Democratic education is central to the functioning and flourishing of modern multicultural democracies, and yet it is subject to increasing public controversy and political pressure. Waning public trust in government institutions, sustained attacks on democratic values and customs from populist politicians and organizations, political sectarianism, and increasing trends toward privatization and chartering in the educational landscape have placed immense strain on the existing structures of public education and generally worked to undermine public confidence in democratic education. In light of these developments, it seems to us to be of central importance to return to the essential concepts, theories and values of democratic education, both as a social ideal and a political institution. This Handbook aims to offer an expansive view of the formation of individuals for democratic life and includes a diversity of theoretical traditions, topics, and thinkers that are relevant to the theory and practice of democratic education.

INTRODUCTION

In this chapter I will defend the thesis that there are good reasons to support certain forms of the practice common among states of giving and receiving official development assistance (ODA). These reasons are grounded in a discourse-theoretic, internationalist account of global justice and represent a novel moral rationale for certain forms of this international development practice. By moral rationales for international development practice I refer to moral justifications for the promotion of development activities across national borders. This promotion is conducted both by governmental and intergovernmental institutions such as, respectively, the British Department for International Development and the United Nations Development Programme. However, we will see that the forms of international development practice that discoursetheoretic Internationalism supports are recognizably different from the ones generally practiced today.

This discourse-theoretic, internationalist moral rationale agrees with theorists of global distributive justice – like Beitz, Pogge, Caney, and Brock – that participation in certain forms of international development practice can count as a demand of justice instead of solely a demand of humanity. Yet it also rejects their view that the moral rationale for international development practice is to further realize an ideal of global distributive justice. Rather, I will present a different moral rationale, contending that this practice can contribute to establishing certain domestic socio-political structures that are required by global discursive justice. This is because, by fostering in various ways democratic practices at the domestic level, certain forms of international development practice help to satisfy the intranational conditions of a fundamentally just global basic structure. Thereby the processes of opinion and will formation at the international level can eventually be properly structured so as to permit the discursive justification of principles of global distributive justice that one may reasonably presume to be justified. I emphasize ‘eventually’, since, in addition to the fulfillment of the intranational conditions, certain international conditions regarding the degree of inequality in justificatory power at the international level must also be satisfied.