Trespassing in the Kingdom of Ends: An essay on global justice

Political institutions should secure the conditions of respect for persons as ends in themselves. I argue that political institutions ought to be concerned with equality when this would help protect persons against wrongdoing. This thesis responds to a question about the scope of justice: To whom do obligations of egalitarian justice apply? Answering this question involves determining when persons are entitled to demand equality (somehow understood). One prominent answer asserts that individuals are entitled to equality only with other citizens of the same political state. According to statism about justice, the state's unique coercive status can only be justified by securing the equality of citizens. Is there any feature of international politics that could create an analogous demand for equality among the members of different political states? This is the statist challenge to cosmopolitanism.;I answer first by arguing that it is possible to wrong a person by means of manipulation, without either coercion or deception. Manipulation occurs when a party abuses the practical authority or influence over the other that a relationship gives them. For example, one friend might manipulate another by seeking to obtain more than the shared understandings of the friendship allow. Next, I borrow from constructivist international relations theory to suggest that such relationships may develop within international institutions, giving rise to parallel possibilities of manipulation. Constructivist scholarship indicates that international institutions create important relationships among states; manipulation involves the abuse of norms within these relationships. I use the WTO as a case to illustrate how more powerful members of international institutions can sometimes manipulate less powerful members in objectionable ways. Equality thereby becomes a political concern in some international institutional contexts, a thesis I call modest cosmopolitanism. This view offers philosophical support for reforms designed to promote greater procedural equality among member states. I conclude by suggesting we have reason to form institutional relationships beyond the state that will increase our obligations to others. That is how we can settle frontiers in the Kingdom of Ends.