Abstract
Most research in global justice considers international distributive justice from a perspective of what duties, if any, affluent states have towards people in severe poverty. The debate usually focuses on whether positive or negative duties are most relevant and how they should be applied. This article challenges this orthodoxy by defending stakeholder theory as a promising new approach overcoming limitations in current debates through promotion of the virtue of stakeholders having a say where they have a stake.
Introduction
Most global justice theorists hold an orthodox view notwithstanding other differences. This is the position that international distributive justice should be considered from a perspective of what duties, if any, affluent states have towards people in severe poverty. Theorists disagree about whether we should be satisfied by either a positive duty, negative duty or some remedial responsibility, but all view the central issue about what ‘we’ in affluent states might owe to others.
This article challenges this orthodoxy and its ‘us and them’ approach to global justice. It argues that the orthodox view should be jettisoned for two reasons. First, it wrongly views global justice as an ends-means project. Our goal should be more than ending severe poverty if possible, but the pursuit of human flourishing. Second, the orthodox view understands global justice as a one-way street about what we in affluent states might owe to others, but without regard to how the voices of others should feed into this project.
Discussion of virtue ethics appears to be missing not only from the leading work in global justice, but also from work on distributive justice. This raises important issues about why this is the case such as why the promotion of human flourishing is absent in the literature concerning key contributions to economic justice. This is perhaps all the more surprising in the field of global justice, where most discussions focus on our duties, if any, for individuals in severe poverty to enable flourishing. Our theories of justice—and not least global justice—appear to have either overlooked or abandoned the virtues as a relevant factor.
I defend an idea of stakeholding extracted from business ethics and given a new context. Stakeholding is an approach grounded in virtue ethics, in the promotion of human flourishing, which provides it with a normative core. It is the position that those who have a stake should have a say in outcomes that affect them. Stakeholding should have a powerful presence in global justice as a rival to the orthodox view because it offers a more compelling argument for our prioritizing human flourishing and not only bare survival, and it takes more seriously the voices of those in need. Stakeholding illuminates a bright future path for global justice that is grounded in virtue ethics. My defence considers its practical application and, specifically, in relation to Martha Nussbaum’s capability approach.
A Standard Approach to Global Justice
The dominant approach taken by global justice theories is to view global justice in an ends-means way. The focus is on overcoming severe poverty and human flourishing above bare subsistence. These theories become silent if severe poverty is overcome, and they offer little by way of justice between states otherwise. This section examines three different theories about international distributive justice—positive duties, negative duties and also remedial responsibilities. The purpose of this article is not to present an exhaustive exploration of each view, but instead highlight its most prominent and influential contributions to show that they each share common problems despite their diversity.
Positive Duties
Positive duties are duties to provide rescue to other persons in great need because this rescue can be provided (Armstrong, 2012, p. 23). Our individual responsibility is an irrelevant consideration. This approach to global justice is best championed by Peter Singer in his famous 1972 essay. Singer argues that the most pressing global problems like severe poverty can also seem so distant to us. We might also think that the geographical distances can impact on our moral duties. Singer rejects that view and claims that it is not the space between us that has moral significance, but instead the relative balancing of moral costs arising from our possible actions.
Singer (1972, p. 231) says: ‘if it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it.’ If we can prevent a bad to others, then we should, where the moral costs to ourselves in acting are outweighed by the moral costs to another if we did not act. The idea is that we should aim to prevent what is bad where we are able to prevent it—and not that we should promote what is good. The positive duty is a duty to prevent what is bad where possible because we morally ought to do so. The distance between us has significance only if it prevents me from preventing what is bad.
Singer’s well-known illustration used to show positive duties at work is his case of a drowning child:
If I am walking past a shallow pond and see a child drowning in it, I ought to wade in and pull the child out. This will mean getting my clothes muddy, but this is insignificant, while the death of the child would presumably be a very bad thing. (Singer, 1972, p. 231)
The moral cost to me of choosing to act is trumped by the moral cost to the child if I refuse to act. Singer’s example is oversimplified. It assumes I am able to act, the child can be saved, and the child is unable to save herself. Where these assumptions hold, I morally ought to act and save the drowning child. This is because the moral cost to the child (e.g., death) far outweighs any moral cost I might incur in providing rescue. If the scenario were different and I risked drowning if trying to save others, then the balance of moral costs might be different and I might not have any positive duty to rescue.
For Singer, we count only the balance of moral, not material, costs. If I morally ought to rescue the drowning the child, then it is of no moral significance whether this activity that the clothes I muddy are an old shirt and jeans or expensive tuxedo.
