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Having argued, in Ch. 2, that there are universal moral values, the next logical step is to ask what these universal moral values are; this question is pursued in Chs 3 and 4, which consider arguments for two different types of universal value and link together to provide an analysis of what universal principles of justice should apply at the global level. This chapter examines what universal principles of distributive justice (if any) should be adopted. It is arranged in 14 sections: Section I presents a conceptual analysis of the nature of distributive justice; Section II makes some preliminary points about the nature of cosmopolitan accounts of distributive justice and the general nature of the reasoning underlying these; Sections III–V then analyse three types of arguments for cosmopolitan principles of distributive justice, and Section VI reflects on these, and suggests and defends four principles of cosmopolitan distributive justice; Sections VII–VIII consider objections (counter-arguments) to cosmopolitan concepts of distributive justice, some of them outlined by John Rawls in his account of international justice and others by nationalist political thinkers such as David Miller; Sections IX–XI examine three nationalist claims about the nature of distributive justice, all of which emphasize the moral relevance of persons’ membership in nations, while Sections XII–XIII investigate two realist claims (XII–XIII). Section XIV sums up the findings of the chapter.

Post‐cosmopolitan citizenship is offered as an alternative to liberal and republican conceptions of citizenship. It is contrasted with cosmopolitan citizenship, in the belief that it offers a more compelling practical account of transnational political obligations.

The aim of this chapter is to analyse a number of prominent views concerning the nature of a just war and, having criticized them, to outline the account of a just war that follows from a cosmopolitan perspective. It explores different philosophical approaches at a general level, analysing their accounts of when war may be waged (jus ad bellum) and how it may be waged (jus in bello). To do this it begins, in Section I, with some methodological observations, and then, in the next three sections (II–IV), examines several leading perspectives on the nature of just war: Sections II and III explore Michael Walzer’s influential treatment of this subject in Just and Unjust Wars (1977), criticizing in particular his account of jus ad bellum and his derivation of rules of jus in bello; Section IV analyses Terry Nardin’s state-centric account of just war in Law, Morality and the Relations of States (1983). The following four sections (V–VIII) turn to more cosmopolitan perspectives: Section V outlines the general structure of a cosmopolitan theory of just war; Sections VI and VII examine particular cosmopolitan accounts of some aspects of just war, analysing utilitarian and deontological approaches; and Section VIII criticizes the utilitarian and deontological accounts given in the previous two sections, outlining an alternative cosmopolitan rights-based approach that avoids the objections levelled against these two theories. Sections IX–XI analyse realist misgivings about both traditional and cosmopolitan conceptions of jus ad bellum (IX) and jus in bello (X); and Section XI summarizes and concludes.

The aims of this book have been to defend a cosmopolitan theory (both a specific cosmopolitan theory and also a cosmopolitan perspective more generally) and to analyse and evaluate competing political philosophies in relation to global justice and politics. This conclusion pulls the threads of the previous six chapters together and offers some more general reflections on different ways of thinking about ethical issues that arise at the global level. The chapter begins by highlighting some key features of the cosmopolitan vision that have emerged from the preceding chapters. It then seeks to locate where non-cosmopolitan political philosophies dissent from (challenge) the cosmopolitan vision.

Jeremy Waldron’s essay centres around Martha Nussbaum’s ideas on cosmopolitan education: Nussbaum argues that we should make ‘world citizenship, rather than democratic or national citizenship, the focus for civic education’. The essay provides just a few examples to illustrate the concrete particularity of the world community for which we are urged by Nussbaum to take responsibility, with the aim of refuting the view of those who condemn cosmopolitanism as an abstraction. The arguments for and against Nussbaum’s idea (universalism vs particularism) are presented, and one of the opposing views highlighted: that cosmopolitan moral education is not just an education in moral ideas; it is (or ought to be) an education in the particular ways in which people have inhabited the world (rather than the purely local aspects of their inhabiting particular territories). The different sections of the chapter look at how a society becomes multicultural, the infrastructure of cultural interaction, the identification of citizenship (citizenship in relation to civic responsibility, exclusivity, subjection), the language of citizenship, and its concrete reality and its cosmopolitan dimensions.

Ecological citizenship is presented as an example and inflection of post‐cosmopolitan citizenship. It is contrasted with environmental citizenship. The ecological footprint is presented as the ecological citizenship's version of political space, and global warming is used to exemplify the asymmetrical relations of globalising cause‐and‐effect that call forth post‐cosmopolitan obligations.

