Human rights are best understood as moral claims on social institutions – not on the conduct of governments or other actors (who, however, are jointly responsible for social arrangements). In our highly interdependent world, concern for human rights, so understood, must focus primarily on prevailing global arrangements which directly and indirectly, have the most profound impact on living conditions worldwide. The resulting institutional moral cosmopolitanism would support global institutional reforms toward a vertical dispersal of sovereignty, with governmental authority and patriotic sentiment widely distributed over a plurality of nested territorial units. Such reforms would tend to increase prospects for peace, to reduce severe poverty and oppression, to enhance global democracy, and to stem ecological degradation.