Singer’s defence of positive duties are important for their relevance to global justice. The analogy is this: like with the drowning child, if the moral cost to us of providing relief to persons in severe poverty is less than the moral cost to those in severe poverty should we fail to act, then we morally ought to provide relief. The argument does not depend on our moral responsibility for others being in severe poverty. Singer’s point is that if we can help, then we should be based on the balance of moral costs. The ‘we’ in discussion here refers to affluent states with the resources and ability to act. If such means are available, they morally ought to be used to save others in need even if doing so is expensive and inconvenient. The distance between us does not matter where means are available. It makes no difference if people are suffering in severe poverty next door or on the opposite side of the planet: we should save lives where we can after balancing the relevant moral costs.
Negative Duties
A second approach to global justice is the idea we should act from our negative duties. We possess negative duties to rescue others in severe poverty where we have contributed to this situation. We rescue others because we share some responsibility for their being in severe poverty—our ability to help is not the primary motivation behind our duty to rescue. Proponents argue that negative duties are a more stringent and compelling understanding of duties than positive duties (Armstrong, 2012, pp. 23–24). This is because it links our having duties with our having contributed towards a harm to others—and not any promotion of the good. Negative duties are believed to have greater intuitive weight than positive duties: my duties arising from contributing to some harm are weightier than any duties to those in need independently of my activities.
The most influential account of negative duties and global justice is developed by Pogge (2002). He argues that the primary source of our duties to those in severe poverty is our responsibility for their condition. Severe poverty should be eradicated because we are responsible for it and not merely because we could bring it to an end (Pogge 2002, pp. 201–203). The harm we contribute to here is a harm to others’ rights where severe poverty is understood as a violation of human rights and autonomy (Hassoun, 2012; Pavel, 2015). The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states in Article III that all persons have a right to the secure access of ‘minimally adequate shares of all basic goods’ (quoted in Pogge, 2002, p. 38). The existence of severe poverty is evidence that such minimally adequate shares are not provided; this is evidence of a human rights violation because this can be attributed to political institutions. Pogge (2002, p. 172) says (also see Brooks, 2007): ‘We are asked to be concerned about avoidably unfulfilled human rights not simply as they exist at all, but only insofar as they are produced by coercive social institutions in whose imposition we are involved’. The global institutional order does not merely permit severe poverty, but engenders it.
Pogge (2002, pp. 18–19) offers several examples. The first example is international economic bodies, such as the World Trade Organization. These bodies have supported the global institutional order by enabling the exacerbation of death from global poverty through monetary agreements that favour affluent states at the cost of poor states. A second example is protectionist exemptions insisted upon by affluent states that damage poor states in their ability to trade on more equal terms. These are not the only ways in which the global institutional order is maintained and promoted, but they also make it clear that affluent states support a global institutional order that engenders severe poverty. This order is foreseeable and avoidable. The effects of protectionist measures are well documented and known in advance. Nor need such measures be in place. Affluent states might not bear all responsibility for severe poverty elsewhere, but they do bear a significant share of responsibility for the global institutional order in which severe poverty is found.
Additionally, Pogge argues that ‘we’ in affluent states have a negative duty to eradicate severe poverty elsewhere. His claim is that affluent states are predominantly democracies where their citizens have a say over who can serve as political representatives as well as the kind of political system upheld. While we might not vote for every public official, we do vote for the representatives that make these decisions. We in affluent states bear some responsibility for severe poverty elsewhere because we can choose our representatives who make decisions on our behalf that maintains or even exacerbates severe poverty elsewhere. Pogge (2002, p. 109) says: ‘We, the affluent countries and their citizens, continue to impose a global economic order under which millions avoidably die each year from poverty related causes…. We must regard our imposition of the present global order as a grave injustice’. We have a negative duty to stop contributing to this harm and to provide relief to those harmed already. Our responsibility for engendering severe poverty justifies our negative duty to provide relief. We should assist not simply because we can, but because we bear some responsibility for the plight of others in severe poverty.
Pogge argues that the approach of negative duties offers a powerful alternative to the approach of positive duties because negative duties are more stringent and intuitively compelling. Negative duties are more stringent because our object is the removal of not any moral bad, but a bad we have responsibility for bringing about. Nor is our object the promotion of any particular good. Instead, our goal is to end the harm we cause others and to provide remedy. Negative duties are thought to be more intuitively compelling because the idea that we should assist because we are responsible for harming is thought to carry more weight than the idea that we should assist because we can.
