No description available.

This thesis contributes to the literature on duties of global justice by critically examining the Rawlsian internationalist account of duties of development assistance. Internationalists argue that two distinct spheres of justice exist: The domestic sphere, where demanding, often egalitarian duties, are owed between citizens, and the global sphere where much less demanding duties are owed to non-citizens. Among those, however, is an obligation to help the world’s poorest countries, called burdened societies, develop. This thesis argues that even if we accept the internationalist framework as a whole, this duty of development is more demanding than its proponents assume. It does so by, first, examining the normative assumptions behind the duty, namely how basic human rights are understood, at what point countries cease to be burdened, and what role national self-respect and self-reliance play. Second, it questions the role that domestic government institutions play in determining whether or not a country develops. And third, it examines the effect that the history of past injustices, colonial or otherwise, towards the least developed countries has on our present-day duties. In making this argument the thesis does not attempt to provide a single authoritative version of internationalism, but instead acknowledges the breadth of views within the literature. Although primarily a work of normative political philosophy, this work places a great emphasis on empirical work to illustrate and inform my argument. This takes two forms. First, it undertakes an extensive review of the development economics literature about the likely positive and negative effects of outside assistance in least developed countries. And second, to test the claim that quality of domestic institutions is the overarching determinant of development, it conducts a statistical analysis of 102 countries using fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fs/QCA). In doing so, the thesis justifies a thicker and more encompassing duty of development which is nonetheless compatible with internationalist account of global justice. As such, it also provides an outline of how rich, developed states can and ought to act in the present.

This dissertation focuses on the concept of human rights, and in particular on how we should understand the interests protected by human rights and human rights' correlative duties. The work consists of three papers. Human rights and interests In the first paper I consider which conditions interests have to satisfy in order to be protected by human rights. I call these the Interest Conditions. I argue that we need to distinguish between two kinds of Interest Conditions: qualitative and quantitative ones. This means that we need to consider both which type of interests, and how much of these interests, human rights protect. I then consider the content of these conditions. Political accounts and fidelity to human rights practice In recent years, considerable attention has been received by so called "political accounts" of the analysis of human rights. According to these theories, one of the distinctive features of human rights is that they play a certain political function. In particular, a large number of political accounts hold that human rights have political correlative duties. I call this thesis 'Political Duties'. Political Duties has been defended on the grounds of the desideratum of fidelity, according to which the analysis of human rights ought to be faithful to human rights practice. I consider two ways of interpreting this desideratum and the corresponding versions of the argument in support of Political Duties. I argue that neither version successfully supports the thesis. The universal scope of positive duties correlative to human rights In the third paper I focus on duties correlative to human rights. We can distinguish between two different kinds of duties: negative and positive ones. Negative duties are duties not to perform an action, while positive duties are duties to perform an action. I focus on the latter and, in particular, I concentrate on the question of their scope - that is, on understanding who holds them. I defend a refinement of the thesis that all individuals hold positive duties correlative to human rights, which I call the Universal Scope Thesis.

The concept of human rights holds a distinctive significance in political practice, yet philosophers remain divided over the nature of these rights. The Orthodox View defines human rights as moral rights possessed by all individuals simply in virtue of their humanity. Proponents of this view claim that the contemporary idea of human rights is a continuation of the natural rights project of the eighteenth century and shares many of its basic philosophical assumptions. This thesis argues that the Orthodox View is no longer an appropriate characterisation of the concept of human rights we find in current domestic and international practice. It also rejects recent alternatives offered by supporters of the Political View, who define human rights by particular functions they serve, specifically their role(s) in acting as benchmarks for the legitimacy of states or triggers of international concern. I propose instead a new 'Political Justification View' of human rights, which states that human rights are demands which challenge unjustifiable political-institutional orders, which are the concern of all people, and which protect the equal standing of individuals in political decisions that affect the collective or individual good. This view better captures the diversity of practices that employ the term 'human rights', whilst also explaining its innovative power as a moral language that enables individuals to challenge the official institutional order under whose authority they live. Finally, I argue that within this broader view of human rights there are two distinct moral concepts which pertain to different parts of human rights practice: Domestic Human Rights and International Legitimacy Rights. Separating these two concepts is helpful in resolving long-standing debates about whether human rights are properly thought of as minimalist moral concerns of legitimacy or broader social goals to be achieved through political institutions.