of any kind ever a bad thing in itself? The alternative is to think that what is bad is deprivati...