In Chapter 5 we considered an argument for globalising Rawlsian justice. This cosmopolitan argument pointed out that the scope of justice is global because there is a global basic structure of economic institutions within which people interact throughout the world and which profoundly influences individual life prospects. Because this was a relational view that regarded existing cooperation within a basic structure as necessary for the existence of requirements of justice, the cosmopolitan conclusion depended on the factual assumption that the world as a whole is such a scheme of cooperation. The scope of requirements of justice was only contingently global because it depended on the existence of a global basic structure. In this chapter I shall look at some other, non-relational, reasons for holding that there are global requirements of justice.

We can describe non-relational views by contrasting them with relational theories. Relational conceptions of justice hold that individuals' standing in some specific practice-mediated relation – typically joint institutional membership – is a necessary condition for requirements of distributive justice to exist among them. To take two examples: political conceptions of justice regard joint subjection to the coercive institutions of a state as a necessary condition, whereas Rawlsians regard participation in consequential institutional schemes regulating social cooperation as necessary. Non-relational views, by contrast, do not regard institutions or other practice-mediated relations as necessary for the existence of requirements of justice.