Rawls outlines his idea of "community" as an idea of society as a fair system of cooperation. He characterizes that "system of cooperation" as a relation-based structure that shows three main elements: cooperation as distinct from "merely socially coordinated activity"; fair terms of cooperation specifying an idea of reciprocity; an idea of "good" as "each participant's rational advantage". This structure of cooperation may have something in common with the most sophisticated conceptualizations of the "market". The main problematic difference here is the fact that "reciprocity" cannot be considered as a political equivalent to the exchange of values that happens in the market. Reciprocity, in Rawls' s own words, "lies between the idea of impartiality, which is altruistic (being moved by the general good), and the idea of mutual advantage understood as everyone's being advantaged with respect to each person's present or expected future situation as things are" (Political Liberalism, p. 16-17). In line with this fundamental distinction, Rawls states clearly that a well-ordered democratic society is neither a community nor an association. It is not an association for two reasons: first, you may choose to be member of an association, whereas you are member of a well-ordered democratic society by birth (and the exit from it is only by death); second, a well-ordered democratic society has no final ends and aims in the way that persons and associations do (Political Liberalism, p. 40-41). Moreover, a well-ordered society is not a community "if we mean by a community a society governed by a shared comprehensive religious, philosophical, or moral doctrine" (Political Liberalism, p. 42). Rawls adds that "to think of a democracy as a community (so defined) overlooks the limited scope of its public reason founded on a political conception of justice" (Political Liberalism, p. 42).
However, the biggest problem with the attempts to "generalize" Rawls has to do both with the separate conceptual framework used in The Law of Peoples and with the limitations (actually, boundaries) that Rawls establishes in discussing the conditions of inclusiveness of his theory. The Rawlsian "well-ordered society" is closed (entry by birth, exit by death). Rawls leaves deliberately aside "relations with other societies"; he treats that problem in The Law of Peoples, but excluding the possibility to apply his principles of justice beyond the national borders. The attempts to "stretch" Rawls in a "transnational" way are not convincing. Rawls is the last great "westphalian" thinker. From this point of view, he seems closer to Bodin than to Kant.
