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Closing the Fairness-Practice Gap

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2012

Robert O. Keohane
Affiliation:
ROBERT O. KEOHANE is Professor of Government at Harvard University and Chair of the Department. He is the author of After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), and International Institutions and State Power: Essays in International Relations Theory (Boulder: Westview Press, 1980).

Abstract

“My argument in this essay is that the fairness principle can be justified on the basis of an ethical perspective that stresses the importance of consequences in judging human action, and that it has far-reaching implications not just for evaluating state policy but for the design of international institutions.” Keohane's utilitarian perspective seeks to establish generalizable principles of morality for a framework of normative moral rules by which to construct a foreign policy for international cooperation. The author argues that all governments are morally obliged to support international institutions that advocate crosscultural and global public goods to advance the fairness principle. The international community is bound by Western understandings of distributive justice, universal human rights, and indisputable national sovereignty.

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Articles
Copyright
© Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 1989

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