The existence of societies that lack regimes capable of meeting the basic needs of their citizens (often called “failed states”) is a tragic feature of the contemporary world. A fundamental question that any account of global justice must answer is: what duties, if any, do functioning, reasonably affluent political societies have with respect to such societies? This is one of the questions addressed by John Rawls in his theory of global justice, as presented in The Law of Peoples (1999). Rawls proposes that “well-ordered societies” have a duty to aid “burdened societies” so that the latter may become capable of meeting their citizens’ basic needs over time.

Burdened Societies

In outlining his account of global justice, Rawls identifies five different kinds of societies: liberal peoples, non-liberal but “decent peoples,” “benevolent absolutisms,” “outlaw states,” and “burdened societies” (“societies burdened by unfavorable conditions”). The first two kinds of societies, liberal and decent peoples, are “well-ordered societies.” This means, roughly, that they each possess a domestic “basic structure” (system of political and economic institutions) that (a) protects basic human rights and (b) is organized by a liberal or decent conception of justice. Liberal and decent peoples are also peaceful in their relations with other societies. “Benevolent absolutisms” respect basic human rights and are nonaggressive in their foreign relations; however, because such regimes do not grant their members any meaningful role in their main political decision-making processes, they are not well-ordered societies. “Outlaw states” fail to respect the basic human rights of their members and/or are aggressive in their foreign relations. “Burdened societies” are societies that either are incapable of satisfying their members’ basic human rights or otherwise are incapable of becoming well-ordered liberal or decent peoples. The burdens that afflict such societies can include, inter alia, insufficient material and technological resources, a lack of human capital and knowledge, and an absence of a political culture capable of protecting basic human rights and/or supporting liberal or decent political institutions and practices.

Duty of Aid to Burdened Societies

The eighth principle of Rawls’s Law of Peoples asserts that liberal and decent peoples have a duty to assist burdened societies to become capable of being well-ordered societies. Once the society in question is no longer burdened, the duty of assistance has been fulfilled. Thus, the duty of assistance – unlike many proposed principles of international distributive justice, including a globalized version of Rawls’s “difference principle” – has a “target” and a “cut-off point.” Formerly burdened societies, once they become liberal or decent peoples, can be considered equal members in the “Society of Peoples.”

The duty of assistance does not require simply the direct provision of funds to burdened societies. Instead, aid typically will involve the provision of advice and technical support – including, importantly, education and training – in order to assist the recipient society in institution building. Members of a burdened society are to be assisted in acquiring the political culture (skills, practices, virtues, and so forth) and institutions (political, legal, and economic) necessary for them to be capable of governing themselves as a well-ordered society.

In addition to the duty of assistance, well-ordered societies also have a duty to aid burdened societies in satisfying the human right to subsistence. Satisfying this duty involves, inter alia, helping burdened societies ensure that their members have access to potable water and adequate nutrition.

Debate over Rawls’s Account of Aid to Burdened Societies

Thomas Pogge has advanced a number of criticisms of Rawls’s account of burdened societies and associated duty of assistance. One criticism is that the duty of assistance cannot be justified via the two international “original positions” that Rawls employs in The Law of Peoples. In the first international original position, only liberal peoples are represented, and they select the eight principles of the Law of Peoples. Decent peoples are included in a second international original position in order to ensure that the Law of Peoples is acceptable to them, which Rawls thinks is required by liberalism’s principle of toleration. Since the parties in the international original positions are purely “rational” (i.e., concerned exclusively with protecting the interests of the peoples whom they represent; the “veil of ignorance” models the fairness or “reasonableness” of peoples), Pogge argues that they have no reason to select a duty to aid societies that are not represented, including burdened societies. Thus, the duty of assistance lacks justification. This failure reflects a deeper problem with Rawls’s Law of Peoples, Pogge maintains, namely, its use of peoples as the primary subjects of principles of global justice rather than individuals. According to Pogge, a satisfactory account of global justice must take individuals to be its primary subjects.

Some defenders of Rawls’s duty of assistance have proposed that the parties in the international original positions would select the duty of assistance for prudential reasons. Burdened societies can impose great costs on other societies: They can became havens for criminal or terrorist organizations, they are prone to becoming “outlaw states,” and their members frequently become refugees that try to enter well-ordered societies. Thus, the duty of assistance can be understood as justified on prudential grounds: It helps protect well-ordered societies against these problems. Other justifications for the duty of assistance have been advanced, including justifications that appeal to moral, as opposed to prudential, considerations. Nonetheless, Rawls’s account of the duty of assistance seems to lack a clear justification. Rawls concedes in The Law of Peoples that its basis is less firm than the other seven principles of his account of global justice.

Another criticism of Rawls’s account of burdened societies and the duty of assistance that has been pressed by Pogge is that the duty presupposes what Pogge calls “explanatory nationalism” (also referred to by Pogge as the “Purely Domestic Poverty Thesis”). Explanatory nationalism, roughly, is the view that a society’s level of wealth is to be explained by internal or domestic factors, such as a society’s political culture and/or institutions. Pogge maintains that explanatory nationalism neglects the important role that external factors – including especially features of the international economic order – play in determining whether a society is burdened.

