Conceptualizing and Measuring Global Justice: Theories, Concepts, Principles and Indicators

The paper focuses on the conceptualization and measurement of global justice and discusses theories, concepts, evaluative principles, and methodologies related to the study of global justice. In this paper, we seek to clarify how to conceptualize global justice, how conceptual indicators can be selected and justified by theories, and how those indicators can be conceptually consistent with the concept of global justice. Global justice is a broad concept that is composed of multi-level and multidimensional aspects belonging to both normative and empirical realities. A coherent and integrated theoretical framework that covers the normative basis and various empirical dimensions is therefore much needed in order to address some of the basic and important questions under study. The paper seeks to synthesize the multiple theories and conceptions of global justice that exist in the academic discourse and literature into three main theoretical approaches to global justice—rights based, good based, and virtue based. These three approaches are a good sample of and reflect well the strengths of the different theoretical, intellectual and cultural traditions at play in the study of global justice. From this perspective, the synthesis of the three approaches is meant to provide us with a coherent theoretical framework that serves as the normative basis and justifies the selection of indicators for measurement.