Global Justice Index Report 2021

The Global Justice Index is a multiyear research project conducted at Fudan Institute for Advanced Study in Social Sciences (Fudan-IAS) to conceptualize and measure the contributions of each country to achieving greater global justice. Over the past two years, we have published a book in Chinese and several academic papers in English to present the justice rankings of nation-states at the global level from 2010 to 2017 developed according to the Global Justice Index (2019) and nation-states’ rankings at the global level from 2010 to 2018 on the index (2020). Building on the success of this earlier work, here we provide our third-year results. including the rankings to promote global justice by nation-states at the global level as assessed in their 2019 data. This year’s report on Global Justice Index (2021) consists of the following five main sections: introduction, methodology, results, analysis, and conclusion.

In the introduction, we reiterate our theoretical innovation in the creation of our index by discussing the development of the conceptual framework to support and justify our selection of issues, dimensions, and indicators for measurement. Although much of this content is discussed introduced in previous years’ reports, we strongly believe that it is necessary to present it again this year. Doing so has the merit of maintaining the integrity of this year’s report. In addition, we have made some major changes in this year’s report compared with the reports published in 2020 and 2021. In the results section, we include the rankings of nation-states’ contribution to global justice across 10 issue areas for 2019. Following the results section, we provide regional comparisons accompanied by detailed policy analysis presented with the assistance of various visualization tools. In the conclusion section, we report the key findings, elaborate possible applications and certain limitations of the index, and describe the potential for further research in global justice and the policy implications for using our materials or approach in advancing global justice in the future.

Many agree that global justice is a broad concept incorporating multilevel and multidimensional aspects rooted in both normative and empirical realities. A coherent, integrated theoretical framework that covers this normative basis and various empirical dimensions is, therefore, necessary to address some of the basic and important research questions that fall under this area of study. Our Global Justice Index research begins with a conceptualization of global justice reported in the theoretical paper “Conceptualizing and Measuring Global Justice: Theories, Concepts, Principles and Indicators”, coauthored by the project leaders Sujian Guo et al. and published in Fudan Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences (Vol. 12, No. 4, 2019), which discusses the theories, concepts, evaluative principles, and methodologies involved in the study of global justice. We recommend that readers read it along with this year’s report.

In our theoretical paper (Guo et al. 2019), we clarify how to global justice should be conceptualized, how operationalized measurement dimensions and indicators can be selected and theoretically justified, and how these measurements can be made conceptually consistent with the concept of global justice. These are challenging questions. By synthesizing multiple theories and intellectual traditions drawn from a range of social, cultural, and political contexts, we have come to conceptualize global justice centering on three main foundational elements—rights, goods, and virtue—to develop a coherent theoretical framework on a normative basis for the following measurements. Our rights-based conceptualization focuses on the basic principles, rules, and sources of legitimacy of justice (Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948; Rawls 1971, 1999). Our goods-based conceptualization concentrates on the material and institutional supports that the governments or institutions are obliged to provide (Arneson 1989; Freeman 2006; Nussbaum 2006, 2011; Richardson 2006). Finally, our virtue-based conceptualization understands justice to be a virtue that an individual seeks to pursue rather than a regulation imposed from the outside that an individual must comply with (Mo 2003). The relationship among the three conceptual approaches are necessarily interdependent rather than separate, and the must be components of a holistic whole. The three approaches must also be seen as complementary instead of competing, such that the rights-based conceptualization forms the basic structure as its bones, the goods-based conceptualization provides substantial material support as the muscles, and the virtue-based conceptualization, which emphasizes personal motivation and internalized willingness, is the heart in this body of justice (Guo et al. 2019).

Using this framework, we propose two evaluative principles to bridge the gap between theory and practice to determine and justify our selection of issue areas for evaluation. We call these two principles Common but Differentiated and Respective Capabilities (CBDR-RC) and Cosmopolitan but Due-diligence Responsibilities (CDDR). CBDR-RC incorporates those issues “for which no single nation-state can be held directly accountable or responsible, matters that can only be tackled through the globally concerted efforts of all stakeholders” (Guo et al. 2019). For example, it is the responsibility of all to protect the climate system and ecological balance, and environmental protection cannot be handled by any country on its own. The principle of CBDR-RC, first adopted by the United Nations (UN) Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFFCC) and reaffirmed in the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, combines normative legitimacy with historical rationality. Although the principle was first developed to establish the responsibilities of different countries for climate change, it has been expanded and applied to other questions of global justice, such as combating transnational crime and global peacekeeping.

The CDDR principle asserts that “all-nation-states are morally obligated to provide cosmopolitan aid, in which context the least advantaged will have a due-diligent responsibility” (Guo et al. 2019). This principle is based on the concept of mutual accountability proposed in the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, adopted in 2005 at the Second High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness to improve cooperation among actors in aid and development. This principle considers aid obligations to be part of domestic affairs, such as anti-poverty and education policy, in the context of which nation-states are expected to provide material and institutional assistance to the citizenry within their territories.

Using CBDR-RC and CDDR, we have selected two clusters of global justice issue areas for practical measurement. The issue areas that relate to CBDR-RC are (1) climate change (global warming), (2) peacekeeping, (3) humanitarian aid, (4) terrorism and armed conflicts, (5) cross-national criminal police cooperation, and (6) refugee. The issue areas relating to CDDR are (7) anti-poverty, (8) education, (9) public health, and (10) the protection of women and children.

This year’s Global Justice Index study is not merely a continuation of previous work. While we have retained our issue areas, indicator systems, data sources, and method of constructing the Global Justice Index as these appeared in the Global Justice Report (2020),Footnote1 we have made a few major changes. The most important change this year is that we now report results per single year results instead of over multiple years. We have also strengthened our analysis of the ranking results by engaging with the literature to a greater extent, noting policy implications, and entering further into discussions of the specifics of some key countries.

The full article is available online here : https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s41111-022-00220-w