Pogge defends the Global Resources Dividend (GRD), a specific proposal designed to show how we might satisfy our negative duties to others (Pogge, 2002, pp. 196–215). He argues that ‘those who make more extensive use of our planet’s resources should compensate those who, involuntarily, use very little’. The idea is that oil producers are largely poorer states who are exploited by the major oil users, which are more affluent states. The GRD is a small tax of about US$ 2 on crude oil. Funds raised are to be used to eradicate severe poverty. Affluent states cannot merely exploit poorer states, but contribute these additional resources to help offset any disadvantage.
Pogge’s GRD has been criticised for its lack of clarity about how funds will be collected and distributed, as well as how non-payment might be punishment if necessary (Fuller, 2005). Criticisms have also focused on whether we have all contributed to the global institutional order in the ways that Pogge identifies (Brooks, 2007). More importantly, for our present purposes, Pogge’s negative duty approach shares similar problems to Singer’s positive duty approach. Both consider what ‘we’ should do for others without engaging with those persons owed rescue. Moral duties are limited in a one-way street. Furthermore, our focus is on ensuring that people are no longer in severe poverty, but there is no substantive consideration about ensuring human flourishing beyond bare survival. Despite other differences between them, the dominant understandings of these two approaches share these core problems in common.
Remedial Responsibilities
Most global justice theories accept some combination of the positive and negative duty approaches. A third alternative is the remedial responsibility approach championed by Miller (2007). This view claims that global justice should focus on distributing responsibilities for remedying crises like severe poverty. We do not start by considering if anyone has a duty (positive or negative) to provide rescue to persons in need. Instead, we begin by accepting there is a duty to rescue others in severe poverty: the question is not if there is a duty to rescue, but determining which state(s) should fulfil this duty.
Miller understands global justice from a different standpoint than Singer or Pogge. They consider global justice from the perspective of individuals asking what duties you or I have individually to others. Miller adopts the perspective of groups, such as nations, to weigh what duties each might have as a collective. A ‘nation’, for Miller, is a group that meets certain test thresholds: our co-national relationship is intrinsically valuable, integral to our other relationships, and honouring this moral significance should not entail our giving less than what is deserved to non-nationals. Our shared national identity may have moral significance, but only if these tests are met.
We should recognise that not all forms of common identity will meet these tests. For example, white supremacists lack a relationship that is intrinsically valuable. Likewise, my being a supporter of the Boston Red Sox or Middlesbrough Football Clubs fails to meet this test. Forms of identity that might meet this test would include our shared identity as American or British, as an illustration. These common bonds might have value integral to our relationships with one another.
National identify is crucial because it grounds Miller’s theory of global justice. His focus is to find some way to determine which nation should put right severe poverty elsewhere. He (Miller, 2007, p. 98) says: ‘it is morally unacceptable for people to be left in that deprived or needy condition, and there is no overriding justification…. All that matters is that we find it morally unacceptable if the deprived person is simply left to suffer’. Our goal is to identify who should help those in need.
Miller offers a connection theory of remedial responsibility. Its purpose is to help us decide which nation or nations have a responsibility to provide remedy elsewhere based upon the relevant weight of connections they share with those in need. There are six connections (Miller, 2007, pp. 100–104): causal responsibility, moral responsibility, capacity, community, outcome responsibility and benefit. We consider each nation in relation to these six connections, and we select appropriate nations for remedial responsibilities based upon the relative weight of the connections they possess. A nation may have greater remedial responsibilities than another nation despite the second nation having more varieties of connections than the first. Miller denies there is any ordering or that any connection has greater weight than others, although it is clear that remedial responsibilities are only possible where a nation has the capacity to provide a remedy and, therefore, capacity has a lexical priority in fact.
The remedial responsibility approach focuses on the alleviation of severe poverty wherever it is found irrespective of how it is caused. It does not matter which nation contributed to severe poverty elsewhere, but identifying which nation or nations should remedy it does matter. The remedial responsibility approach shares this perspective with the positive duty approach in that both claim there are duties to assist those in severe poverty because there is severe poverty. The difference is that the remedial responsibility approach denies that each nation will have the same duties to assist. The remedial responsibility approach agrees with proponents of negative duties that some may have greater duties than others. The strength of the remedial responsibility approach is that it can address severe poverty that could be the result of natural catastrophes where there is no human responsibility for severe poverty. A further strength of the remedial responsibility approach is that it can help us identify some nations as having greater remedial responsibilities than others based on more than mere moral responsibility for suffering, but on other connections such as their being part of a shared ethnic or linguistic community amongst other factors. The drawback is that this approach rests upon a view of group responsibility and the moral value of co-nationality that may be controversial. Additionally, there is no clear guide on how more precisely we should weigh relative connections.
This discussion should make two points clear. The first is that these three leading approaches to global justice are ends-means directed. Each focuses on duties to overcome severe poverty and no more. A world where no people are harmed by the actions of others is a place where negative duties disappear. This is because its horizon of possibilities is restricted. Our duties aim to ensure others are above a threshold and little more.
