Basic Rights by Shue Henry;

Author:Shue, Henry; [Shue, Henry;]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780691202280
Publisher: Princeton UP
Published: 2020-03-30T00:00:00+00:00

POLITICAL JUSTIFICATIONS: TWO CONCEPTIONS OF GOVERNMENT

The Trustee/Adversary Theory of Government. One political view is what might be called the trustee, or adversary, theory of government: the proper role of every national government is primarily or exclusively to represent and advance the interests of its own nation. This view is so widely assumed that it is ordinarily taken to be obviously correct. Various formulations of this view are possible, distinguished from each other in part by the types of constraints they acknowledge and the extent to which these constraints are allowed to override national interest. Perhaps the term “adversary” should be reserved for less constrained and more aggressive variants. Most people would presumably agree that it is reasonable to acknowledge treaties and international law generally as constraints upon the pursuit of national interest. But it is less obvious what other “rules of the game,” if any, ought to be observed by governments in their sometimes bitter advocacy of national interests that are sometimes zero sum. Ought a nation ever to refrain from pressing a natural advantage out of concern for the welfare of the people of another nation—for example, ought the United States (A) actively to support an international system of food reserves that could place a ceiling on the upward volatility of world prices for commodities the U.S. exports or (B) to encourage world prices to rise as high as they will go and sell all but token amounts to whichever nations can afford to buy at the top price regardless of the levels of poverty elsewhere (assuming that selling to the highest bidder would be in the long-term U.S. national interest and that a price ceiling would not be)?

Various formulations of the trustee/adversary theory of government would also differ in the precise basis offered for the role attributed to national governments. Rarely in print but frequently in political rhetoric one finds taxation presented as the basis: the goverment is spending our money so the government ought to be serving our interests. This appeals to a principle that he who pays the piper is morally entitled to call the tune. A quite different, more strictly political basis would be an account of representative government, maintaining, roughly, that in a representative form of government individuals are entrusted with executive and legislative office precisely and explicitly in order to act on behalf of those whom they represent.8 A decision to sacrifice the interests of constituents, or anyhow the basic interests of the nation of which the constituency is a part, would according to this view quite literally be a betrayal of a trust. A person should seek and hold a representative role only if the person is prepared faithfully to represent the interests entrusted to him or her.

Almost inevitably, faithful representation of constituent interests, where those interests do in fact conflict with the interests of other constituencies, will involve serving in an adversary role and assuming that the interests of others will be advocated by their own representatives. At the national level,

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