Equality and the New Global Order

May 11-13, 2006, Harvard University

Conference Organizer: Mathias Risse; Jointly Sponsored by the Center for Ethics and the Project on Justice, Welfare, and Economics, with additional financial support by the Kennedy School of Government, the Provost's Office, the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, the Ash Institute for Democratic Innovation, and the Center for International Development.

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At the beginning of the 21st century, our world is politically and economically interconnected, a continuous global society based on local territorial sovereignty whose fate is shaped not merely by states, but also by transnational and transgovernmental networks, structures aptly called the global political and economic order. At the political level, our current state system is governed by a set of rules the most significant of which are codified by the UN Charter. At the economic level, the so-called Bretton Woods institutions (IMF, World Bank, later the GATT/WTO) provide a cooperative network intended to prevent wars and foster worldwide economic betterment. One important normative question that one can ask about this order is: how should we think of the value of equality in this new global order that is interconnected in such ways but nevertheless so highly “unequal”? Put differently, what would this order have to be like for it to realize the moral equality of all human beings?

Consider the status of distributive equality. For purposes of distributive justice the idea of a “global village” is a non-starter. There is no way of motivating governments or individuals to engage in the levels of redistribution we see even in the most redistribution-resistant of developed countries. It is also unclear how one would set up this goal in any case, given the very different conditions that nations live in. However, is this just an acceptance of failure of motivation, or should the diagnosis be different: that the realization of the value of equality at the global level does not require “full” redistribution, and that hence the moral equality of all human beings must be conceptualized differently than in terms of material equality to be brought about by redistribution? Beyond this, what norms should govern our relations? Basic humanitarian principles of rescue and some norms of fair trade seem widely accepted, even if hard to implement. Yet these are not obviously values that are have much to do with equality. Is there anything beyond this that somebody concerned with the realization of the value of equality should favor? If so, what should be the principled basis? And what would answers to such questions entail for the design of global institutions and moral issues of global reach, such as health disparities?

The goal of this conference is to explore the role of the value of equality in the new global order. This is a normative question, but our special emphasis is on normative perspectives that are empirically informed (especially of the social-science literature on “globalization”), as well as on work in the social sciences that is normatively engaged.

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