Social Media & Domestic Contestation and Engagement

Charles Beitz in his chapter on “The Practice,” discusses the “paradigms of implementation” or “enforcement” for agents to prevent or mitigate human rights failures by a government (33).  He explains that six of these “paradigms of action” are 1) accountability, 2) inducement, 3) assistance, 4) domestic contestation and engagement, 5) compulsion, and 6) external adaptation.  I wanted to look into “domestic contestation and engagement.”

Beitz discusses domestic contestation and engagement as the way in which “outside agents can seek to influence a government’s conduct by engaging in various aspects of a society’s domestic political and social life” (37).  With new technology and an increasingly connected world, I believe we can begin to create societal change with the click of a button.  We can create human rights discussions by posting about human rights standards and by disseminating information on life in other states.  As Beitz acknowledges, by doing so, “local actors themselves may be empowered and their political activity legitimated by a recognition that their grievances have a basis in human rights doctrine” (38).  With more than one billion people on Facebook, simply sharing links or posting statuses has the capability of reaching huge numbers of people.  Now, of course, this could be for the good or for the bad (with great power comes great responsibility J), but I think it is clear that social media and new technology allows us to multiply the impact we were once able to have.  Moreover, I think technology has already played this role, changing discussions around human rights and promulgating information to those who previously may not have been reached, as shown in many recent human rights political actions and discussions.  By gaining this further access to opinions and information, individuals may feel the backing of other humans and feel “legitimated” and “empowered” to contest their lack of human rights.  Social media seems to affect both political and social spheres, but how big of an impact do you think global technological interconnectedness has upon human rights engagement and contestation in countries?  Does it need to act in coordination with other factors to inspire social and political change or can it work independently? 

Involuntary membership legitimates government coercion?

As Negal points out, states don’t just serve the purpose of allowing all people to mutually benefit. Instead, states act coercively and often impose societal laws on their citizens that are at odds with citizens’ desires and benefits, though citizens have the obligation to follow these laws regardless of the fact that these policies may be detrimental to them. As Negal indicates, “Insofar as those institutions admit arbitrary inequalities, we are, even though the responsibility has been simply handed to us, responsible for them, and we therefore have standing to ask why we should accept them” (129). So why should we accept these laws, according to Negal?

For Negal, the answer to this question falls on the fact that the “will is inseparable from membership in a political society” (128). Whether we like it or not, “we are both putative joint authors of the coercively imposed system and subject to its norms" (128). We must follow the laws of our society, regardless of whether our option for policy is incorporated into the government’s actions or not, and as long as we actively follow these laws and conform to the society’s norms, “we are all participants in the general will” (128). If we follow the law, we display active engagement, thus giving governments the legitimacy, in Negal's view, to exercise coercive power over us. So my problem with this account is how can we not actively engage in the society in which we live? By following laws, Negal argues that we conform to the general will and that this in turn gives government coercive power over us. But to me, his account of legitimating government coercion seems problematic. People follow the law all the time not because they agree with the general will of society, but because they have no other choice. If they do not follow the law, the state can take coercive acts against them for breaking the law and this has negative impacts not just for that one individual, but for everyone around them.

I do not believe that Negal can then fall back on this double role as joint authors to the governing system and subjects to it to justify involuntary membership. Just because one actively cooperates and follows laws should not mean that the government is justified in acting coercively towards that person because that person's alternative would be to pay the fines for breaking the law and all of their dependents would be forced to suffer. Negal seems to assume that individuals have a choice not to actively engage in a political system, but I am not even sure what this would look like. Does he assume that all who do not actively engage have the ability to protest the laws and the government, and that otherwise all consent to involuntary membership? 

Colonisation as Legitimate Collective Enterprise?

