"What Does Liberal Legitimacy Really Require?"

Analysis (2014) 74 (1): 99-107 - Symposium on Nicole Hassoun's "Globalization and Global Justice" (peer-reviewed)

This contribution focuses on four aspects of Nicole Hassoun’s insightful book Globalization and Global Justice. All four aspects concern the central theoretical claim made in the book, namely that (3) a compelling case for aid – (4) and one that libertarians, against odds, must accept – can be made on the grounds of (2) what coercive institutions require (1) in order to be legitimate (rather than from a perspective of distributive justice). My comments mainly consist in breaking down the claim in what I take to be its four main components, and raise a few concerns about each of them. In other words, I am going to:

(1)               Ask in what specific sense Hassoun’s account is one about legitimacy (rather than justice), and what is distinctive about it;

(2)               Raise a couple of concerns about whether Hassoun has done enough in terms of showing that the global institutions she focuses on are coercive in the relevant way;

(3)               Ask whether her emphasis on aid projects (as opposed to global institutional reform) is really what should follow from her liberal legitimacy approach;

(4)               Ask whether such an emphasis on aid really is something that classical libertarians would have a hard time accepting – and, therefore, whether Hassoun’s argument really is as controversial as she takes it to be.

 



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