The Ethics of Global Poverty: Who is

responsible?
A Critique of Thomas Pogge’s
Politics as Usual

Karen Pimentel Simbulan

Ethical Issues in the Public Sector
Introduction

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the
age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the
epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the
season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the
spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had
everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all
going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other
way – in short, the period was so far like the present
period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its
being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative
degree of comparison only.

- Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

Depending on where one lives, both in terms of geographic location as well as

socio-economic class, the 21st century could be, to paraphrase Charles Dickens, the best
of times or the worst of times.

At no other point in history has our world achieved the level of scientific and
technological advancement, or economic and social transformations that it has at this
very moment. We have at present the scientific wherewithal to vaccinate against or cure
the deadliest diseases of the last few centuries. We have the technological knowhow to
communicate, at the speed of light, with people from thousands of miles away. Extremely
complicated medical and surgical procedures that were the stuff of science fiction novels
fifty years ago can now be availed of easily in hospitals all around the world. Apart from
the scientific and technological advancements of this age, globalization has opened up the
world of possibilities – access to the farthest, most inaccessible corners of the world, and
even the possibility of space travel; of obtaining the most exotic fruits at any time of the
year, and of eating the world’s finest delicacies.

In the midst of all this progress, we are also living in the world where more than 3
billion people live on less than $2.50 a day, with more than 1 billion living on less than
$1.00 a day. 1 billion children worldwide are living in poverty. More than 800 million
people go to bed hungry every day, 300 million of which are children. Consequently, six
million children die annually from malnutrition before their fifth birthday. More than six
million children die annually from completely preventable causes like malaria, diarrhea
and pneumonia. Over 40% of the world’s population, more than 2.6 billion people, do not
have access to basic sanitation, with more than one billion people still using unsafe
sources of drinking water. (UN Millennium Project 2006).

We are living in a world of extremes – of abundance and starvation, of

unbelievable prosperity and debilitating poverty, of endless possibilities and life-
threatening scarcity.

It is this world of extreme poverty, hunger and deprivation juxtaposed with the
world of unprecedented affluence that Thomas Pogge focuses on in book, Politics as
Usual. Pogge draws a causal link between the richest industrialized countries in the
Western world and the world’s poorest economies in the developing world by applying
global institutional analysis to the present global institutional order. Pogge mainly argues
that the current global institutional order was created and consistently propped up by
the most powerful industrialized Western countries to primarily serve the interests of
their own governments, business elites, and corporations, at the expense of poorer
countries in the developing world. This, in turn, has greatly contributed to the rise in the
levels of global poverty.

Global Justice and Collective Responsibility

Pogge singles out the governments and officials of the so-called G-7 countries -
the United States, Japan, France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, and Canada – as
the principal architects and planners of the current global institutional order. Within the
Westphalian paradigm, the governments of these countries naturally prioritized the
interests of their own citizens in shaping the global institutional arrangements. But Pogge
argues that because these governments acted only for the best interests of their own
citizens and constituents without considering the foreseeable effects that the global
institutional order would have on citizens of developing countries, they deliberately and
knowingly caused world poverty. Such a harsh condemnation is better understood if
premised on Pogge’s belief that everyone has a negative duty to respect the human right
to freedom from poverty. Based on such a stringent formulation of this right, all persons
have a duty to prevent or alleviate global poverty. Thus, support for any system or order
that would foreseeably cause poverty for others gives rise to a corresponding moral
obligation on the part of those who participated in the act to compensate those injured for
the harms caused, as well as to reform the order so as to avoid any further harm.

But how does the present global institutional order generate and maintain the
deplorable levels of global poverty in the developing world?

According to Pogge, global institutions such as the World Trade Organization

directly cause global poverty by setting up an uneven economic playing field that
provides preferential treatment to affluent Western countries.

On the other hand, this global institutional order indirectly contributes to severe
world poverty by providing the rules that shape the national institutional order under
which the citizens of developing countries live, by granting the ruling dictators several
international privileges that legitimize their rule and give them the resources they need to
further entrench themselves in power. These international privileges come in the form of:
(a) the resource privilege, or the right to legally dispose of their country’s resources and
dispose of the proceeds from the sale in any manner they wish; (b) the borrowing
privilege, or the right to take out loans from international financial institutions in the
name, and as a legal representative of, their countries, thereby legally binding their
people to debt service obligations; (c) the treaty privilege, or the right to enter into legally
binding treaties with other states for and on behalf of their populations; and (d) the arms
privilege, or the right to acquire the means necessary to quell any internal dissent.