Describes the aims, approaches, and structure of the book. The basic issue addressed is the political principles that should govern global politics, and to analyse this the book posits six sets of questions, each of which is addressed in separate chapters that separately examine (moral) universalism, civil and political justice, distributive justice, political structures, just war, and humanitarian intervention. The author makes four points: that his concern is with political philosophy; that he refers to global rather than international political theory; that he examines global political theory rather than global ethics; and that he distinguishes three levels at which global political theory may operate—its relation to domestic political theory, the principles and institutions involved, and the application of these principles to specific issues. He also identifies the aims of the book, which are: to provide a defence of what is commonly termed a cosmopolitan political morality; to explore in depth and evaluate competing philosophical perspectives on these issues; and to emphasize that the topics examined in the book are very closely intertwined and cannot be engaged satisfactorily in isolation from one another. The four competing approaches that may be taken to global political theory (cosmopolitanism, realism, the ‘society of states’, and nationalism) are outlined in turn in order to provide a framework within which the six questions posited in the book are examined, and to stake out and defend the cosmopolitan approach taken.

Having argued in Chs 3 and 4 that there are cosmopolitan principles of civil and political justice and cosmopolitan principles of distributive justice, one is logically led to the question, ‘if one affirms cosmopolitan principles of justice, what kind of political framework (political structures) should one accept— a system of states, or of global political institutions, of autonomous nations (including even statehood)? This chapter seeks to answer these questions. It is arranged in 17 sections: Section I provides a conceptual analysis of some possible political frameworks; the following six sections (II–VI) consider cosmopolitan approaches to the question of how political power should be institutionalized (II), present three possible approaches—intrinsic, right-based, and instrumental (III–V), and examine the nature of the political framework offered by these three approaches (VI); Sections VII–XI analyse five challenges to the cosmopolitan political proposals, first, those voiced by statists (including both realists and those who affirm the ‘society of states’) (VIII–X) and, second, those voiced by those sympathetic to the idea of a global civil society (XI); Sections XII–XVI evaluate four nationalist claims that any defensible account of political institutions should grant autonomy to nations (provide national self-determination), and they aim to defend a cosmopolitan political programme—one in which there are democratic supra-state institutions charged with protecting people’s civil, political, and economic rights—and to rebut the challenges of statists and nationalists or to show that they can be accommodated by cosmopolitans. Section XVII summarizes and concludes that, overall, a cosmopolitan political order should grant a very heavily qualified role to national self-determination.

Focuses on the question of whether it is ever justified to intervene in the affairs of another political regime. To answer this question, the chapter begins, in Section I, with an analysis of what is meant by humanitarian intervention, and then goes on, in Section II, to outline a cosmopolitan argument for the right, and indeed duty, of humanitarian intervention. Sections III–VI then consider four counter-arguments for a norm of non-intervention presented by ‘society of states’ theorists, realists, and nationalists; these are that humanitarian intervention is illegitimate because it fails to respect the right to self-government, is presumptuous and arrogant, destroys international stability, and rarely succeeds. Sections VII–VIII argue that there is a moral case for intervention on humanitarian grounds, and analyse the conditions that must be satisfied before intervention is attempted (VII), as well as the principles that should guide the conduct of an intervention (VIII). Section IX examines whether international law should affirm a right to humanitarian intervention, and Section X summarizes and concludes, suggesting that overall, on cosmopolitan grounds, humanitarian intervention is defensible under certain conditions, but pointing out that it is a reactive policy, and that there is a strong case to be made for tackling and preventing problems rather than responding to them after they have arisen.

Develops a cosmopolitan theory of global justice, in critical dialogue with John Rawls’s The Law of Peoples. Kuper argues that Rawls has begged some of the central questions of global justice by adopting a ‘thin statist’ conception of legitimate global order. Thus, Rawls effectively supports a system of unitary nation-states with limited sovereignty, while Kuper rejects this idea in favour of multi-level and multi-type political institutions. Similarly, Rawls disavows free speech and democratic rights at the global level, while Kuper establishes that they are fundamental requirements of global justice. Kuper then proposes a new notion of ‘plurarchic sovereignty’ governed by Principles of Democracy and Subsidiarity. Important practical implications are demonstrated in three areas: economic development, the rules of engagement with illiberal states, and the use of force in humanitarian intervention.