The problem is that justice may be more about ensuring all are above a safety net, but also the promotion of certain goods like human flourishing. To this end, orthodox theories about global justice are too narrowly focused on one important part of justice (e.g., overcoming severe poverty) without regard for other parts (e.g., promoting human flourishing). This connection between the virtues and global justice is missing in the orthodox approaches. This gap may be partly explained by the fact that orthodox theories of justice that support the utilitarianism of Singer to the Rawlsianism of Pogge deny any clear connection to virtue ethics either (Pogge, 1989; Singer 2010).
The second point is that each takes an ‘us and them’ perspective on world affairs. We consider what positive or negative duties we have to distant others and then determine what we should do (or not do) for them as a result. These views treat affluent states as autonomous agents and people in severe poverty as non-autonomous patients. We are the actors and others become the acted-upon. Absent is any consideration of dialogue or reciprocity. If we believe global justice should acknowledge the importance of reciprocity and that justice should aim at flourishing and not mere survival, we have reasons to consider if some alternative theory of global justice exists that can account for them.
Stakeholding as a Virtue
The idea of stakeholding can provide us with a valuable alternative to orthodox approaches to global justice. This section explains what is meant by ‘stakeholding’ and how it embodies a virtues ethics-led approach. The following section applies stakeholding to global justice to demonstrate its strength as an alternative to the dominant theories.
Foundations
Stakeholding is an idea more strongly associated with business ethics and corporate governance (Freeman et al., 2010; Kaler, 2003; Plender, 1997). There has not been any previous attempt to apply stakeholder theory to global justice before. The earliest research in business studies originated in 1984 with the publication of R. Edward Freeman’s Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach published and subsequently popularised by the work of Will Hutton and his defence of a ‘stakeholder economy’ (Freeman, 1984; Hutton, 1995).
In this context, stakeholding is about securing corporate accountability through greater transparency and shared decision-making. Business is not a machine for mere profit creation alone seeking wealth; however, it can. Instead, if its members viewed themselves as stakeholders, then each will view himself or herself as having a stake in outcomes. Together, they are partners engaged in a shared project actively promoting a common conception of the good. The idea of the stakeholder economy is a model for how business management could be improved while showing how a centre-left view of economic justice might be forged (Freeman et al., 2007). Economics is not about profits alone: all citizens have a stake in the nation’s economic health, and this has consequences for how relevant policies are determined (Hutton, 1999, 2010).
Politically, it might appear that this idea of the stakeholder economy has lost its relevance. We can trace its decline as a public ideal to shortly after Tony Blair endorsed stakeholding in an important speech about the British economy delivered in January 1996 a few months before becoming Prime Minister in a major landslide election for his Labour Party. Revealingly, Blair’s Director of Communications and Strategy, Alastair Campbell, described this speech as one of Blair’s most significant for signalling an idea that would ‘make a real impact’ (Gould, 2011, p. 249). Blair’s then advisor Philip Gould claimed stakeholding was the idea that gave the Labour Party its ‘defining idea’ for building ‘a fair and strong society’ where ‘New Labour had moved decisively towards becoming a coherent political project’ (Gould, 2011, p. 250). Gamble and Kelly found ‘the stakeholder economy’ to be Labour’s ‘big idea…whose time has come’ (Gamble & Kelly, 1996). Some commentators began to question whether stakeholding moved ‘no further than the starting block’ with many questioning its continued relevance in less than a decade (Prabhakar, 2004). Indeed, Blair did not speak post-election about this central idea of stakeholding notwithstanding its perceived importance for his socio-economic perspective.
Commentators are divided on the reasons for stakeholder theory’s decline in public policy circles (Brooks, 2015). Some claim it has suffered significant problems at its heart from the start (Hasnas, 2012; Marcoux, 2003; Prabhakar, 2004; Sternberg, 1996). This includes questions about identifying stakeholders (Kaler, 2002). It is not obvious that the employer and employees of a firm are the only stakeholders in that firm, and stakeholder theorists do not claim otherwise. This is because they alone lack an exclusive stake in the firm’s future performance and continued existence. Shareholders, customers and the wider society all have stakes in the firm’s success.
The problem of identifying stakeholders is also an issue about numbers: how many stakeholders are there? Some of stakeholder theory’s defenders, such as Will Hutton, claim that ultimately, we are all stakeholders to some degree. He says: ‘companies should be run and managed balancing the interests of shareholders, customers, employees and wider society, rather than prioritizing shareholders’ (Hutton, 2010, p. 151). The persons possessing a stake in future firm success include us all. This is the claim of the stakeholder economy. For Hutton, stakeholding is fundamentally about inclusion where this is ‘not a one-way street’ that demands reciprocal obligations (Fassin, 2012; Hutton, 1999, p. 74; Plender, 1997, p. 256).