In arguing thus, it is necessary to point out that Pogge does not lay the blame for
the deplorable state of the world solely on the affluent countries. Rather, he concedes that
the current state of affairs is the result of the relationship of synergistic harm that is
formed between the affluent countries and the ruling elites of the developing countries.
To quote:

“It is true – as defenders of the affluent countries and of their

present globalization project point out – that most severe poverty would
be avoided, despite the current unfair global order, if the national
governments and elites of the poor countries were genuinely committed
to “good governance” and poverty eradication. It is also true – as the
defenders of governments and elites in the poor countries insist – that
much severe poverty would be avoided, despite the corrupt and
oppressive regimes holding sway in so many poor countries, if the global
institutional order were designed to achieve this purpose. Much of the
harm thus is synergistic. But this fact cannot negate the responsibility of
the citizens and governments of the affluent countries: given our
contribution, we may bear responsibility for the severe poverty of even
those people who would not be poor if their countries were better
governed.” (p.45)

A recent Al Jazeera article mentioned a World Bank study on corruption perfectly

illustrates Pogge’s point. This study found that developing countries lose between US$20
billion to US$40 billion a year from corruption by government officials (in form of bribes
and theft). This amount is staggering when we consider the valuable government services
that could have been provided had this money been properly utilized. What is more
appalling, however, is the World Bank’s finding that multinational corporations are able
to steal from developing countries more than US$900billion annually through tax
evasion. The US$40 billion lost through the corruption practices of the ruling elites of
developing countries suddenly appears to be small change in comparison. (Hickel, 2014)

Significantly, governments, corporations and international institutions are not the

only actors that have to be held morally responsible for the extreme poverty that plagues
most of the developing world. Pogge is clearly of the view that all those who, directly or
indirectly, benefit from, participate in, collaborate with, or provide support to this global
institutional order must share the blame for the severe poverty that that this order causes.
Consequently, citizens of affluent western countries can also be held accountable for
propping up and benefiting from the global institutional order that engenders massive
deprivation in the impoverished countries of Asia, Africa and South America.
 But how can one become liable merely on the basis of citizenship to an affluent
western country? In Pogge’s view, since affluent Western countries, specifically the G-7
countries, are democratic, the citizens of these countries share responsibility for the
global order that their governments have built, as well as the consequences of this global
order. In other words, for Pogge, democratic governance equates to citizen complicity in
the acts and omissions of the ruling government. Whether this is a fair assessment or not
will be explored later on in the paper.

Global institutional order and severe poverty – an illustrative case

I begin my analysis by examining one of the central tenets to Pogge’s main

argument - that the design of the current global institutional order causes harm by directly
and indirectly reinforcing the imbalance of power in favor of already affluent western
countries and against developing countries, subsequently causing or aggravating global
poverty. In Pogge’s (2010) words:

“vast human rights deficit regularly persisting in today’s world can be

traced back to institutional factors – to the national institutional
arrangements in so-called less developed countries, for which their
political and economic elites bear primary responsibility, as well as to
present global institutional arrangements, for which the governments and
citizens of the affluent countries bear primary responsibility.” (p.30)

The Philippines is a case in point in illustrating both the direct and indirect means
by which the current global institutional order aggravates global poverty. From 1965 to
1986, the Philippines was ruled by a dictator, Ferdinand Marcos, who utilized the
country’s constitution to entrench himself in power. The experiences of the Philippines
under the Marcos regime clearly demonstrate the hazards of the “borrowing privilege,”
and how this fosters conditions that result in severe poverty in a country. When Marcos
first became president in 1965, the Philippine foreign debt was less than US$1 billion. In
the course of his 21-year dictatorship, the IMF and the World Bank lent Marcos regime
$5.5 billion, with foreign governments lending him an additional $3.5 billion. By the time
Marcos was ousted from power in 1986, the Philippine foreign debt had ballooned to
US$27 billion, with the Marcos family keeping approximately US$10 billion in
numbered bank accounts all over the world. (Robles, 2014)

After the Marcos regime, the succeeding President passed a law prioritizing all
debt payments over any other government spending. To date, debt payments still
accounts for over 20% of government revenue, exceeding the government budget for
public health and education combined, and leading to the government’s inability to
adequately fulfill the population’s healthcare, education and housing needs (Dear, Dear
and Jones, 2014).