This chapter examines the idea of cosmopolitan justice, or the application of egalitarian principles to relations between nations. Three primary challenges to this application are considered: the doctrine of state sovereignty in international law and political theory, which holds that the internal affairs of states ought to be the exclusive prerogative of national governments; the theory of political realism, which denies the existence of valid normative ideals within international relations, maintaining instead that the advancement of national interests are the only defensible aims in policy such as that affecting climate; and the anti-cosmopolitanism of Rawls and some of his allies, maintaining that principles of justice can only apply within some societies, denying that the aggregate global effects of anthropogenic climate change raise any distinctive problems for justice itself. The case for cosmopolitan justice (by Beitz and others) is examined, paying particular attention to its application to problems of global climate.

This chapter discusses a detailed outline of the first point of opposition for an embedded cosmopolitan position, called ‘impartialist cosmopolitanism’. There are many works that have approached the questions of global justice and duties to ‘distant strangers’ from impartialist cosmopolitan perspectives; this chapter focuses on only a few of them. The chapter addresses those liberal cosmopolitan positions that draw on the work of John Rawls and seeks to survey the points of disagreement found at the centre of an influential debate. Emphasis is drawn on the inclusive and critical capacities claimed by impartialist cosmopolitan positions.

This chapter outlines a number of critical responses to the project of seeking to rectify historic injustice, and explains why they largely do not apply to international libertarian accounts of international justice. It distinguishes between backward-looking and forward-looking accounts of distributive justice in both ideal and non-ideal theory, and looks at how both accounts relate to ideas of rectificatory justice. If one advocates a forward-looking account of distributive justice, and so advocates a redistribution of resources with each new generation, then the rectificatory project will seem to be of little importance. However, this nonchalance in the face of historic injustice is unsustainable if one advocates backward-looking principles. Since international libertarians resist cosmopolitan calls for a generational redistribution of resources across political boundaries, they must carefully scrutinize the provenance of modern day distributions.

From the discussion in the previous chapters, it is clear that we need to improve the agents and mechanisms of humanitarian intervention so that we can legitimately tackle egregious violations of human rights on a much more frequent basis. This chapter therefore considers five proposals for reform: (a) the codification of criteria for humanitarian intervention in international law; (b) the extension of UN standby arrangements; (c) the creation of a small cosmopolitan UN force; (d) the creation of a large‐sized cosmopolitan UN force under the control of cosmopolitan democratic institutions; and (e) the improvement of the capacity of regional organizations to undertake humanitarian intervention.

David Held argues that globalisation has eroded the capacity for meaningful democratic citizenship at the domestic level, as nation-states lose some of their historic sovereignty. It is argued that globalisation has not undermined domestic political participation, and has mobilised otherwise apathetic people. The prospects for producing a meaningful form of transnational citizenship are discussed.

Democracy’s Discontent has been so well received more because it expresses a mood than because it makes an argument. Middle-class professionals and managers are no longer experts offering professional and autonomous advice on how best to steer the economy, but employees subject to the market forces they had believed they controlled. Unsurprisingly, they might be interested in recapturing some control at the expense of some slight reduction in their material well-being, even if the effects on the material well-being of less privileged groups might be more substantial. Our different identities–our cosmopolitanism and our more particular commitments to family, friends, neighbors, nations, ethnic groups, and religious confreres–might sometimes conflict, but a public philosophy that acknowledges the possibility of internal conflicts, and treats such conflicts as an occasion for political deliberation and struggle, might inspire the allegiance that Sandel requires. To exercise effective control over transnational corporate power, people must participate in supranational institutions as democrats, not as Kurds or Quebecois–and, to that extent, as cosmopolitans.

Harry Brighouse’s essay concludes Part I of the book by taking up one aspect of the task of clarifying the role of common education, by applying it to the teaching of patriotism in public (common) schools. He asks whether liberal and cosmopolitan values are compatible with a common education aimed at fostering patriotic attachment to the nation. He examines numerous arguments recently developed to justify fostering patriotism in common schools from a liberal–democratic perspective, and finds them all wanting. However, even if liberal–democratic arguments for teaching patriotism could be found that withstand the criticisms he advances, Brighouse argues that common schools should avoid using history as the vehicle for fostering patriotic loyalty, since even the most honest, clear-sighted, unsentimental attempts to teach national history are likely to degrade and undermine the other purposes that teaching history properly has. The chapter proceeds as follows: Section 6.1, discusses briefly the justifications of patriotism and the further arguments that patriotism is something that should be taught to children in school – and in particular the argument that history is an appropriate vehicle for teaching it; Section 2 casts doubt on the arguments for patriotism and even more doubt on the idea that it should be taught; Section 6.3 argues that history is a discipline particularly inappropriate for conveying patriotic feeling; Section 6.4 concludes.