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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 July 2015
While Rawls himself put contractualism to work at the national level, his more cosmopolitan followers have argued that the full requirements of international justice can be reached only by way of a global contractualist argument. Both positions neglect a resource from within the contractualist tradition, The need for iteration of the nation-level contract gives rise to strong and reasonably definite moral requirements. A good-faith adoption of the contractual argument entails, first, a duty to assist those whose potential recourse to just arrangements is blocked by tyranny or political collapse. Second, understood as a net risk-reducing project, a nation-level contract entails a duty not to impede the iterated risk-reduction projects of other national soceties. Envisaging the duty in this contractualist way avoids problems that beset both "natural duty" and "interactionist" approaches to international justice. The non-impedance requirement bears especially on international economic arrangements. The institutional representation of those affected by such arrangements would connect this abstract requirement with practical conclusions.
An earlier version of this paper was read to the Department of Philosophy at The University of Western Ontario. My thanks to those who participated, as well as to Joseph Carens, Charles Jones and Kirsten Fisher for helpful comments.
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19. I don’t believe that one can evade the requirements by embracing the radical partialist option, at least if one wishes to retain a case for political obligation, for there simply is no reason to think that the bounds of obligation marked out by that option will resemble the boundaries of states.
20. This is of course merely a brief abstract statement of a view that needs much concrete elaboration. Among many excellent recent discussions, see Holzgrefe, J.L. & Keohane, Robert O., eds., Humanitarian Intervention: Ethical, Legal and Political Dilemmas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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