On the other hand, the failure of the Philippines’ agriculture sector best
exemplifies the negative effects of accession to unjust WTO treaties, with heavily-
subsidized foreign competition, free market liberalization and loan conditions killing off
local producers. As a result, the Philippines has gone from being a rice exporter in the
1970s to one of the world’s top rice importers at present (Dear, Dear and Jones, 2014).

The Philippine experience is, unfortunately, not unique. In the 1970s, various
countries from Latin America, Asia, and Africa all suffered, in one form or another, from
the governing global institutional order. International financial institutions like the World
Bank and the International Monetary Fund, which occupy a dominant place in the global
institutional order, provide loans to developing countries in need in exchange for
compliance with policy prescriptions. These prescriptions, the so-called “Washington
Consensus,” include trade liberalization policies to provide open market access to
multinational corporations, deregulation and privatization of nationalized industries,
while at the same time cutting social spending programs. The disastrous effects of the
implementation of these policies on the economically vulnerable sectors of society are
well-documented – deepening inequality, lack of government-provided basis services,
higher unemployment rates, environmental destruction, and long-term threats to food
security (Shah, 2013).
 The question that now remains is whether, as Pogge claims, the imposition of the
global institutional order is done despite the foreseeability of the devastating effects,
thereby making those who shape, control, and support it fully accountable for knowingly
and deliberately causing global poverty.

Pogge responds to this by pointing out that the post-Cold War global economic
order1 was predominantly by the G-7, composed of the United States, the United
Kingdom, Germany, Italy, France, Japan, and Canada. For Pogge, it is enough that these
countries engineered the global economic order and continue to support and maintain it
for them to be held morally accountable for the consequences.

On this point, I deviate slightly from Pogge’s view. I do not believe that Pogge
convincingly proved that the G-7 countries deliberately shaped the global economic order
with the intent to cause global poverty. I do agree, however, that the governments of
affluent western countries that continue to support the global institutional order despite
all the evidence we presently have that it aggravates and leads to more global poverty,
bear the primarily responsibility of the detrimental effects.

In this regard, it is significant to note that the G-7 holds 45% of the votes on the
boards of the IMF and the WB, with the United States alone holding 17%. This translates
to these countries having virtual control over how these institutions are run, i.e., setting
the conditions that attach to any loan agreements with developing countries. As
previously noted above, the imposition of the Washington Consensus policies as a
prerequisite for much-needed “development” loans has consistently proved ineffective. In
most cases – in Chile, Argentina, Mexico, Ecuador, Brazil, Bolivia, Malawi, the
Philippines, Sub-Saharan Africa – these policies not only failed to deliver the promised
development, but actually led to increasing inequality, long periods of economic
recession, and crippling poverty (Stieglitz, 2004).

1
Which is considered a part of Pogge’s global institutional order.
 Despite all this, the global economic order continues to encourage the
implementation of trade liberalization, deregulation, and privatization policy
prescriptions in developing countries. As a matter of fact, while the WB and the IMF
embarked in 1996 on the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative (HIPC) to provide
debt-reduction packages to heavily indebted developing countries, a recent study by the
Jubilee USA has revealed that before qualified countries obtain a 100% debt cancellation,
they must first implement the same harmful economic policies that accompanied the
loans in the first place – privatization of key industries, liberalization of markets, and
complying with strict public spending limits (Jubilee, 2008). At the very least, this clearly
demonstrates the apparent indifference of those in charge of these international financial
institutions to the proven human cost of neoliberal policies. This greatly contextualizes
Pogge’s damning assessment in the introduction, where he writes:

