Questioning Thomas Pogge's Proposals to Eradicate Global Poverty

Abstract

Moral cosmopolitanism has often been criticised for being too demanding and not offering a viable solution to the problem of extreme global poverty. Thomas Pogge has responded to both these concerns by arguing that it is possible to eradicate most global poverty through relatively light international-level actions. Pogge's proposals can be divided into two broad categories: financial transfers to the poor and international institutional reforms (which include changing the rules of global trade and restricting the ability of undemocratic governments to borrow internationally or sell off their country's natural resources). However, Pogge's proposed international-level actions are unlikely to eradicate global poverty as he has underestimated the tenacity of poverty-causing local practices. More specifically, this article will question the workability of Pogge's plans against the backdrop of sub-Saharan Africa. Confronted with a gap between what Pogge's proposed international-level reforms are able to accomplish and what they aim to accomplish, the final part of the paper considers Pogge's three options (or some combination of them): one, settle for a more modest reduction of global poverty; two, expect greater endeavour from the poor and their governments; or (and) three, demand a deeper involvement and sacrifice from citizens of well-off countries.

Notes

1. For example, Gareth Cullity, The Moral Demands of Affluence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); Andrew Kuper, “More than Charity: Cosmopolitan Alternatives to the ‘Singer Solution’”, Ethics and International Affairs, Vol. 16, No. 2 (2002), pp. 107–120.

2. Peter Singer, “Famine, Affluence, and Morality”, in C. Beitz et al. (eds.), International Ethics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), p. 259.

3. According to the World Bank's adjusted measure of extreme poverty, $1.25 a day; World Bank, Poverty Data: A Supplement to World Bank Development Indicators 2008, available: <http://siteresources.worldbank.org/DATASTATISTICS/Resources/WDI08supplement1216.pdf> (accessed 20 November 2009).

4. Singer, op. cit., p. 241. More recently, Singer has argued that if an American family needs roughly $30,000 to pay for necessities, a family with an income of $50,000 should give away as close to $20 000 as possible; Peter Singer, “The Singer Solution to World Poverty”, New York Times Magazine (5 September 1999), pp. 60–63. Even with its restated figures, Singer's position remains too demanding for most. As Cullity has argued, we should help the poor to lead longer and healthier lives, but also to lead more fulfilling lives. This might include giving a poor student a scholarship to study music. But, as music is not a necessity, we would be helping a poor person to get what it is wrong to have, which can't be right. If it is permitted to spend money on the “unnecessary” pursuits of the poor, then it should also be permitted for the better-off; Cullity, op. cit., pp. 135–137.

5. James Fishkin, The Limits of Obligation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), p. 9.

6. Thomas Pogge, “Priorities of Global Justice”, in T.W. Pogge (ed.), Global Justice (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), p. 13.

7. Thomas Pogge, “Severe Poverty as a Human Rights Violation”, in T.W. Pogge (ed.), Freedom from Poverty as a Human Right: Who Owes What to the Very Poor? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 46.

8. Ibid.

9. Pablo Gilabert, “The Duty to Eradicate Global Poverty: Positive or Negative?”, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, Vol. 7, No. 5 (2005), p. 542.

10. Debra Satz, “What Do We Owe the Global Poor?”, Ethics and International Affairs, Vol. 19, No. 1 (2005), pp. 47–54.

11. Thomas Pogge, World Poverty and Human Rights: Cosmopolitan Responsibilities and Reforms (Cambridge: Polity, 2002), p. 169.

12. For example, Henry Shue, Basic Rights: Subsistence, Affluence, and US Foreign Policy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980); Singer, op. cit., pp. 247–261.

13. Pogge understands institutions “as a social system's practices or ‘rules of the game’, which govern interactions among individual and collective agents as well as their access to material resources … The totality of the more fundamental and pervasive institutions of a social system has been called its institutional order or basic structure” (Pogge, World Poverty, op. cit., p. 31).

14. Ibid., p. 171.

15. Pogge, “Severe Poverty”, op. cit., p. 26.

16. Pogge's conception of human rights contains not only the usual negative liberties such as one's freedom of person but also the right to subsistence levels of food, drink, shelter, clothing and basic health care, as well as the right to basic education and economic participation, Pogge, World Poverty, op. cit., p. 170.

