Can Globalization Promote Human Rights?

9. The Primacy of Politics

9 the primacy of politics Critics of globalization look to different types of solutions to its adverse aspects. One proposed solution for inequality and poverty, whether they are caused by globalization or not, is redistribution of some of the world’s resources. Another proposed solution is to institute domestic authoritarian socialism to control a country’s relations with the world economy. The first solution is morally admirable but not entirely practical; the second is dangerous to both civil/political and economic human rights. Social democracy is the best political system for the protection of all human rights. However, serious threats to human security will remain, even in the unlikely event that most states begin to temper capitalism with social democracy. world redistribution vs. internal institutional change Even in the globalization era, the state bears the principal responsibility to ensure individuals’ enjoyment of economic rights. However, many poorer states do not possess the resources necessary to ensure such enjoyment, even when the government is democratic and state elites are not self-interested. The national pie is very small. The international pie is much bigger, leading many human rights activists to suggest 132 can globalization promote human rights? redistribution of the world’s resources. Those who believe that the West accrued its wealth by actively underdeveloping its former colonies (Rodney 1972; Frank 1967) also believe there is a powerful moral case for redistribution. One argument against world redistribution is that individuals do not bear obligations to remedy problems that they did not themselves cause. Narveson maintains that the current residents of the Western world did not cause world poverty; therefore, the world’s poor may not call upon the wealthy West to assist them as a matter of right, although Westerners may choose to assist them as a matter of charity (1999, 143–56). Further, some argue that we bear more responsibility to the people closest to us than to distant others. There is “no general community of mankind” and “no person can respond to the full range of human misery,” as Hoffmann summarizes this position (1981, 152). Thus, “compatriot favoritism” is a sensible way to order our obligations, our fellow citizens taking precedence over people who live in distant lands (Jones 1999, 111). The opposing viewpoint contends that we bear universal obligations; those whom we do not know and whose situation we have not at all influenced are as deserving of our concern as our own families (Singer 2004, 11–32). Whatever philosophers may say, many individuals in the wealthy Western world are concerned about the poverty endured by distant others. They believe they have an obligation to assist the poor and that this obligation goes beyond the individual choice to contribute to charities. Yet a human being’s capacity to feel a sense of community with strangers seems to be limited. Individuals have difficulty feeling that strangers have as much place in their “universe of obligation” (Fein 1979, 33) as do family, friends, and compatriots. For example, Canadian civic leaders whom I interviewed in 1996–97 explained that they found the obligations of humanitarian citizenship more indirect and harder to honor the farther away its objects were (Howard-Hassmann 2003, 200–214). Even the most engaged Western citizens are unlikely to donate more than what they consider their “fair share” to assist people in underdeveloped countries, and this fair share will not normally undermine their own standard of living. Some suggestions for redistribution of world resources do not appear, at first glance, to ask Westerners to do more than their fair share. Pogge the primacy of politics 133 suggests that 1 percent of world income should be redistributed to the poor; in 2002 this figure amounted to $312 billion (2002, 205). If such redistribution did take place, however, it would entail enormous administrative and procedural difficulties analogous to the familiar problems connected to foreign aid. Several decades of Western foreign aid, amounting to $2.3 trillion since 1960 (Easterly 2006, 4), have done little to ameliorate poverty in the less developed world. Yet there may be ways to tax global economic transactions to generate funds for redistribution. Pogge suggests a Global Resources Dividend, a tax on the use of the world’s resources no matter what country officially owns them (2002, 205–14). Others suggest taxes on financial flows, plane tickets, weapons exports, or CO2 emissions (Milanovic 2005, 160). Despite such suggestions for world redistribution, in practical terms...