Some political philosophers believe that equality emerges as a moral concern where and because people coerce each other. I shall argue that they are wrong. The idea of coercion as a trigger of equality is neither as plausible nor as powerful as it may initially appear. Those who rely on the idea that coercion is among the conditions that give rise to equality as a moral demand face a threefold challenge. They will have to succeed in jointly (a) offering a (...) convincing account of the wrongness of coercion, (b) rendering cogent the idea that the demand of equality arises in response to the moral problem of coercion, and (c) identifying some types of interaction as relevantly coercive. This challenge, I believe, cannot be met. More precisely, I argue that two important accounts of coercion fail to meet it. (shrink)

Are the rights, duties, and virtues of citizenship grounded exclusively in considerations of justice, or do some or all of them have other sources? This question is addressed by distinguishing three different accounts of the justification of these rights, duties, and virtues, namely, the justice account, the common-good account, and the equal-membership account. The common-good account is rejected on the grounds that it provides an implausible way of understanding what it is to act as a citizen. It is then argued (...) that the justice account and the equal-membership account provide complementary perspectives that differ in terms of the scope of the duties they ground: the latter offers an analysis of the duties that citizens proper (those with an unconditional right of residence and full political rights) owe to each other, whereas the former provides an analysis of the duties that those who are under the jurisdiction of the same state, whether fellow citizens or not, owe to each other. The article concludes by arguing that the distinction between the justice account and the equal-membership account cuts across the traditional one that is drawn between liberal and republican theories of citizenship. (shrink)

RESUMEN Una de las principales aportaciones de Rawls fue su concepción de la justicia como algo predicable de la estructura social. La justicia, según él, es la primera virtud de la estructura básica. La tesis que se defiende en este artículo es que, si queremos una teoría de la justicia aplicable a nuestro mundo en globalización, tenemos que desarrollar una concepción de la estructura social diferente a la contemplada por Rawls. Con este fin, se expondrán las carencias de la ontología (...) social mantenida por Rawls para alcanzar una justicia adecuada a nuestro mundo en globalización y se propondrá, siguiendo a Nancy Fraser e Iris Marion Young, una alternativa más adecuada a la realidad que vivimos hoy. ABSTRACT One of Rawls' main contributions was his conception of justice as something predicable of the social structure. Justice, according to him, is the first virtue of the basic structure. The thesis defended in this article is that, if we want a theory of justice applicable to our globalizing world, we have to develop a conception of the social structure different to the one contemplated by Rawls. With this aim, we will discuss the shortcomings of the social ontology of Rawls to achieve justice appropriate to our globalizing world and will propose, following Nancy Fraser and Iris Marion Young, a more appropriate alternative to the reality we live today. (shrink)

Many of the foremost defenders of distributive egalitarianism hold that its scope should be limited to co-citizens. But this bracketing of distributive equality exclusively to citizens turns out to be very difficult to defend. Pressure is placed on it, for instance, when we recognize its vulnerability to ?extension arguments? which attempt to cast the net of egalitarian concern more widely. The paper rehearses those arguments and also examines some ? ultimately unsuccessful ? responses which ?citizenship egalitarians? might make. If it (...) does turn out that citizenship egalitarianism cannot be defended, then two options are open to its adherents: to modify that position substantially in order to embrace at least some global egalitarian components, or to argue for a reorganization of citizenship regimes in such a way that citizenship might properly track the subjects of egalitarian justice. Both are radical options. Finally, the paper then briefly considers one way in which an attenuated form of citizenship egalitarianism might still be defended. (shrink)