17. Ibid., pp. 12, 130.

18. Ibid., pp. 20, 199.

19. Ibid., pp. 112–116, 146–167.

20. Ibid., pp. 13, 24. Risse observes that instead of blaming the global economic order for the daily deaths of approximately 34,000 children of preventable poverty-related causes, we could credit this order with preventing a higher number of such deaths, since by “any standard development indicator, the human race has never been better off” than it is today; Mathias Risse, “How Does the Global Order Harm the Poor?”, Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 33, No. 4 (2005), p. 370. Nevertheless, Pogge's proposed reforms might be considered so minor that their enactment would not constitute an “overthrow” of the current global economic order, but a mere adjustment thereof. In other words, since the global economic order can easily be improved upon in terms of reducing poverty, its recent accomplishments notwithstanding, it is to be blamed for unnecessarily harming the world's poorest; Thomas Pogge, “Reply to the Critics: Severe Poverty as a Violation of Negative Duties”, Ethics and International Affairs, Vol. 19, No. 1 (2005), p. 59.

21. Thomas Pogge, Realizing Rawls (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989), p. 276.

22. Pogge, World Poverty, op. cit., p. 144.

23. Ibid., p. 2; idem, “Reply to the Critics”, op. cit., pp. 75–76.

24. Pogge, “Severe Poverty”, op. cit., p. 28.

26. Pogge, “Reply to the Critics”, op. cit., pp. 76–77; emphasis in original.

25. Satz, op. cit., p. 49.

27. Pogge, World Poverty, op. cit., pp. 22, 111.

28. Ibid., p. 26.

29. Nicolas van de Walle, Overcoming Stagnation in Aid-dependent Countries (Washington, DC: Center for Global Development, 2005), p. 36.

30. Ibid.

31. For example, Craig Burnside and David Dollar, “Aid, Policies, and Growth”, American Economic Review, Vol. 90, No. 4 (2000), pp. 847–868; Steve Radelet, A Primer on Foreign Aid, Working Paper No. 92 (Washington, DC: Center for Global Development, 2006), p. 11, available: <http://www.cgdev.org/content/publications/detail/8846> (accessed 2 December 2008).

32. Michael Bratton and Nicolas van de Walle, Democratic Experiments in Africa: Regime Transitions in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 62.

33. For a critical overview, see Gero Erdmann and Ulf Engel, Neopatrimonialism Revisited: Beyond a Catch-all Concept, Working Paper No. 16 (Hamburg: German Institute of Global and Area Studies, 2006); Aaron deGrassi, “‘Neopatrimonialism’ and Agricultural Development in Africa: Contributions and Limitations of a Contested Concept”, African Studies Review, Vol. 51, No. 3 (2008), pp. 107–133.

34. Max Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology (eds. G. Roth and C. Wittich) (New York: Bedminister Press, 1968), p. 231; see also, Bratton and van de Walle, op. cit., p. 61.

35. Clientelism refers to an exchange of favours in a political system between actors with different levels of power and wealth. Van de Walle distinguishes between two forms of clientelism: patronage and prebendalism. Patronage refers to the use of state resources to provide jobs and services for political supporters, such as hiring someone from one's ethnic group as a police officer. The doling out of prebends entails giving individuals public positions and allowing them to benefit from their personal access to state resources, for example, allowing a police officer to extort motorists at a roadblock. Prebendalism is the more damaging to the economy. Patronage might lead to inefficient and bloated government agencies as large numbers of ill-qualified people are employed, but prebendalism entails the deliberate obstruction of investment and economically productive practices; van de Walle, op. cit., pp. 19–23.

36. Nicolas van de Walle, “Economic Reform: Patterns and Constraints”, in E. Gyimah-Boadi (ed.), Democratic Reform in Africa: The Quality of Progress (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2004), pp. 44–45.

37. BBC, “The Cost of Corruption in Africa”, available: <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4723572.stm> (accessed 18 November 2009).

38. The Guardian, “Mo Ibrahim Prize for African Leadership Will Not be Awarded this Year”, available: <http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/19/mo-ibrahim-african-leadership-prize> (accessed 18 November 2009).

39. Charles Tilly, “War Making and State Making as Organised Crime”, in P.B. Evans, D. Rueschemeyer and T. Skocpol (eds.), Bringing the State Back In (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 169–191.