Among the features of the existing international order that Pogge claims are especially deleterious in their effects on the economic and political health of developing countries are the various “privileges” that it extends to whatever group exercises effective power in a country, irrespective of how it came to power. One such privilege is what Pogge calls the “international resource privilege.” (Other “international privileges” discussed by Pogge include the borrowing and treaty privileges.) Existing international practice confers upon any group that exercises effective power in a country the right to sell that country’s resources and to dispose of the proceeds of such sales as they see fit. The international resource privilege thus gives rise to what is known as the “resource curse”: Countries blessed with abundant natural resources are more likely to be cursed with a lack of economic and political development. One reason for this is that the international resource privilege enables authoritarian regimes to maintain power (as they can sell their country’s natural resources to pay for arms, mercenaries, and so forth). The international resource privilege also can give rise to political instability by encouraging coup attempts and civil wars (as the prospect of controlling a country’s natural resources serves as an incentive for different groups to attempt to seize power). Many resource-rich countries consequently are plagued by political oppression, corruption, civil conflict, and poor economic performance. Pogge concludes that the international resource privilege, which is a feature of the international economic order, helps show that explanatory nationalism is incorrect – nondomestic factors often significantly influence or determine the political and economic fate of a country. A satisfactory account of global justice, according to Pogge, must take into account such features of the international economic order.

Pogge’s argument, however, focuses on the current international system, not Rawls’s “realistic utopia” of a just Society of Peoples. The practices discussed by Pogge clearly seem to violate the Law of Peoples. If existing wealthy societies actually were well-ordered peoples, they would respect the eight principles of the Law of Peoples, including the first principle (the duty to respect the freedom and independence of other peoples) and the eighth principle (the duty of assistance). Insofar as the international resource privilege undermines the freedom and independence of many societies, and in fact prevents some societies from becoming capable of being well-ordered societies (by facilitating authoritarianism, civil conflict, and so forth), then the international resource privilege, as it exists today, is incompatible with the Law of Peoples. (Similar arguments can be made, mutatis mutandis, with respect to many, if not all, of the other aspects of the existing international economic order discussed by Pogge.) Moreover, Rawls notes (albeit only briefly) that peoples would agree to implement “fair standards of trade” in their relations with each other.

Despite these replies (which Pogge acknowledges, but finds ultimately inadequate or incomplete), Pogge argues that the Law of Peoples, by providing “interactional” instead of “institutional” principles, cannot adequately address issues of injustice that invariably emerge in the larger international institutional context in which societies exist and interact, including inevitable power disparities between societies. In contrast, Pogge emphasizes that Rawls’s domestic theory of justice, by providing “institutional” principles to regulate the domestic basic structure of a society, prevents any member of that society from being vulnerable to the decisions of other particular members of that society. According to Pogge, then, a plausible account of global justice must similarly be institutional, not interactional, in nature.

Matthias Risse has defended Rawls’s account of burdened societies and the duty of assistance by defending what he calls the “institutional view” (or “institutional stance”). According to this view, a country’s level of prosperity depends primarily on the quality of its institutions. Other factors, such as a country’s level of integration into the global economy, have an impact on a country’s prosperity primarily through their impact on that country’s institutions. According to the institutional view, the existence of a stable property rights regime, the rule of law, independent courts, and regulatory structures to minimize corruption is important in facilitating economic growth. Also important are less formal features of a society’s institutional structure, such as the existence of social trust and cooperation, and the health of civil society in general.

Risse argues that the institutional view helps justify Rawls’s duty of assistance, and in particular, its focus on helping burdened societies become capable of being well-ordered societies. Moreover, according to Risse, this justification for the duty of assistance is not vulnerable to Pogge’s criticisms of explanatory nationalism. The institutional view asserts that a country’s institutions are the primary determinants of that country’s economic condition; this claim is compatible with acknowledging the role played by the international economic order in affecting or shaping the institutional structure of that country. Thus to the extent that the international economic order helps cause bad institutions (authoritarian regimes, civil war, and so forth), this must be taken into account when determining the content of the duty of assistance in particular cases.

Other defenses of the duty of assistance as the appropriate distributive principle of global justice have been advanced. For instance, Rawls and some sympathetic commentators have claimed that more demanding principles of global distributive justice would be incompatible with the ideal of national self-determination. In contrast, the duty of assistance simply ensures that all peoples are capable of being genuinely self-determining. Another line of defense emphasizes that Rawls’s project in The Law of Peoples is to outline principles of global justice for a “realistic utopia.” Any principle of global distributive justice more demanding than the duty of assistance simply is unrealistic. This is especially the case given the existing global public political culture. Because Rawls’s Law of Peoples is a “political” conception of justice, it is constructed in terms of political ideas found within the global public political culture. A political conception of global justice therefore faces a justificatory constraint that precludes a principle of global distributive justice more demanding than the duty of assistance.

These defenses of Rawls’s account of burdened societies and the duty of assistance have been challenged. It may be the case, for instance, that not all principles of global distributive justice more demanding than the duty of assistance are incompatible with the ideal of national self-determination. The claim that the duty of assistance is more feasible than all rival principles of global distributive justice also has been disputed. Given that Rawls himself concedes that the basis of the duty of assistance is not especially firm, in light of the global public political culture, it is not clear that all alternative principles fare worse.

Other important criticisms and defenses of Rawls’s account of burdened societies and the duty to aid such societies have been advanced in recent years. Many of these debates reflect the broader and more fundamental debate between advocates of “cosmopolitan” theories of global justice and defenders of Rawls’s Law of Peoples.

Conclusion

Although among prominent contemporary theories of global justice the duty of assistance is widely judged to be a comparatively “modest” principle, even critics acknowledge that realizing it would require existing wealthy societies to do far more than they presently do in order to aid burdened societies. A world in which wealthy societies fulfilled their duties of aid to burdened societies would be a radically different one from the world in which we live today. Critics and defenders of Rawls’s Law of Peoples disagree, however, over whether the universal realization of the duty of assistance would be sufficient for a distributively just world.

Related Topics

Duties of Assistance

Law of Peoples

Nationalism, Explanatory

Original Position

Pogge, Thomas

Political Liberalism

Rawls, John

Realistic Utopia

Resource Curse

Second Original Position