Global Egalitarianism or National Self-Determination?

Abstract

This chapter examines the challenge that claims for global justice have been said to pose for the nation, and the value of national self-determination in particular. A debate has arisen between defenders of global justice and defenders of national self-determination, with the latter camp sometimes arguing that although some forms of global justice are valuable, the call for global equality, if realized, would seriously endanger any meaningful form of self-determination (and as such, global egalitarianism must of necessity be ‘postnational’ in form). The first section sets out the apparent opposition between the two positions. The second section looks a little more closely at the arguments of defenders of self-determination and examines just why, in their view, their concerns rule out global egalitarianism as a theory of global justice. The third section shows why the view that a concern for national self-determination rules out global egalitarianism as an account of global justice is mistaken for a number of reasons, as I have argued in more detail elsewhere (Armstrong, 2010). Actually, global egalitarians are able to carve out space for self-determination in a variety of ways. The fourth section concludes by asking whether they should. It is claimed here that there are good reasons to reserve room for legitimate forms of self-determination. But my argument will give limited relief to nationalists, because the forms of self-determination that are likely to be valuable to individuals worldwide are likely only partly to overlap with national forms of government.