Globalisation, the state and economic justice

This paper explores the potential for states to act as agents of economic justice in an era of ‘globalisation’. After providing a critical review of debates about both economic justice and globalisation, the paper suggests that states retain an important degree of policy-making autonomy—should they care to exercise it. Following this I make a rather unfashionable argument which claims that, if economic justice is actually to be achieved in the contemporary era, it may be up to states to provide it. For the current structures of global governance are not only often ineffective, but they may actually entrench inequality and injustice. In the absence of a just global order, individual states may have to rely on their own efforts to achieve what economic equality they can.