Since 2011 an international study group spearheaded by the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt elaborates on the feasibility of a 21st Century Concert of Power. In this project a Concert is understood as a possible means to mitigate the dangers of the triple challenge of US/Western decline, the ongoing multipolarization and a future power transition at the top of the international system through a system of multilateral great power governance.
Justice and fairness considerations enter the realm of a potential 21st Century Concert in both a rather abstract and a rather concrete way and furthermore from the inside as well as from the outside. Specifically they concern the relations between concert members (for example in questions of decision making) and the relations between the Concert as such and non-members (exclusion-problem, legitimacy).
This paper explores the different issues, sites and stages, in which justice issues could complicate the coming-into-being and working of a 21st Century Concert. Furthermore it offers some remedies that might be able to ease at least some of these justice-tensions. It concludes that – in order to fulfill its promises – a 21st Century Concert cannot be just a Concert, but has to be conceived as a just Concert.