“[t]he central lie, the foundation of the others, is that we are moral
people, who care about our moral responsibilities. If we were, we would
take morality seriously in shaping foreign policy and in negotiating
transnational institutional arrangements, especially those that affect the
evolution of severe poverty. We would seek to develop a full
understanding of morality’s demands on our conduct in these areas, and
we would try to live up to these demands. In fact, we do no such thing
even while we traffic heavily in moral language.” (p.3)

Collective responsibility and the democracy illusion

I move on to explore the second point of Pogge’s argument – that citizens of

affluent western countries bear collective responsibility for upholding global institutional
arrangements. Pogge premises this collective responsibility on the fact that affluent
western countries are reasonably democratic, thereby implying that citizens in democratic
countries are empowered enough to influence government policies.

In critiquing this argument and the assumptions that it rests upon, I divide the
discussion into two parts. I deal first with Pogge’s questionable assertion that G-7
countries are “reasonably democratic”. Assuming that Pogge’s assertion is correct, would
it be fair to hold that all citizens of democratic countries have the ability to influence
government policy, and should thus be held accountable for their government’s actions?

At the outset, it bears noting that the word “democracy” is problematic in that it
has no set definition. For the sake of expediency and consistency, I take my cue from
Pogge, who defines the fundamental idea of democracy as:

“the moral imperative that political institutions should maximize and

equalize citizens’ ability to shape the social context in which they
live…that it be possible for all social groups of any kind (and especially
for minorities) to gain something approaching proportional
representation in the legislature.” (p. 200)

The question that naturally arises is, within this definitional framework, are the G-
7 countries sufficiently democratic at present? Even confined to Pogge’s limited
definition of democracy, I do not think so. Rather, I find that Pogge’s assertion is an
oversimplification of the complex workings and challenges of democracy.

Let me start with the United States. In 2010, the US Supreme Court held in
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (558 U.S. 310) that political action
committees (PACs) are not covered by electoral campaign finance laws. While PACs do
not formally represent candidates, they are generally formed to campaign for or against
electoral candidates. The 2010 Supreme Court ruling allows corporations, labor unions
and wealthy individuals to interfere in political campaigns by letting them spend
unlimited amounts of money to support or campaign against candidates. (Stoeher, 2012)
This kind of interference in the democratic process certainly puts into question the
possibility for proportional representation in the legislature, skewing as it does the
political playing field in favor of candidates who have strong financial backing or their
own personal resources.

Japan, on the other hand, has had a questionable history with proportional
representation, having been ruled almost consistently for the past 60 years by one party.
How was this possible? Because in the Japanese system, electoral districts in some rural
areas have the same number of representatives in the Diet (legislature) as district near
Tokyo, even if they have half the number of inhabitants. Under such a set-up, each voting
inhabitant of certain rural areas has the equivalent of two votes to the one vote of those
living near Tokyo (Fackler, 2013), thereby negating the possibility of proportional
representation.

Although the possibility of proportional representation exists under the United

Kingdom’s electoral system, the reality is also quite bleak. The electorate’s growing
indifference to their government, caused by an apparent mistrust of their government
officials, has resulted in a “disconnect” between the government and the citizens it
purports to represent. This has been manifested by low electoral turnout, particularly
from lower class citizens experiencing social deprivation as a result of poverty,
unemployment, mental or physical disability, imprisonment, among other factors (Allan,
2011). A report written by Democracy Audit on the state of British democracy since 2000
supports this finding, noting that the widening gap in the participation rates of different
social classes of voters, as well as the unprecedented growth in corporate power threatens
the very idea of representational democracy in the United Kingdom. (Jowit, 2012).

But even assuming that these G-7 countries are all “working” democracies, would
it be fair to suppose that the citizens of these countries, by virtue of the fact that they live
in a democracy, can be held accountable for their government’s actions? This would
depend, in large part, on whether all citizens of affluent countries have an equal ability to
influence their elected representations. But, as has been demonstrated in the discussion
above, this is obviously not the case.

At the outset, it bears noting that Pogge’s use of the phrase “affluent western
countries” is misleading. While these “affluent western countries” are admittedly more
economically developed and stable in comparison to developing countries, it is important
to recognize the implications that accompany this phrase, not least of which is the
suggestion that all citizens of these countries are themselves economically prosperous.
But this is a false assertion, failing as it does to account for the rising poverty rates within
the countries comprising the G-7 countries, as well as in many countries in western
Europe.

