Political and distributive justice

To most philosophers, unmet claims based on distributive justice imply a political injustice-some have a complaint of justice against their political system. This article explores a variety of views about how this connection may be grounded or qualified: political institutions may be one tool among others to realize an independent good, distributive principles might regulate the distributive activities of political institutions, or distributive principles might apply in light of a special relation of a political institution and its members. We also consider a view prevalent in the social contract tradition that, in light of reasonable disagreement, one cannot demand that shared political institutions conform to one’s own contentious distributive theory: members must seek terms with which all can live, even though such terms may not be anyone’s most preferred possibility.