Yet, this approach remains too crude leaving several unanswered questions. For example, if we are all stakeholders, then what is the power distribution? Corporate partners may share a common interest in successful future performance of their firm, but this shared interest might not apply to each relevant context. The manager and the secretary share a common stake in general, but their stakes differ with respect to their contrasting organizational roles. In other words, we might have a stake in a firm’s success, but some of us have a bigger stake than others and working out this difference is mired in difficulties than have constrained stakeholding from entering most public policy debate beyond corporate boardrooms. Restructuring the firm and perhaps many economic decisions around the principle of stakeholding may improve accountability and transparency by securing more levels of deliberative decision-making. But this reveals a complexity about stakeholding and the different spheres of stakes we might each possess largely absent in theories about stakeholding.
This raises a more fundamental issue. If stakeholding has relevance for economic justice as an important principle of justice, then it is unclear why stakeholding should be confined to ‘the stakeholder economy’ rather than inform an idea of ‘the stakeholder society’. This has not been unnoticed: for example, Hutton argues that ‘social citizenship and economic membership are interdependent…. An active participatory democracy goes hand in hand with underpinning social cohesion and promoting stakeholder firms’ (Hutton, 1999, p. 80). However, a stakeholder view of the economy may connect with institutions beyond the firm and its customers, such as government, the media and special interest groups. Nevertheless, the firm remains at the heart of modern stakeholder theory: the firm and its related communities are ‘primary stakeholders’ while government and other groups remain ‘secondary stakeholders’ (see Fassin, 2009; Freeman et al., 2007, p. 7). Perhaps stakeholding is a useful concept for improving ethical corporate governance and business management with benefits to the economy and other socio-political domains.
Re-imagining Stakeholding
There is a specific core to the idea of stakeholding that we can extract from this discussion that might help us avoid these problems prioritizing practice over ideals. This is the idea that those who have a stake should have a say over decision outcomes affecting them. But why should my having a stake matter? It might be argued—following John Stuart Mill—that the best judge of my best interests is myself and not others (Mill, 1989). To have a say in decisions whose outcomes might affect me is to accept the principled virtue of republican self-government in community with others (Pettit, 2012). Stakeholding is about individuals maintaining discursive control to avoid arbitrary exercises of dominating power over them by ensuring that those with a stake in outcomes have a say about them (Brooks, 2014b).
But how is stakeholding related to virtue ethics? I believe it is and this requires we consider what might serve this kind of role. The virtues concern human flourishing and the good. One illustration drawn from Aristotle is to consider three different forms of friendship (Driver, 2007, pp. 143–144). The first is friendship based on utility. This is the view that my being a friend of yours is good for something else, such as maximizing my happiness. Our friendship is not a good in its own sake independently of utility. A second form is friendship based on pleasure. But here our friendship still lacks a more permanent basis as it rests on the enjoyment we receive from that friendship. Should we feel differently one day our friendship might cease. The third form is friendship based on virtue. Only in this sense do we value our friendship in itself and not as a means to some other ends.
Friendship as a virtue conceives friendship as valuable in itself, but this does not mean that friendship cannot contribute to other goods or ends. Furthermore, ‘not all virtues need embody impartiality to have moral worth and significance’ (Driver, 2007, p. 144). Likewise, stakeholding might require transparency to secure accountability—if those with a stake are to have a say on outcomes that might affect them, then information relevant to this decision-making should be made available. But stakeholding does not promote virtue because it instrumentally helps to achieve transparency and accountability. This is because stakeholding acknowledges the importance of republican self-government free from domination as a good in itself. So stakeholding may contribute to other instrumentally good achievements, but stakeholding’s value is independent from them. Stakeholders should have a say regardless.
Furthermore, stakeholding is consistent with virtuous action insofar as it is not overly prescriptive: ‘there can be many ‘right’ actions in a given context’ (Athanassoulis, 2013, pp. 18–20; Driver, 2007, p. 144). What is important is that stakes are recognised and voices heard. How stakeholding becomes manifest can take different forms in practice so long as the importance of our individual status as stakeholders retains non-instrumental value as an intrinsic good. This intrinsic regard for my stakeholders qua stakeholders contributes to their flourishing by both honouring and, more importantly, enacting a respect and regard for others. In treating you like a stakeholder, I recognise our shared stakes in a common enterprise. We do not merely state a preference for options given to us, but, as stakeholders, we construct options together. In this way, our mutual flourishing is enabled, supported and maintained.