A study on the EU found that in 2012, 124.5 million people, or 24.8 % of the
population were at risk of poverty or social exclusion (European Commission, 2013). In
the United Kingdom, over 30 million people suffer from financial insecurity (Poverty and
Social Exclusion Team, 2013). In the United States, 46.5 million people (15% of the
population) lived in poverty. In the same year, 49.0 million people lived in food insecure
households, with 5.7% of households (approximately 7.0 million households)
experiencing very low food security.

True, the poverty experienced by people in affluent western countries greatly

differs from that experienced by people living in developing countries. This difference is
reflected in the “extreme poverty” and “relative poverty” classifications. Extreme poverty
refers to the condition where people are extremely deprived of the basic necessities for
survival, such as food, safe drinking water, adequate sanitation services, and shelter.
People suffering from relative poverty, on the other hand, can meet their basic needs but
their way of life and income is so much worse than the general standard of living, leading
to exclusion from ordinary economic, social and cultural activities. (European Anti-
Poverty Network).

The causal link between poverty and social, economic and political exclusion has
been extensively studied in various academic literature.2 Among the many consequences
of rising relative poverty, the most relevant for the purposes of our discussion is the
resulting political exclusion of a large sector of the citizenry. Having to face such dire
problems such as unemployment, food and income insecurity, and social exclusion, it is

2
See for instance, Townsend, P. (1979) Poverty in the United Kingdom, Harmondsworth: Penguin; Silver,
H. (1995) ‘Reconceptualising social disadvantage: three paradigms of social exclusion’, in G. Rodgers, C.
Gore, and J.B. Figueiredo (eds) Social exclusion: Rhetoric, reality, responses, Geneva: International Labour
Organization; Walker, A. and Walker, C. (eds) (1997) Britain divided: The growth of social exclusion in
the 1980s and 1990s, London: Child Poverty Action Group.
reasonable to expect that people living in relative poverty do not put political
participation high on their list of priorities.

Another point to consider is the democratic deficit phenomenon occurring in the

member countries of the European Union. Pogge himself has recognized the inability of
ordinary citizens of the EU member countries to influence the policies and decisions of
EU institutions. In his own words –

“citizens of the EU have very little meaningful influence on the political

decisions made in their name by the centralized organs and agencies,
such as the European Commission, the Council of Ministers, and the
European Parliament…ordinary citizens of the EU have had little
meaningful influence on the designing of the emerging small politico-
bureaucratic elite. And this elite decides, quite undemocratically, what
sorts of democratizing modifications they are going to implement in
order to reduce public hostility to their opaque and undemocratic rule.”
(p.183)

Coming into focus in light of the continuing Euro-zone crisis, the problematic
effects of the democratic deficit in the EU on the ability of the electorate to influence
government policies can best be illustrated by the following observation made in the Wall
Street Journal:

"the French, the Spanish, the Irish, the Dutch, Portuguese, Greeks,
Slovenians, Slovakians and Cypriots have to varying degrees voted
against the currency bloc's economic model since the crisis began three
years ago. Yet economic policies have changed little in response to one
electoral defeat after another. The left has replaced the right; the right has
ousted the left. Even the center-right trounced Communists (in Cyprus) -
but the economic policies have essentially remained the same:
governments will continue to cut spending and raise taxes." (Dalton,
2013)

The foregoing observations put into question the accuracy of Pogge’s assumption
that citizens of affluent countries have the power to influence their elected
representatives. From the previous discussions, it would seem that the contrary was true.
It would therefore be greatly unjust for Pogge to hold citizens of these countries
collectively responsible for the increasing rate of global poverty, despite the established
causality between their governments’ policies and the worsening poverty in the world.

Minor reforms in the global order – are they sufficient?

Another point that deserves attention is Pogge’s conclusion. Given the atrocious
evils caused by the global institutional order – the millions of deaths and lives destroyed
by a seemingly malignant global institutional order – one would expect Pogge to
conclude that the entire order is seriously broken and requires complete restructuring.
Instead, Pogge claims that the deaths, deprivations and massive poverty caused by global
institutional order can be rather easily avoided “through comparatively minor
modifications in the global order that would entail only slight reductions in the incomes
of the affluent.” (p. 31) For Pogge, making small changes to the rules governing trade,
lending, investment, resource use, or intellectual property can prevent the incidence of
life-threatening poverty.

