The title of Ethan Kapstein's book, Economic Justice in an Unfair World, for a wild moment made me hope it was going to be one of those 'how to' books one finds in airport bookstores. Alas not. You won't find here the ten bullet point summary for delivery of global justice.

Nor is this a book with new economic theory or evidence about globalization. Heaven knows, the globalization literature is huge and hardly needs additions. Especially if, as the most depressing statistics and news indicate, there's a widespread retreat from globalization. (I think this will be cyclical given that there has been a whole generation's-worth of restructuring economic activity to increase specialization across borders. One can hardly imagine it being easy for any other country to mimic China's expertise in textiles logistics, or Taiwan's in chips fabrication, or central Europe's in specialized auto components. But the lesson of history isn't wildly encouraging, it must be said.)

Instead, this is a rather interesting book (albeit written in dull academic style) which looks at the welfare analysis of aspects of globalization. Specifically, Kapstein is interested in what steps will increase welfare, not in an ideal world but in the world of realpolitik. He rejects the demands of anti-globalization campaigners as ineffective in improving welfare, and instead focuses on how to make trade and aid deliver incremental benefits.

He starts by noting that there are two separate critiques of globalization. The first focuses on its adverse effects on domestic economic justice and argues for redistributive policies within the nation state (he calls this the communitarian model). The second is concerned with justice between individuals no matter where they live (the cosmopolitan model) and looks to policies which will redistribute between rich and poor nations. Kapstein favours what he calls liberal internationalism, recognizing these two distinct arenas of justice, and emphasizing policies which improve outcomes incrementally by giving national governments the capacity to engage at the level of the state in international institutions. Governments are the agents which matter to him.

Having set up this framework – and I think the distinction between communitarian and cosmopolitan is interesting and valid – in the early chapters, the later chapters which try to set it out in more detail in specific contexts are a bit disappointing  – too sketchy perhaps.  The section on controversial aspects of trade such as the TRIPS agreement particularly disappointed me because, 'free trader' as I am, I believe it to be a profoundly unjust dimension of the WTO;  Kapstein suggests the answer to questions such as the affordability of medicines in the developing world is better public health systems whereas I think there is no justice in creating for big pharma companies the same monopoly rents in new markets that the enjoy from IP protection in their core rich markets.

However, as this will make clear, the book covers interesting issues, and I fundamentally do agree with the argument that nation states still are decisive for the fairness or otherwise of outcomes in a globalized world. National politics does still determine the distribution of income and access to education.

Next on my pile of things to read is Amartya Sen's new book, The Idea of Justice, which has just arrived. I'm a Sen fan – his papers on social justive responding to Arrow are terrific, and his concept of capabilities seems to me intuitively valid. A review will follow post-holiday.