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Lea Ypi's book is divided into three parts. The first two develop her 'dialectical methodology', offer a critique of the dominant approaches to global justice - cosmopolitanism and statism - and lay the foundations of an alternative approach: statist cosmopolitanism. On this approach, a cosmopolitan outlook on the scope of justice is coupled with an emphasis on states as sites where the pursuit of (global) justice is 'politically effective and motivationally sustainable' (p. 133). The third part of the book further develops the statist cosmopolitan perspective, and looks at how global justice might be brought about, exploring the idea of a cosmopolitan avant-garde. Cosmopolitan avant-garde agents (much like artistic avant-gardes) draw attention to existing conflicts and injustices (specifically global ones), thereby 'awakening' the moral conscience of their fellow citizens, and furthering institutional reform.
Ypi's book is broad in scope, ambitious, and brings together insights from an impressively large set of sources: from modern political thought and contemporary political philosophy, to the history of art and philosophy of science. In addition, the book is highly imaginative, offering a novel perspective on how political change in the direction of greater justice could/should come about - an important but neglected topic in global-justice theory, which Ypi creatively and refreshingly addresses.
Here I can only focus on a few aspects of Ypi's argument. In the spirit of the critical, but constructive, engagement of a 'review exchange', these aspects will be those that I have found either least convincing or most interesting, but in need of further development.
First, I wish to consider Ypi's 'dialectical' approach (chapter 2), which she presents as a better alternative to mainstream ideal and non-ideal outlooks on normative theorizing. On this approach, reflection on political morality is sparked by political conflicts (p. 58); in response to such conflicts, existing practices are creatively re-interpreted, and new 'normative content' is added to them (p. 59); and the new interpretations then open the way to political reform (p. 60).
I am uncertain about (a) the status of this approach and (b) how it relates to existing alternatives. Regarding (a), at points the reader gets the impression that the approach offers a framework explaining how political-moral progress happens, rather than a prescriptive account of how political theory should...