Publication Title

American Political Science Review

Document Type

Article

Department or Program

Philosophy

Publication Date

9-25-2026

Abstract

Structural injustice remains a puzzling concept despite its increasing prominence. I distill recent theoretical challenges into a dilemma: either structural injustice lacks the normative credentials of injustice given that wrongdoing is inessential, or it is redundant given existing theories that trace injustice to culpable state and other institutional failures. I then develop a novel account of structural injustice, the Complexity View, that unravels this dilemma. The emergent properties of human actions in a complex society explain what is “structural” about structural injustice, specifically how it can arise without (culpable) wrongdoing. Structural injustice is unjust because it is wrong to contribute to social processes that cause harm and to passively accept preventable forms of vulnerability and deprivation as tragic misfortunes. But this account of structural injustice has a sobering implication: while complexity explains what distinguishes structural injustice from other wrongs, it also sets significant epistemic limits on social reform.

Comments

Original version is available from the publisher at: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055426101877

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Copyright Note

© The Author(s), 2026. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of American Political Science Association.

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