Rawls’ Difference Principle and Global Vaccine Distribution
In a world of constrained resources, most governments and leaders make a concerted effort to prioritize and provide whatever is best for their constituents, locally and nationally. However, when faced with a global pandemic, policymakers must take a worldwide approach when creating programs aimed to curb the spread of the disease. For example, the international distribution of vaccines has been wildly inequitable. According to Our World in Data, more than 80% of the doses have gone to people in high-income and upper-middle-income countries, while only 1% of people in low-income countries have received at least one dose. To combat this, the leaders of the G7 pledged extra doses for low- and middle-income countries by the end of 2022. President Joe Biden promised to donate 500 million doses of the vaccine. This is in addition to the 87.5 million Biden previously pledged. The United Kingdom also promised 100 million, and France, Germany, and Japan have pledged around 30 million each. While I applaud the decisions by these countries, I also question why this hasn’t happened sooner. After all, lower-income countries have required vaccines for months, while millions have expired on American shelves.
After reading about the deep inequity in vaccine distribution, I thought how if Rawls’ Difference Principle was a key framework in international policy, the vaccine’s dissemination could have been greatly improved and potentially saved more lives. However, after further research, I was surprised to learn that Rawls himself did not believe his principle was applicable globally. In The Law of Peoples, Rawls argues that the Difference Principle cannot apply internationally because it is founded on liberal principles of the men and women that not all countries agree upon. He writes that not all societies endorse “a political conception of the person rooted in the public culture of a liberal society,” such as the equality, rational agency, and freedom of every individual. Rawls also argues at the international level, there is no need to nullify the adverse effects of morally arbitrary factors since they do not cause any difficulty to the development of society, and that if the problem of society is caused by the destructive policies it adopted in the past, other communities do not have the duty to assist this society. Finally, he states that the scheme of social cooperation is the foundation of distributive justice, and it cannot exist at the international level.
While I think there is some merit to Rawls’ arguments, I do differ with him on two fronts. First, his view on a “contract” seemed to be tied to a nation-state since the people of the nation-state agreed upon specific laws. There is merit to that; however, in today’s globalized world that is highly interlinked, most countries have at least come to a place of agreeing upon certain economic principles and laws that allow us to depend on each other for goods and services. Secondly, one of the critical tenets of the Difference Principle was its notion of removing morally arbitrary reasons for the distribution of resources. If the value which underlies the Difference Principle is just on the domestic front for liberal nations, it is just as legitimate on the international one because national birth is morally arbitrary. There is no moral reason why one person was born in one country or another, making national affiliation arbitrary and thus not legitimate grounds to justify withholding economic goods from people in other nations. Domestically Rawls believes that the distributive effects of natural differences ought to be nullified. Rawls views natural talents as a “common asset.” He argues that no one deserves his greater natural capacity nor merits a more favorable starting place in society; instead, biological differences and social contingencies require compensation. However, this analysis is not extended to nations. For example, the distribution of natural resources among countries is uneven and arbitrary from a moral point of view, so if individuals cannot gain from their talents without improving the situation of those who are less favored by nature, why should the country be allowed to gain from the natural resources which happen to be under their control without improving the situation of others? Thus here lies the incongruity in Rawls’ argument.
In the case of global vaccine distribution, despite Rawls’ own inhibitions, I believe the Difference Principle would be an appropriate and helpful framework to apply. If wealthy nations use their resources to support the “least advantaged members,” in this case lower-income countries, the spread of the disease can be significantly reduced, and countless lives can be saved.