One of the key issues I encountered during this reading pertains to apparent distinction between different forms of arbitrariness, and the argument Nagel is making about which forms of arbitrariness we must work to eliminate, and which forms we are not required to.
I'm going to try and sketch his reasoning on this front and then try and relate it to a later discussion about inter state relations and state legitimacy.
On page 128 Nagel observes: "What is interesting and somewhat surprising about this condition is that such co-membership is itself arbitrary, so and arbitrary distinction is responsible for the scope of the presumption against arbitrariness." He is referring here to an earlier section in which he points out that Rawls is concerned not with arbitrariness per se, but rather arbitrariness amongst "fellow participants in a collective enterprise of coercively imposed legal and political institutions."
This argument is very troubling to me, as one of the most endearing aspects of Rawls is his recognition of the need for a theory of justice that corrects for many of the distributional inequalities that result directly from the natural lottery, or other purely luck based events. As much as it pains me to say it, Rawls' domestic focus undermines the strength of his argument in this case, as the universality of arbitrariness is one of its key features.
Nonetheless, Nagel goes on to offer a potential explanation for this split. He argues that the moral weight of arbitrary distinctions arises from: "a special involvement of agency or the will that is inseparable from membership in a political society." He goes on to elaborate on this point, explaining that he is referring to the dual role of citizens not only as subjects but also as "those in whose name authority is exercised."
At first glance this seems fine and well, so long as one assumes Nagel is referring to democracy and the role of the people in policy making. Troublingly, he goes on to make clear that is not the case on page 129: "This request for justification has moral weight even if we have in practice no choice but to live under the existing regime. The reason is that its requirements claim our active cooperation, and this cannot be legitimately done without justification--otherwise it is pure coercion." So if not democracy, what is he appealing to then? In a footnote on the same page (I know, I hate me too) he explains the following: "requires a broad interpretation of what it is for a society to be governed in the name of its members." That sounds okay, but he continues to explain that even colonial powers purport to rule not through force alone, but additionally are: "providing and enforcing a system of law that those subject to it are expected to uphold as participants, and which is intended to serve their interests even if they are not its legislators."
This is problematic for all of the obvious reasons. I highly doubt most of the colonised people would agree with Nagel here, and his argument is on difficult footing even if we consider the rationalisations of the colonial powers. He is right to say that states often felt compelled to do more than simply claim the right of the sword, but the justifications they did turn to are no less acceptable. White supremacy, sexism, imperialism, rabid pursuit of profit and glory, forced mass proselytisation, forced settlement, and so on are some of the justifications given by colonial powers, none of which seem acceptable to me. Nonetheless Nagel seems to (explicitly, in fact) accept the legitimacy of such states or forms of power. In fact, he concludes: "the path from anarchy to justice must go through injustice."

What is the baseline for human rights?

While I really enjoyed Nagel’s discussion of Global justice, I found a few things confusing and troubling. His discussion of current international institutions for global justice was one such piece of his argument. While he highlights that such institutions lack the political nature necessary for the coercive obligation that a recognition of global justice beyond basic human rights implies, he highlights the UN Security Council as a sort of exception. Nagel highlight’s the Security Council’s empowerment to coercively enforce individuals as an exception to the global trend, but also discounts it. He notes that it is “primarily a form of collective self-defense exercised by traditional sovereign powers.” I see two problems with this. The first being that I don’t find this to be true: while he qualifies the claim by arguing that there is a movement towards preventing domestic genocides, I (even though I tend to think it powerless and unable to act) think it is wrong to say that the UN only serves the self-defensive interests of powers like the US. Has a UN peace-keeping force ever been deployed in the US? No.

            My second issue relates to genocide as his choice of example, and draws in his discussion of negative and positive rights as they relate to human rights and obligations to global justice. By highlighting genocide as an example, Nagel focuses on the protection of a negative right, that to life, as one that we can be held globally accountable for absent political connections.  As he indicated earlier it is political connections that create positive rights, voting, socioeconomic security, etc., but I wonder how he would call for the international community to respond to something like the South African apartheid, the standing of Palestinians in Israel, or even the status of women in the US before they were granted the right to vote. All three situations, to varying degrees, seem to have inherent injustice where one class of person is treated as a second-class citizen, yet the denial of the right to vote and other positive rights seems to fall outside Nagel baseline for human rights.

