Institutional Justice and the Ethical Dimension of the Norm of Modern Development at the Bretton Woods Institutions

Introduction

In the course of defining how political asymmetries affect global structures of governance, little value has been given to its role in shaping socially constructed norms. From an historical perspective, this phenomenon has molded social principles and procedures that just upon the inclusion of otherwise disregarded views, appear as problematic or conflictive. A glimpse into the background of this antagonistic character of socialization, reveals that, over time, social practices become norms, and upon the legitimation of this symbolic constructions on structures of authority, they tend to acquire a somehow mandatory institutional category. From an international Relations perspective, such cases can be seen on organizations that regulate political relations by guidelines and discourses that acquire meaning when put into practice, despite been highly contested in terms of procedures, foundational settings and normative outcomes.

In the task of steering framed spheres of international relations, the Bretton Woods Institutions reveal themselves as strategic nodes of normative meaning. Their ongoing allusion to an idea of development by the regulation of framed realms of political and economic relations, has further created a narrative of “global justice” hardly refuted over time. As such, the idea of “global justice” has transposed its semantic value into an institutional arrangement. In this scenario, it´s role as a virtuous principle for the mediation of interests on an international sphere, acquire a sense of legitimacy scarcely antagonized in today politics, but problematic when grasped from a more democratic or ethical perspective. In sum, in the global process of modern development, the idea of justice as a functional governance category has meticulously been transferred from the social to the contractual sphere. This shift has been triggered by the increasing levels of sophistication of societies, which upon the necessity of regulate relations, have posit on institutions the burdens derived from tensions of complex contemporary social systems.

Taking into account the role of historic contingencies in the birth process, formation, maturation and legitimation of institutions, as well as contributions of communicative action theory and critical constructivism, the present chapter presents a theoretical approach upon which at the Bretton Woods institutions, this concept of modern contractual justice can be grasped coherently. The working hypothesis of this argument, is that in contemporary structures of asymmetric governance, fundamental social norms evolve conflictively, acquiring institutional meaning that replace functionally and systemically the deontological attributes and claims for legitimacy of institutional practices.

In the present chapter, I reconstruct the idea of global justice and its institutional category at the Bretton Woods Institutions upon two features of the institutions. First an historical one, in which the contributions of historic institutionalism and critical constructivism, explain how the development of social systems, is gradually joined by the creation and implementation of steering structures. In such circumstance, the construction of norms is reached by making customary use in societies of constitutive traditions, some of them that further acquire a semantic content upon language and the sharing of fundamental symbolic expressions such as the idea of justice. The concept of justice, rather than having a de facto meaning, is made upon context and socialization. Both represent circumstances that on a governance level, attribute legitimacy to the institutional practice, while at the same time, suggest the inclusion of world perspectives otherwise disadvantaged or underrepresented on scenarios of unbalanced or asymmetric governance.