Normative approaches to global justice

Normative theories of global justice can be divided according two criteria: (i) relational or non-relational; (ii) statist or cosmopolitan. Relational authors are either statist or cosmopolitan. Non-relational authors normally are cosmopolitan albeit in a different way from relational cosmopolitans. Limits of statists (Blake, Nagel, Julius, Sangiovanni ) are showed starting with cosmopolitan objections to them. Cosmopolitans can be relational or non-relational, the difference being that relational cosmopolitans (Beitz, Pogge, Cohen and Sabel ) expand the basic structure from domestic to global whereas non-relational cosmopolitans (Caney, Buchanan ) use moral arguments bypassing the institutional ones. Statist arguments are here adopted for criticizing cosmopolitanism. Cosmopolitanism is criticized for two kinds of reasons: (i) institutional reasons; (ii) moral reasons. The first kind of reasons mainly concern relational cosmopolitans and the second ones non-relational cosmopolitans. In so doing, one plays the cosmopolitan with the statist and the statist with the cosmopolitan. This is not because either cosmopolitans or statists are right. The intention is rather to avoid the pitfalls of both statism and cosmopolitanism by presenting a fresh start under the name of Liberal Internationalism. Then relational institutional support for Liberal Internationalism is provided: normative regionalism. Finally, a moral support for Liberal Internationalism is found: a non-relational humanitarian duty of justice. This duty of justice is not egalitarian but sufficientarian, more focused on absolute deprivations than on relative deprivations.