In addition, stakeholder theory was formulated originally in the context of business ethics and corporate governance, and it has fallen out of favour in some policy circles (Brooks, 2015). But stakeholding can be understood from a different perspective: not as an approach to managing a firm, but a principled virtue that recognises the intrinsic importance of those who have a stake in decision outcomes should have a say in keeping with republican self-government. Individuals should have discursive control because each is the best judge of his or her interests and not for reasons of utility or to maximise pleasure. Stakeholding offers us an approach grounded in virtue ethics with potential application far beyond the corporation.
The New Stakeholding Approach to Global Justice
Perhaps surprisingly, leading commentators on global distributive justice make little, if any, reference to virtue ethics (Armstrong, 2012; Pogge, 2002, 2007; Singer 1972). Even with respect to climate change where we might expect the good of a flourishing natural world to carry special weight, there is little said about how virtue ethics in any guise can inform and maybe improve current thinking on global justice (Stern, 2010).
In the previous section, I argued that stakeholding offers us a way of bringing virtue ethics back in to considerations of justice. My attention turns now to defending stakeholding as an alternative approach to the orthodox theories that can address the importance of human flourishing while overcoming two key problems for orthodox theories more generally. I discuss Martha Nussbaum’s capability approach in relation to this project of bringing virtue ethics and global justice together.
The First Problem of Orthodox Theories
We have stressed that orthodox approaches to global justice share two problems in common notwithstanding their other differences. First, they consider distributive justice in terms of what ‘we’ owe to others in our own terms. We are to engage in a conversation with ourselves about what we might owe to distant others. This fails to acknowledge the importance of hearing other voices and not least those to whom duties might be owed that should be corrected. Second, orthodox theories of global justice focus almost exclusively on addressing severe poverty and not wider issues of human flourishing. I am not arguing that a view of positive or negative duties cannot speak to concerns about flourishing. But I am claiming this bigger picture is too often missing where we are left to draw up the picture using limited guidance.
Stakeholding is a promising alternative to orthodox global justice theories because it aims to correct these problems. Let me briefly indicate how it can perform this task. The principled virtue that those who have a stake in decision outcomes that might affect them leads stakeholder theories of global justice to consider issues of global justice differently than orthodox theorists. They ask themselves about whether they have duties to others and who should act. The focus is on what ‘we’ might owe to ‘them’. Therefore, the positive duty approach asks if we are able to provide rescue to those in severe poverty in light of balancing relevant moral costs. If the moral costs to ourselves in acting are less than the moral costs to others in our not acting, then we should act. But note what counts is our considering our duties to others. These others do not have a choice, but are either rescued or not. Likewise, the negative duty approach asks if ‘we’ bear some responsibility for the severe poverty that others find themselves in. Again, these others lack a choice on what we do next because the decision is ours. Finally, remedial responsibilities do not ask ‘us’ or ‘them’ if something must be done to remedy severe poverty, but instead does ask only ‘us’ which of us should perform this task. In every case, affluent individuals and states consider what they should do without communicating or entering into any dialogue with those who might require rescue. Orthodox theories of global justice are to that extent imperialistic in their nature.
Stakeholding offers a different perspective to the orthodox theories. If those who have a stake should have a say, then stakeholders number more than those who can help but also those in need of rescue. The duties of some to others are not a decision for the actors alone, but should include the to-be-acted-upon as well. The reason is not that including the voices of distant others in need will lead to more efficient or successful development aims—although this might be one positive by-product of cooperative, dialogic engagement. No, the reason for why the voices on all sides should be heard is because each is valued as their having a stake.
Take Singer’s drowning child example. Singer claims that we should save the child if we can at relatively less moral cost to ourselves. Analogously, we should provide rescue to others that ‘we’, the affluent states, perceive to require our assistance where we believe we can on balance of moral costs. The problem is that our perceptions about the needs of others may be mistaken. Or if we are correct that others do require assistance, we might get wrong how it is delivered. Stakeholding can correct for this in recognizing the importance of our common stakes. But it is a compelling view not merely because its requiring communication among stakeholders whether rescuer or the to be rescued is likely to lead to better results, but because stakeholding honours the intrinsic value of everyone’s stake.