40. Charles Tilly, “Reflection on the History of European State-making”, in C. Tilly (ed.), The Formation of National States in Western Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), p. 24.

41. See Aidan Southall, “State Formation in Africa”, Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 3 (1974), pp. 153–165.

42. Robert Jackson and Carl Rosberg, “Why Africa's Weak States Persist: The Empirical and Juridical in Statehood”, World Politics, Vol. 35, No. 1 (1982), p. 6.

43. Ibid.

44. Jeffrey Herbst, “War and the State in Africa”, International Security, Vol. 14, No. 4 (1990), p. 124.

45. Ibid., pp. 117–139.

46. Joel S. Migdal, Strong States and Weak Societies: State–Society Relations and State Capabilities in the Third World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), p. 27.

47. Ibid., p. 141.

48. Pierre Englebert, “Pre-colonial Institutions, Post-colonial States, and Economic Development in Tropical Africa”, Political Research Quarterly, Vol. 3, No. 1 (2000), p. 12.

49. Nicolas van de Walle, African Economies and the Politics of Permanent Crisis, 1979–1999 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 46.

50. Thomas Pogge, “Priorities of Global Justice”, Metaphilosophy, Vol. 32, No. 1/2 (2001), p. 14.

51. Herbst, op. cit., p. 138.

52. In neopatrimonial societies, the president dominates all branches of government. One important way in which the president prevents cabinet ministers from building up independent spheres of influence is to limit the time they spend in a specific ministerial portfolio. The prudent course of action for a career official in such an environment is to keep a low profile and not be identified too closely with the policies of a specific minister who will soon be replaced; Migdal, op. cit., pp. 238–245.

53. Thomas Pogge, “Introduction: Global Justice”, in T.W. Pogge (ed.), Global Justice (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), p. 3; idem, World Poverty, op. cit., pp. 2, 7, 205; idem, “Symposium: World Poverty and Human Rights”, Ethics and International Affairs, Vol. 19, No. 1 (2005), p. 1.

54. Idem, World Poverty, op. cit., pp. 196–215.

55. Idem, “Severe Poverty”, op. cit., p. 13; Government of the United States, The President's 2009 Budget, available: <http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy09/pdf/budget/defense.pdf> (accessed 27 March 2009). See also Pogge, “Symposium”, op. cit., p. 1; idem, World Poverty, op. cit., p. 205.

56. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Aid Targets Slipping Out of Reach? (Paris: OECD, 2008), p. 1, available: <http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/47/25/41724314.pdf> (accessed 23 March 2009).

57. William Easterly, “The Big Push Déjà Vu: A Review of Jeffrey Sachs's The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time”, Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. 44, No. 1 (2006), pp. 118–127; Jeffrey Sachs, The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time (New York: Penguin, 2005).

58. Pogge, World Poverty, op. cit., p. 92.

59. OECD, Aid Statistics, Donor Aid Charts: United States, available: <http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/42/30/41732048.jpg> (accessed 17 April 2009).

60. Government of the United States, The President's 2009 Budget, available: <http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy09/pdf/budget/education.pdf> and <http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy09/pdf/budget/dhs.pdf> (accessed 27 March 2009).

61. Pogge, World Poverty, op. cit., p. 8 and p. 212.

62. Ibid, p. 205; emphasis added.

63. William Easterly, The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good (New York: Penguin, 2006), p. 4.

64. See idem, The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists’ Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001).

65. Nancy Birdsall, Seven Deadly Sins: Reflections on Donor Failings, Working Paper No. 50 (Washington, DC: Center for Global Development, 2004), available: <http://www.cgdev.org/content/publications/detail/2737> (accessed 12 December 2008).

66. Michael Clemens, Steven Radelet and Rikhil Bhavnani, Counting Chickens When they Hatch: The Short-term Effect of Aid on Growth, Working Paper No. 44 (Washington, DC: Center for Global Development, 2004), available: <http://www.cgdev.org/content/publications/detail/2744> (accessed 12 December 2008).

67. Raghuram Rajan and Arvind Subramanian, Aid and Growth: What Does the Cross-country Evidence Really Show?, Working Paper No. 05/127 (Washington, DC: IMF, June 2005), available: <http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2005/wp05127.pdf> (accessed 15 January 2009).

