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Notes
I was directed to this quote by Andrew Dobson in his recently published ‘Thick cosmopolitanism’, Political Studies 54 (2006), pp. 165–184, at p. 165.
This list is certainly not definitive. Rather, it should be understood more as a compilation of the features most frequently described by scholars of solidarity as essential to the concept.
It is sometimes suggested that solidarity can be understood in terms of identity. Jeff Spinner-Halev writes, for example, that a new democracy ‘needs a source of solidarity to motivate citizens, which it can obtain by codifying and appealing to national identity’. See his ‘Democracy, solidarity and post-nationalism’, Political Studies, (2008) 56/3: 604–628. However, solidarity is more often conceived as an alternative to identity as a cohesive force. See Ann Ferguson, ‘Global gender solidarity and feminist paradigms of justice’, paper presented to APSA Boston 2008, on file with author.
Here one obvious objection is that shared values and goals do not exist even at the domestic level. I do not have the space to examine this objection here, but see Lea Ypi, ‘Political membership in the contractarian defense of cosmopolitanism’, Review of Politics 70/3 (2008), pp. 442–472 for more.
This way of conceptualizing the source of trust is reported in, among others, Francis Fukuyama's Trust (New York: Free Press, 1995).
1 Rousseau expressed it well in his Social Contract: ‘The instant the People is legitimately assembled as a Sovereign body […] the person of the last Citizen is as sacred as that of the first Magistrate […]' (Rousseau, 1997, Book III, chapter 14, at p. 112).
2 One could wonder why we should distinguish the idea of equal moral worth from the concept of individual autonomy. To my mind, the answer lies with Mill : while the value of individual autonomy demands that we defend ‘experiments in living’ the equal moral worth we attribute to individuals may still allow for paternalistic policies that aim to prevent a person from harming herself by using drugs, say. Thanks to Lea Ypi for raising this point.
3 One other argument might be that we may rely on the mechanisms of reciprocity as part of society's welfare provision. I believe the reciprocity argument to fail, however, as it cannot account for provisions that will only ever benefit a very small but fragile portion of the population – think of homeless people – from whose needs a majority is firmly removed (see Barry, 1996).
4 There may be other constraints on individual autonomy and autonomous decision-making. For instance, we could imagine that certain options may be left off our horizon for cultural reasons. I might not imagine becoming a doctor if I was brought up to believe that my role is in the house (see Taylor, 1979). I am not concerned with these kinds of constraints here, although they may lead to conditions of vulnerability and thence from a liberal perspective, they should be cause for concern.
5 ‘Coercion is a technique for forcing people to act as the coercer wants them to act, and presumably contrary to their own preferences. It usually employs a threat of some dire consequence if the actor does not do what the coercer demands, although it is controversial whether a non-threatening offer might in some contexts be coercive' (Feinberg, 1998).
6 Some could argue that taking individual capabilities rather than individual vulnerability as the benchmark for autonomy might be better suited to address the motivation question. I believe, however, that in the case of the welfare state, emphasis on vulnerability is much more prominent than on capability. Since I build on the analogy with the welfare I have selected this approach as more relevant to my account. I thank one of the reviewer for pointing out this question.
7 There is, of course, quite a debate about what kind of institutions a just global order would call for (see Blake, 2001; Pogge, 2002). Regardless of what position one takes in that debate, it seems to me uncontroversial to say that we do not have international institutions akin to those we have in liberal welfare states, and which redistribute income systematically through the means of individual taxation and individual benefits. My thanks to one of the reviewers for helping me clarify this point.
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Tamara Lenard, P., Straehle, C. & Ypi, L. Global Solidarity. Contemp Polit Theory 9, 99–130 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1057/cpt.2009.9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/cpt.2009.9