Stakeholding can also overcome problems with negative duties and remedial responsibilities for global justice. The negative duty approach considers whether ‘we’ are responsible for the severe poverty suffered elsewhere. But again the question of whether there is such a responsibility is not for the potential rights violators to answer alone. The voices of all stakeholders have an interest that is intrinsically important in determining whether any such negative duty exists, for example, and how it is best remedied. Why think only the transgressors have the ability to address this issue? They clearly do not. Remedial responsibilities ask not whether something should be done, but who should do it. But again, it is unclear why the only ones who should have a voice are those who are possible rights violators and not those who might receive support as of right. The reasons for stakeholding are not that doing so might lead to improved outcomes although this may well be true, but instead the principled importance of our having stakes. Indeed, however great the stakes might be felt by affluent states for their need to assist others in need, the stakes are no less great for those to be on the receiving end. We should end the practice of orthodox global justice theories only listening to the voices one side and not the other. Both are stakeholders and this important commonality demands recognition.
The Second Problem with Orthodox Theories
The orthodox theories of global justice focus on ensuring those in severe poverty can be rescued, but do not address the issue of how best to promote human flourishing beyond bare survival. For example, positive duties aim to show why we should save the proverbial drowning child in a pond wherever we can. But it is silent on what duties we have to promote that child’s education or moral sensibilities. Negative duties identify what they believe to be a more stringent and compelling view of a duty to rescue others. But it is silent on both what we should do for anyone in severe poverty that we bear no responsibility for, if anyone, and how we should promote public goods for individuals no longer in severe poverty. Finally, remedial responsibilities address severe poverty alone without consideration of other issues.
The problem is this. Distributive justice is concerned with the promotion of different kinds of equality, not all of which are economic. Yet international distributive justice seems concerned with only feature of our world, namely, severe poverty. My claim is not that people in emergency situations like severe poverty should not be a priority, but rather this important feature of global justice should not be the whole of it. This criticism is similar to what is sometimes levied at the capability approach. Martha Nussbaum’s well-known version claims that capabilities indicate our ability to do or be across ten separate dimensions: a minimally decent human life is secured only where our freedoms are guaranteed above some threshold across all ten capabilities she identifies (Brooks, 2020; Nussbaum, 2000, 2011). Nussbaum’s capability approach is a powerful theory that contributes much to our understanding of freedom, political justice and global justice (Brooks & Nussbaum, 2015; Nussbaum, 2015).
The relevance of the capability approach is striking for its breaking from orthodox theories of global justice much like stakeholding does. Nussbaum’s list of ten capabilities includes our ability ‘to imagine, think and reason’; to share ‘attachments to things and people outside ourselves’ and ‘to form a conception of the good’ (Nussbaum, 2011, pp. 33–34). Her approach is directed by the question: ‘What does a life worthy of human dignity require?’ and the answer is that every person should be able to live above a threshold level across all 10 capabilities (Nussbaum, 2011, p. 32). Promoting human flourishing is at the heart of the capability approach and not only bare subsistence.
The capability approach emphasises the importance of satisfying capability thresholds to help secure improvements in human development. This perspective has been criticised by some for being concerned solely with whether individuals meet this threshold and not on our differences above it which might raise further concerns about distributive justice (Pogge, 2010). Its focus on achieving a threshold—such as rising out of severe poverty—is too limited because distributive justice is about more than bare survival hand-to-mouth, but should aim at securing human flourishing. Recognizing the importance of republican self-government where the individual knows his or her preferences best free from the arbitrary domination of others through acknowledging self and other as common stakeholders is one means of achieving this. Our stakes do not end or lose their importance because we have economic security or begin to enjoy some degree of prosperity, but they change, grow and develop over time. Our relations to each other are complex and severe poverty is surely an emergency demanding our immediate attention, but we should also consider a model of principled virtue that can account for global justice beyond securing the bare necessities for all.
I do not claim that there cannot be an account of positive or negative duties that can account for justice above severe poverty, but I would argue that the scope of justice often considered is too circumspect. To say we should consider justice as about survival and human flourishing is not to deny the emergency state of affairs too many people face daily. But it remains less clear how the orthodox theories of global justice might account for this broader dimension of distributive justice because they have remained relatively silent about it. This is no less true for a capability approach that only considers whether we meet a threshold without any view about what happens above it.
The capability approach might appear to endorse a kind of one virtue ethic. But this is a mistake. Nussbaum’s presentation of her approach through a list of ten capabilities is not meant to be permanent list: what can serve as a capability is open to dialogue and debate. While the list has remained largely intact over the last 15 years or more, it is a list that is open to refinement and change over time. Nussbaum denies that capabilities are reducible to any single metric: they are meant to be plural and suitably abstract for specification by each nation (Nussbaum, 2011, p. 18 and p. 40). This flexibility entails that different communities will understand the application of capabilities in different ways, but this is perfectly consistent with virtue ethics. Importantly, how capabilities are applied is not a question about an ‘us’ in relation to a ‘them’, but a project undertaken in common not unlike our understanding of stakeholding by stakeholders.
