Justice, Institutions, and Luck This page intentionally left blank Justice, Institutions, and Luck The Site, Ground, and Scope of Equality Kok-Chor Tan 1 3 GreatClarendonStreet,Oxford,OX26DP, UnitedKingdom OxfordUniversityPressisadepartmentoftheUniversityofOxford. 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For Amalia This page intentionally left blank Preface and Acknowledgments Thisbooksurveysandevaluatesthreecentralphilosophicaldebateswithin distributive justice: Where is the site of distributive equality, that is, to whatentitydodistributiveprinciplesprimarilyapply?Whatistheground ofdistributiveequality,thatis,whydoesdistributiveequalitymatter?And is the reach or scope of the ideal of distributive equality limited to the confinesofthestateorisitglobal? Myobjectiveistoprovideanoverviewofsomeofthemainarguments andpositionsinthecontemporarydiscussionssurroundingthesequestions. I cannot attempt to engage all the different positions at play in the vast and still growing literature on these matters. Instead, I wish to identify what I take to be the general forms of the most important positions and arguments for the purpose of organizing and tidying an increasingly crowded field. As a result some detailsmay be sacrificed, but the hope is thatatidying-upofthephilosophicalterrainandtheidentificationofthe keyissuesatstakeinthesedebateswillcompensateforthisshortcoming. This critical survey will suggest that institutional egalitarianism provides themostreasonableunderstandingofthesiteofequality;thatluckegalitari- anism provides a plausible understanding of the grounds of equality; and that the scope of equality is realizably global. To do this, the book will attempt to clarify the basis of the institutional approach to equality, the propercontoursofluckegalitarianism,andthecasefortheglobalreachof egalitarian concerns in spite of equality’s institutional site. It will also propose a way of understanding how the institutional site, the luck egalitarian ground, and global scope of equality—even though engaged withdifferentaspectsofequality—cancometogethertosupportapartic- ularidealofdistributivejusticethatIwillcallinstitutionalluckegalitarianism. Inthisregard,althoughthemaingoalofthisbookistoprovideacritical introduction to some of the main questions on equality, I hope some of theargumentsitadvancescancontributetothecontemporaryphilosoph- ical literature on distributive justice and be of interest to readers already engagedinthisdiscourse. I enjoyed the benefit of discussing several parts of this book in various stagesofitsdevelopmentwithstudentsindifferentadvancedundergraduate viii PREFACEAND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS andgraduateseminarssinceFall2005attheUniversityofPennsylvania.Iam grateful for their criticismsand fortheir ownviews on thesubject. I owe special thanks to the following (some of whom are now only former students): Collin Anthony, Chris Melenovsky, Mark Navin, and Doug Paletta. Colleagues and friends at the University of Pennsylvania have been supportiveandkindenoughtodiscussdifferentaspectsofthisbookwith me.IamespeciallygratefultoSamuel Freemaninmanyways,including for the frequent discussions on the topic of this book, and whose own writingshaveprovidedoneofthesparksforthiswork.IalsothankKaren Detlefsenforentertainingmythoughtsonthissubjectonmoreoccasions than she would care to recall, and whose comments and feedback provided valuable guidance at crucial points. Colleagues and friends in the field at large have also offered comments and criticisms on different sub-partsofthisworkatvariousoccasions.InparticularIthank:Richard Arneson, Simon Caney, Deen Chatterjee, the late Jerry Cohen, Bruce Landesman,CarolGould,AaronJames,AlistairMacleod,DarrelMoellen- dorf,MargaretMoore,ChristineSypnowich,CindyStark,andBobTalisse. Peter Momtchiloff of Oxford University Press generously supported and encouraged this work from the beginning, and adroitly arranged for invaluablefeedbackonboththeproposalandmanuscript.Ibenefitedfrom differentreaders’commentsontheproposal,amongthemThomasPogge and Andrea Sangiovanni. Two readers took the additional trouble of offering careful criticisms and comments on the manuscript, and I hope they will find the revisions prompted by their remarks on track. I am certainlygratefulfortheirattention.Oneofthesereaders,nowrevealedto me to be Peter Vallentyne, deserves special thanks for his detailed and incisivesuggestionsandcriticismsthatheturnedaroundwithastonishing rapidity.IhavenotaddressedallofPeter’sandtheotherreader’sconcerns tomyfull satisfaction(andno doubtneither totheirs);butIhopeIhave done enough to temper at least some of their more powerful challenges. Many thanks also to Brenda Stones for her excellent copy-editing of thescript. Finally,andmostofall,thankstoKarenagainforhergoodpatienceand encouragement,andtoAmaliaforprovidingthenecessarylifedistractions thatputthingsintheirrightfulplace. Chapter 6 includes passages from “Luck, Institutions, and Global Dis- tributiveJustice,”TheEuropeanJournalofPoliticalTheory(July2011).Iam PREFACEANDACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix grateful for permission to reproduce parts of this paper here, and to the editorsandreadersofthejournalforhelpfulcriticismsonthedraftofthis paper. Part I and Part II expand (with revisions in most cases) on some argumentsfirstpresentedinthefollowingpapers: “JusticeandPersonalPursuits,”TheJournalofPhilosophy101/7(2004). “A Defense of Luck Egalitarianism,” The Journal of Philosophy 105/11 (2008). I thank the editors and readers of The Journal of Philosophy for helpful feedbackonthesepapers.