68. Deborah A. Bräutigam and Stephen Knack, “Foreign Aid, Institutions, and Governance in Sub-Saharan Africa”, Economic Development and Cultural Change, Vol. 52, No. 2 (2004), p. 266.

69. Todd Moss, Gunilla Pettersson and Nicolas van de Walle, An Aid–Institutions Paradox? A Review Essay on Aid Dependency and State Building in Sub-Saharan Africa, Working Paper No. 74 (Washington, DC: Center for Global Development, 2006), available: <http://www.cgdev.org/content/publications/detail/5646> (accessed 15 January 2009).

70. Todd Moss and Arvind Subramanian, After the Big Push? Fiscal and Institutional Implications of Large Aid Increases, Working Paper No. 71 (Washington, DC: Center for Global Development, 2005), p. 7, available: <http://www.cgdev.org/content/publications/detail/4436> (accessed 3 February 2009).

71. Michael Clemens and Steven Radelet, The Millennium Challenge Account: How Much is too Much, How Long is Long Enough?, Working Paper No. 23 (Washington, DC: Center for Global Development, 2003), p. 7, available <http://www.cgdev.org/content/publications/detail/2767> (accessed 2 March 2009).

72. Moss and Subramanian, op. cit., p. 6.

73. For example, Burnside and Dollar, op. cit.; Radelet, op. cit.

74. Pogge, World Poverty, op. cit., p. 206.

75. Joshua Kurlantzick, Beijing's Safari: China's Move into Africa and its Implications for Aid, Development, and Governance (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2006), available: <http://carnegieendowment.org/files/kurlantzick_outlook_africa2.pdf> (accessed 15 February 2009).

76. Chris Alden, China in Africa (London: Zed Books, 2007), p. 2.

77. Kenneth Roth, China's Silence Boosts Tyrants (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2006), available: <http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2006/04/18/chinas-silence-boosts-tyrants> (accessed 13 February 2009).

78. Alden, op. cit.; Robert Calderisi, The Trouble with Africa: Why Foreign Aid isn't Working (New York: Palgrave, 2006), pp. 177–194; Howard W. French and Lydia Polgreen, “China, Filling a Void, Drills for Riches in Chad”, New York Times (13 August 2007), available: <http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/13/world/africa/13chinaafrica.html?fta=y&pagewanted=all> (accessed 15 February 2009); Kurlantzick, op. cit.

79. Stefan Koeberle, “Conditionality: Under What Conditions?”, in S. Koeberle et al. (eds.), Conditionality Revisited: Concepts, Experiences, and Lessons (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2005), pp. 57–83.

80. Van de Walle, Overcoming Stagnation, op. cit., p. 35.

81. Van de Walle, African Economies, op. cit., p. 164.

82. Pogge, Realizing Rawls, op. cit., p. 12.

83. Pogge, World Poverty, op. cit., p. 170.

84. Pogge, “Reply to the Critics”, op. cit., p. 59.

85. One important omission is Pogge's recent important work on making essential medication more affordable for the poor and directing more research to address the needs of people who lack the ability to pay for such medication. Pogge's proposals are detailed and wide ranging, dealing with issues that cannot be adequately addressed in a few paragraphs with patent rights, and thus better suited to more extensive analysis than can be undertaken in this article; Thomas Pogge, “Human Rights and Global Health: A Research Program”, Metaphilosophy, Vol. 36, No. 1/2 (2005), pp. 182–209; Aidan Hollis and Thomas Pogge, The Health Impact Fund: Making New Medicines Accessible for All (New Haven: Incentives for Global Health, 2008).

86. Pogge, World Poverty, op. cit., p. 19.

87. United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), Trade and Development Report 1999 (New York: UN Publications, 1999).

88. Pogge, World Poverty, op. cit., p. 18.

89. Pogge, “Severe Poverty”, op. cit., p. 37.

90. Pogge, “Reply to the Critics”, op. cit., p. 59.

91. Defined as an elimination of agricultural export subsidies by all countries, cuts in domestic agricultural subsidies by developed countries, no cuts in domestic support by least-developed countries, cuts of 45–75% in agricultural tariffs for developed countries (35–60% for developing countries) and 50% in non-agricultural tariffs by developed countries (33% for developing countries); Kym Anderson, Will Martin, and Dominique van der Mensbrugge, “Market and Welfare Implications of Doha Reform Scenarios”, in K. Anderson and W. Martin (eds.), Agricultural Trade Reform and the Doha Development Agenda (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2006), pp. 333–399.