The capability approach might offer us a further alternative to orthodox theories about global justice. Capabilities are concerned with the promotion of human flourishing although there could be a greater emphasis on flourishing above a threshold of bare subsistence—and this is one area where stakeholding can account for this better than rival approaches. But capabilities and stakeholding alike avoid the problem of conceiving global justice as a project about how ‘we’ determine our duties, if any, to others without engagement with others. Capabilities offer us a promising alternative that can incorporate virtue ethic into a theory of global justice that largely overcomes the problems identified with orthodox theories, even if less clearly than stakeholding.
On a practical level, Nussbaum leaves open the application of capabilities within particular societies. It is for each community to work out its own understanding of how common thresholds should be met to satisfy each capability and guarantee at least a minimally decent life. Stakeholding fleshes this view out further in a compatible way with its unique brand as a democratically rooted approach. It demands that those with a stake should have a say—and engage others as fellow stakeholders. This means that decisions are not left to elites, but made together in community. Of course, no community is perfect and errors of judgement may arise. But the stakeholder view claims that those with a stake are best placed to engage qua stakeholders in determining a satisfactory conception of global justice and, conversely, political outcomes that did not take into account the views of stakeholders have at least the appearance of strong paternalism requiring added justification. So, stakeholding is not only compatible with the capability approach, but it also helps flesh out a more compelling democratic vision of it.
Summary
This section has sought to only indicate how stakeholding might be relevant to global justice as a virtue ethics approach. I argued that orthodox views fail to acknowledge the voices of those to be rescued as if they were not worthy of being heard. I further claimed that orthodox views focus too narrowly on the pressing matter of severe poverty, but without some idea about distributive justice aimed at promoting human flourishing.
Stakeholding can overcome these problems by recognizing the stakes all sides have in overcoming severe poverty and its larger focus on human flourishing. A possible criticism of this view might be that stakeholding still does not tell us what we should do, and that it is too imprecise to be of much value. But as it is a principled virtue, there can be more than one way to formulate a stakeholder theory of global justice. I have left this matter to here only to avoid the possible confusion that stakeholding must lead to any particular outcome. Like with the application of many other virtues, this can lead to the justification of different practices, too.
One such example is that stakeholding can be combined with the view of positive or negative duties likely leading to different results. For instance, positive duties on their own consider our potential duties to others where we can in consideration of balancing relevant moral costs. A stakeholder approach to positive duties would insist that determining whether any such duties exist should be undertaken, in part, by all those who have some stake in the outcome. So an affluent state’s decision to act should be informed to at least some degree by other stakeholders, such as those who might benefit from such an action. This is a more compelling view to a virtuous implementation of positive duties because it recognises the non-instrumental value and equality of the relevant parties, whereas positive duty approaches on their own do not.
Stakeholding is more than a different perspective and approach to global justice, but it also represents a different perspective on how we might improve existing approaches by incorporating the principled virtue of stakeholding to them. Nussbaum’s capability approach is a further promising alternative that achieves similar goals, but it remains limited by its focus on satisfying a threshold of human flourishing rather than promoting flourishing beyond this.
Conclusion
This article makes the case for a new perspective of how virtue ethics can contribute to global justice theories. The field is diverse, but there is an identifiable orthodox view encompassing leading defences of positive duties, negative duties and remedial responsibilities alike that shares two problems. The first is their understanding of global justice as a conversation we have among ourselves about what ‘we’ in affluent states might owe to others in severe poverty. The second is their limited perspective on severe poverty without a view to human flourishing more broadly.
Stakeholder theory may seem an odd choice given its prevalence in business ethics and management studies. But if we consider a common understanding of stakeholding as a principle that says those that have a stake should have say in outcomes that might affect them, then we can locate a space for overcoming the limitations of orthodox global justice theories from a perspective informed by virtue ethics. Stakeholding does not see decision-making as top-down or one-way street. Those in severe poverty have a stake about how any duties of rescue are considered and so should have a say in their determination. Whether or not duties exist is not a decision for the potential duty bearer alone to make. This perspective acknowledges the equal value of human beings and their flourishing that other approaches overlook. Furthermore, this concern with ensuring stakeholders have a say where they have a stake helps guarantee accountability and transparency required for stakeholding to be possible and so helps secure our common flourishing. Our end is not merely to overcome the problem of severe poverty through bringing together the interests of stakeholders on all sides, but to help develop and improve stakeholding for all as a good in its own right.
Stakeholding is not the only possibility for virtue ethics to enter into discussions about global justice. However, I believe it is a promising route for proponents of virtue ethics to take that can further correct for other deficiencies in orthodox accounts of global justice.