This appears a rather timid solution to propose given the enormity of the problem.
To recall, to Pogge, the global institutional order was designed specifically to benefit the
more powerful developed countries and their own constituencies, at the expense of the
poor and vulnerable populations of less developed countries. This should logically lead
us to question the very foundations of this order.

It would seem that Pogge, in an attempt to make his solution easier to swallow for
his intended audience, chose to temper the solutions to the grave ills he perceived in the
global order, as if to provide the proverbial light at the end of a very bleak, distressing
tunnel.

Another notable limitation in Pogge’s proposed solution is that he restricts the

means to changing the current global institutional order to a top-down approach. While
he recognizes the power that the citizenry possess, which power is the very basis for their
complicity in the “crimes” perpetuated by their governments, such power is reduced to
their right to vote for their chosen representatives. But given the problematic state of
representative democracy in the very same countries that he has identified as having the
moral responsibility to address the problem of global poverty, I find that Pogge has left us
with a conundrum masquerading as a solution.

It also bears mentioning that Pogge’s whole approach to the solution to global
poverty fails to provide for the meaningful participation of the global poor in the whole
debate. In so doing, Pogge fails to take the voices of the global poor into account and
ignores their agency and ability to contribute in the process of eliminating global poverty.
While I recognize that Pogge’s intended audience is composed of the citizens of affluent
western countries, made evident by his use of the pronoun “we” when he writes about the
collective responsibility to fulfill the negative duty of eradicating global poverty, his
approach falls into the trap of relegating the “global poor” to helpless victims that need to
be saved. But this is just not true. While it is imperative that citizens from powerful
developed countries acquaint themselves with their countries’ foreign policies and
question the effects that these policies have on the developing world, this cannot be the
only solution to the problem. It is necessary to recognize that the people who need
“saving” also have their own abilities and means to contribute to the fight against global
poverty.

Current State of Affairs

Pogge’s book concentrated mainly on the ravaging effects of the global

institutional order on developing countries. In his view, the global institutional order
created an “us versus them” paradigm – where the wealth of the developed world came at
the expense of the developing world, leaving the bodies of starving people in its wake.

But the times appear to be changing.

At present, a new transatlantic trade and investment agreement is being negotiated

by the United States with the European Union, with a similar trade pact agreement being
negotiated by the United States with various Pacific Rim countries. These trade
agreements are primarily meant to stimulate trade between the United States and the EU
by removing tariffs and other barriers to trade.

One of the most controversial, and most worrying sections of this pact is the
investor-state dispute settlement provision. This provision calls for the creation of a
system of international tribunals that grant corporations the legal personality to challenge
domestic laws and jurisprudence of member countries that get in the way of their profit.
Apart from the fact that this international tribunal can supersede the laws of signatory
countries, its decisions are not subject to appeal.

While the corporate trade advisors, lobbyists and board members of multinational
corporations have been granted access by the US delegation to the preparatory documents
for the trade negotiations, private citizens have not been allowed to access any of the
same documents. Most citizens only became aware of the negotiated trade agreement
after Wikileaks published a secret draft chapter of the proposed agreement. This bars any
possibility for public consultation or any other form of public participation in the policy-
making process, despite the foreseeable consequences of the leaked provisions.

It would therefore seem that the global institutional order is in the process of
turning against the very people who were meant to benefit from its design. As an
alternative, we could simply rethink one of Pogge’s main assumptions that “the design of
the global institutional order reflects the shared interests of the governments,
corporations, and citizens of the affluent countries more than the interest in global
poverty avoidance, insofar as these interests conflict.” (p. 35) Perhaps in the end, the “us
versus them” narrative should not be based, as Pogge proposes, on the developed-
developing country paradigm. Rather, the fight seems to progressively be about a global
institutional order that pits multinational corporations against people. This, I think, would
be more in keeping with the global institutional analysis that Pogge proposes to apply in
furthering the discourse on global justice.
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