92. Ibid.

93. Antoine Bouët et al., “Multilateral Agricultural Trade Liberalisation: The Contrasting Fortunes of Developing Countries in the Doha Round”, World Economy, Vol. 28, No. 9 (2005), p. 1346; T.J. Achterbosch et al., Trade Liberalisation under the Doha Development Agenda: Options and Consequences for Africa (The Hague: Agricultural Economics Research Institute, 2004), p. 50, available: <http://129.3.20.41/eps/it/papers/0407/0407013.pdf> (accessed 15 February 2009).

94. William R. Cline, Trade Policy and Global Poverty (Washington, DC: Center for Global Development, 2004), p. 282.

95. Jennifer Brant, Africa and the Doha Round: Fighting to Keep Development Alive (Washington, DC: Oxfam, 2005), p. 8; available: <http://www.oxfam.de/download/Africa_and_the_Doha_Round.pdf> (accessed 16 February 2009).

96. Mareike Meyn, The WTO Doha Round Impasse: Implications for Africa (London: Overseas Development Institute, September, 2008), p. 3; available: <http://www.odi.org.uk/resources/odi-publications/briefing-papers/41-wto-doha-round-impasse-implications-for-africa.pdf> (accessed 15 February 2009).

97. Pogge, World Poverty, op. cit., p. 115.

98. David Held, Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State to Cosmopolitan Governance (Cambridge: Polity, 1995); Daniel Philpott, Revolutions in Sovereignty: How Ideas Shaped Modern International Relations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001).

99. Philpott, op. cit., p. 4.

100. Arch Puddington, “A Third Year of Decline: The 2008 Freedom House Survey”, Journal of Democracy, Vol. 20, No. 2 (2009), p. 101; Todd Moss, “Briefing: The G8s Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative and Poverty Reduction in Sub-Saharan Africa”, African Affairs, Vol. 105, No. 419 (2006), p. 292.

101. Pogge, World Poverty, op. cit., p. 142.

102. Pogge, “Severe Poverty”, op. cit., p. 47.

103. Henry Rossbacher, “The Business of Corruption, or is the Business of Business Corruption?”, Journal of Financial Crime, Vol. 13, No. 2 (2006), pp. 202–212.

104. Alden, op. cit.

105. Ibid., pp. 45–46.

106. Pogge, World Poverty, op. cit., pp. 155–156.

107. Patrick Chabal, “The Quest for Good Government and Development in Africa: Is NEPAD the Answer?”, International Affairs, Vol. 78, No. 3 (2002), p. 450.

108. Van de Walle, African Economies, op. cit.

109. Nicolas van de Walle, “Presidentialism and Clientelism in Africa's Emerging Party Systems”, Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 41, No. 2 (2003), pp. 297–321.

110. Pogge, “Reply to the Critics”, op. cit., p. 59.

111. Pogge, World Poverty, op. cit., p. 10.

112. Pogge, “Severe Poverty”, op. cit., p. 46.

113. Christopher Clapham, Third World Politics: An Introduction (London: Croom Helm, 1985), p. 49.

114. United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report 2009 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), pp. 177, 197.

115. Pogge, World Poverty, op. cit., p. 136.

116. Joseph Stiglitz, Making Globalization Work (New York: Norton, 2007), p. 83.

117. Eduard Jordaan, “Cosmopolitanism, Freedom, and Indifference: A Levinasian View”, Alternatives, Vol. 34, No. 1 (2009), pp. 83–106.

118. Chris Brown, International Relations Theory: New Normative Approaches (New York: Harvester-Wheatsheaf, 1992); idem, Sovereignty, Rights and Justice: International Political Theory Today (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002).

119. David Miller, National Responsibility and Global Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).

120. Ibid., p. 133.

121. Ibid., p. 269.

122. Ibid., p. 275.

123. Ibid., p. 273.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Eduard Jordaan

∗The author would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their extensive and very helpful comments.