The article presents a novel normative model of shared responsibility for remedying unjust labor conditions and protecting workers’ rights in global supply chains. While existing literature on labor governance in the globalized economy tends to focus on empirical and conceptual investigations, the article contributes to the emerging scholarship by proposing moral justifications for labor governance schemes that go beyond voluntary private regulations and include public enforcement mechanisms. Drawing on normative theories of justice and on empirical-legal research, our Labor Model of (...) Shared Responsibility introduces three main claims: First, that responsibility for protecting and promoting labor standards in global supply chains should be shared by all private and institutional actors involved (whether directly or indirectly) in the production and distribution processes. Second, we offer a normative model for allocating responsibility among the various actors, based on five principles: connectedness, contribution, benefit, capacity, and power. Last, we demonstrate how the normative model could be implemented through various national and international institutional mechanisms. (shrink)

In this Article we propose an analytical framework for allocating responsibility for the protection of worker’s rights in the global labor market. Since production and services have expanded globally, and the state’s ability to protect worker’s rights on the national level has been undermined, the main challenge today is to find the appropriate institutional arrangements that allocate responsibility in a manner that realizes basic labor standards. The Article argues that in the context of a global labor market, responsibility should be (...) perceived in terms of "shared responsibility," whereby responsibility is shared by a complex network of agents and institutions that take part in global production and services. Within these global social networks and connections, labor relations generate a unique type of social connection which implies a special type of commitment and obligation towards workers. We propose four principles to guide the allocation of responsibility for remedying the unjust conditions of workers in the world, based on measures of connectedness, capacity, benefit, and contribution. (shrink)

Despite the growing global consensus regarding the need to ensure minimal labour standards such as adequate safety and health conditions, freedom of association, and the prohibition of child labour, millions of workers across the world continue to work in horrific conditions. Who should be held responsible, both morally and legally, for protecting workers' rights? What moral and legal obligations should individuals and institutions bear toward foreign workers in their countries? Is there any democratic way to generate, regulate, and enforce labour (...) standards in a global labour market? This book address these questions by taking a fresh look at the normative assumptions underlying existing and proposed international labour regulations. By focusing on international labour as a particular sphere of justice, it seeks to advance both the contemporary philosophical debate on global justice and the legal scholarship on international labour. (shrink)

The article presents a novel normative model of shared responsibility for remedying unjust labor conditions and protecting workers’ rights in global supply chains. While existing literature on labor governance in the globalized economy tends to focus on empirical and conceptual investigations, the article contributes to the emerging scholarship by proposing moral justifications for labor governance schemes that go beyond voluntary private regulations and include public enforcement mechanisms. Drawing on normative theories of justice and on empirical-legal research, our Labor Model of (...) Shared Responsibility introduces three main claims: First, that responsibility for protecting and promoting labor standards in global supply chains should be shared by all private and institutional actors involved (whether directly or indirectly) in the production and distribution processes. Second, we offer a normative model for allocating responsibility among the various actors, based on five principles: connectedness, contribution, benefit, capacity, and power. Last, we demonstrate how the normative model could be implemented through various national and international institutional mechanisms. (shrink)

Seyla Benhabib’s article, “Twilight of Sovereignty or the Emergence of Cosmopolitan Norms” offers a penetrating analysis of the contemporary global order and suggests a normative approach by which to mend its structural failures—viewed from the democratic ideal of popular sovereignty and guided by what she calls “cosmopolitan norms.” The authors take issue with Benhabib's position on both the descriptive and the normative grounds, and make three critical points in this matter: the first two points concern Benhabib's descriptive portrayal of the (...) global order. The third critical point concerns her normative position, i.e., her ideal of the good polity, displayed through her idea of “democratic iteration” operating through global civil society. The critical assessment of Benhabib's views ensues from the authors’ endorsement of the transformationalist position—the state, although somewhat undermined by global processes, still possesses considerable power and maintains a crucial role in determining the trajectory of these processes. (shrink)

In this paper, we explore a specific variant of multicultural education inIsrael that developed within the dominant Jewish cultural identity, that isthe claim of Jews from Islamic countries (Mizrahi Jews) for educational autonomy. This demand arose against the backdrop of an aggressive nationalist ideology – Zionism – that claimed torepresent all Jews, and yet was too ambivalent toward its non-European Jewish subjects. The Mizrahi Jews' dual identity, as Jews and as products of the Arab culture, conflated with the state's problematic (...) self-conception as both Jewish and democratic. This phenomenon, apparently, is evidenced by the two types of multicultural responses that developed within the Mizrahi sector: a critical multiculturalism with a social-democratic character on the one hand, and an autonomist multiculturalism with fundamentalist featureson the other. (shrink)