Debating global justice with Carr: The crisis of laissez faire and the legitimacy problem in the twenty-first century

Abstract

In Carr’s ethics, there is a link between the rise of the socialised nation and the crisis of laissez faire due to its loss of legitimacy among the lesser privileged. How far is this link in Carr’s ethics relevant today? There are two aspects to this relevance – theoretical and empirical. Theoretically, the article argues, Carr’s analysis is relevant to the statist-cosmopolitan debate on global justice. It highlights the political vacuum in which this debate operates in the absence of a framework of rights and obligations under laissez faire. Consequently, statist and cosmopolitan arguments are implicit in their acceptance of the violence committed by the status quo and lack the legitimacy Carr deemed necessary for international justice in the age of the socialised nation. The article then turns to highlight the empirical relevance of this critique. Here, it argues that the resurgence of nationalism in world politics shows that the problem of legitimacy is especially pressing today. The article thus calls for the debate on global justice to engage more seriously with Carr’s analysis of the crisis of laissez faire – specifically the legitimacy problem it raises in the twenty-first century.

I Trends in Theorizing Democratic Legitimacy

“…Secondly, there are actors whose populist internationalism influences legitimation and delegitimation. As other researchers point out, the influence of this factor is more substantial the higher the level of nationalism in world politics and the narrative of its constructors (Karkour, 2021;Keohane, 2021;Peetz, 2020). In addition, Kelley and Simmons (2021) seek the sources of the legitimacy crisis in Western disruption in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the USA's reluctance to support multilateralism, and mounting civil society skepticism.…”

From the Twenty Years’ Crisis to the climate crisis: Reconsidering Carr’s thoughts on nationalism and global reform

“…As resources decrease and climigration increases, the incompatibility between nationalism and peace in the international order will also increase. Carr observed this dynamic in the twentieth century, when he argued that a stagnant economic pie globally turned into economic competition, then border control and finally total war (Karkour, 2021). Indeed, a UN report on Africa (World Meteorological Organisation, 2021: 32), predicts that ‘high water stress is expected to displace up to 700 million people by 2030’ escalating ‘the risk of tensions and intercommunal conflicts’.…”