Frustration with Rawls

I had a hard time in this reading reconciling Rawls’ limited view of international justice with his more egalitarian view of domestic justice.  Nagel explains, “[Rawls’] two principles of justice are designed to regulate neither the personal conduct of individuals living in a just society, nor the governance of private associations, nor the international relations of societies to one another, but only the basic structure of separate nation-states” (123).  Thus, Nagel explains that, “Rawls’s egalitarianism does not apply either to individual morality or to individual outcomes within the bounds of an egalitarian state” (123).  In principle, it seems highly inconsistent to me for Rawls to advocate for the veil of ignorance and the difference principle domestically and then for him to almost entirely ignore those values on an international scale.  In A Theory of Justice, on a domestic scale, Rawls prioritizes efforts to diminish arbitrary factors in our lives.  Yet, as Nagel admits, “the accident of being born in a poor rather than a rich country is as arbitrary a determinant of one’s fate as the accident of being born into a poor rather than a rich family in the same country” (119).  Thus, it seems to be counter to Rawls’ main ideals that a factor this arbitrary is ignored.   

While, I think perhaps it may be more feasible to apply Rawls’ principles on a domestic scale, I was disappointed by his lack of moral consistency.  Nagel seems to defend Rawls’ position by explaining that “further requirements of equal treatment depend on a strong condition of associative responsibility, that such responsibility is created by specific and contingent relations such as fellow citizenship, and that there is no general moral requirement to take responsibility for other by getting into these sorts of relations with as many of them as possible” (125).  While humanitarian claims should compel us to bring those out of unlivable situations, once livable standards are met, the political conception of justice would dictate that we have no other reason to help those worse off than we are.  This idea disappointed me because of Rawls’ emphasis is to help those worse off. Why should this need to help the worse-off end at the borders of our nation?  In a John Oliver clip this week, he discussed the Syrian Refugee Crisis, and mocked the rhetoric that we can claim we ought to “Love your neighbor as yourself” and then asterisk that statement by precluding our individual nation.  To me, Rawls’ inconsistency is not that different from this sentiment.  How can he ignore “the gruesome fact of injustice” in our world and apply his difference principle only to his most immediate neighbors (aka those in our country) (118)?  Moreover, if he claims that perhaps we only have “specific and contingent relations” to our fellow citizens, what happens when trade and new technology bring close relations with those who may live far from ourselves?  What if I technology allows me to feel just as close to someone in a foreign country than someone in my own?  Regardless, is this even a fair consideration because these factors are arbitrary and counter to his principles?

Francesco

Conversion Rates: A Measurement Problem

In Chapter 4, Sen alerts the reader to discrepancies between the traditional conception of income-based poverty and a capability-based approach to understanding poverty, noting that the former cannot properly account for situations in which income inequality is not the only factor limiting capabilities. Sen goes on to give various examples of “spaces” where income is an inadequate measure for freedom—the handicapped, gender preferences within families, relative wealth, and so on. He considers the massive unemployment in Western Europe, lack of health care in the United States despite higher incomes, and low rates of literacy in Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa to all be markers of non-income poverty. Sen does not attempt any weighing of freedoms in Chapter 4; he notably mentions that “[he has] also not attempted to produce an “aggregate” measure of deprivation, based on “weighting” the different aspects of capability deprivation. A constructed aggregate may often be far less interesting for policy analysis than the substantive pattern of diverse performances” (Sen 103). Although he later points to democracy and public discourse as the appropriate arena for determining which freedoms ought to preside over the others (if at all), I can’t seem to get past the hurdle of calculating the various paths to increased freedom in separate cases.

As Sen notes, there are all sorts of factors affecting how one garners freedom in any given situation. Social exclusion can be seen as a form of poverty, but how do we determine exactly what basket of goods an individual in Missouri needs to avoid ostracism? Sure, she might a need a cellphone, but what kind? A smartphone? An Apple smartphone? Will any car suffice? Or does it need to be a model newer than 1995? I know that data collection and surveys are immensely powerful in giving answers to such questions, but wouldn’t we need a team of researchers to visit every small town in the world for a minimum of a few days to determine such specifics? If it were a collective effort, we could envision mass volunteering as was done with the Cuban Literacy Campaign over the course of 1961. Is this sort of data collection necessitated by Sen’s argument or am I missing something?