“Discussion of Prof. David A. Crocker’s New Book -
Ethics of Global Development:
Agency, Capability, and Deliberative Democracy”
February 20th, 2009
International Center for Non-Profit Law
Washington, DC
I – Welcome and Introduction of Panelists
- Ramon Daubon, Esquel Group President
II – Book Discussion Presentation
- Dr. David A. Crocker, Author and Senior Research Scholar, Institute for Philosophy & Public Policy, School of Public Policy – University of Maryland
Five Scourges of the Earth
- Poverty
- Violence
- Environmental Crisis
- Tyranny
- Degrading Inequality
Ethics of Global Development offers a moral reflection on the ends and means of local, national, and global efforts to overcome these five scourges.
We need to disenthrall ourselves of the grip that the proposition of development holds on us, based on the idea that economic growth is the end all and be all of development.
In order to do this we need to get ethics on the development agenda by acknowledging the role of ethics in development studies, policymaking, and practice. This includes: a deepening and broadening of cross cultural interaction and institutionalization; the extended and improved use of the capabilities approach; addressing the issues of over consumption (core) and under consumption (periphery) in different parts of the world; extending development ethics and capabilities approach to international scene; and the usage of deliberative democracy in both institutional and informal settings.
Central questions in the book include how the benefits and burdens of development should be distributed? And, who should do the distributing? As well as, what are the virtues and vices of development workers?
For Amartya Sen the basic purpose of development has to be to facilitate, enhance and protect freedoms. Development needs to move its focus away from the production of commodities and income. Instead it needs to stress the acquisition of capabilities and freedoms. It needs to recognize the individual and collective agency of people and communities, their desire and capacity to run their own life and make their own decisions individually and collectively.
Martha Nussbaum focused Sen’s concepts and attempted to derive a core set of universal capabilities that all people value at all times. She proposed that these core capabilities be enshrined in all constitutions.
The crux of the book is that agency-focused capability approach can then be extended and strengthened by applying it to the challenges of consumerism and hunger, the development responsibilities of affluent individuals and nations, and the dilemmas of globalization. Particular emphasis is needed to understand the globalization of democracy and the need for a democratization of globalization. This deeper approach to democracy in both government and outside of it can be found through discussion, dialogue and creating spaces of common ground upon which emerging consensus can be identified.
III – Speaker Commentary
- Patti Petesch, Independent Researcher and Policy Analyst
There is a need, not for strict equality, but some kind of equality of opportunity. High mobility communities have lower group participation than poorer communities. High mobility communities have more violence than poorer communities. Conflict offers opportunity for institutional experiments to be deliberate. Communities can’t always stand harmful partnerships and governments are not always transparent. Some development partnerships reinforce cohesion and some corrode capacity.
IV – Speaker Commentary
- Katherine Marshall, Senior Fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, and Visiting Professor in the Government Department and the School of Foreign Service – Georgetown University
In the context of the World Bank, ethics has long been seen as related exclusively to the real of government corruption and the proper filing of financial statements. Ethics is not about unethical people, it is about what one should do when faced with hundreds of decisions every day that impact the lives of others. One particular problem in large international development institutions is the sense that some people get that “we’re more ethical than you. After all whose ethics are these anyway? One controversial example of the warring moralities relates to reproductive health rights. Development is a complex and non-linear process. While the Millennium Development Goals provide morally simple objectives, their implementation is very difficult. To achieve them the development community needs to focus on results with technical rigor, yet simultaneously act with compassion and humility. Equity comes from justice, and currently the way that the world’s power and opportunity is development is not fair. We need a fairly even distribution of opportunity. This discussion of development ethics must inform our perspective on what society and world. We need to help see the world from multiple perspectives in order to be truly able to deal with the complexity and competing priorities that abound.
V – Public Questions and Answers
Public comments, questions and answers included discussions on: the need for deliberative spaces as means to find the footholds of consensus; the question of the validity of searching to define a common (or universal) ethic to guide development work; the challenges presented by the asymmetry of power and what happens when one group uses their freedom to dominate others; and, how power is distributed and under which conditions can we do something to change that.