| Global justice theorist Thomas Pogge argues that the average citizen in any Western nation is to blame for kleptocracy in the developing world and is therefore morally obligated to agitate for reforms to international law which would bar unelected rulers from disposing of their countries' natural resource wealth or borrowing on the credit of their nations. Pogge's unique argument appeals solely to moral duties of forbearance (negative duties) and relies on the claim that those who uphold political and economic institutions bear moral responsibility for harms that occur in response to incentives created by those institutions. For Pogge, the global privileged are imposing unjust institutions on the global poor and are therefore bound to make reparations by replacing these institutions with more equitable ones.;I argue that Pogge's reforms are, by his own lights, not radical enough. Since even elected leaders have incentives to act in kleptocratic ways, the logic of Pogge's argument commits him to denying all political leaders the privileges of creating debt and of disposing of natural resources, as well as the privilege of compulsory finance (taxation). In short, if negative duties are the only duties that count politically, and if the creation of incentives to kleptocracy is immoral, then the goal of political action should be not democracy but anarchy. It is sovereignty itself, the right of monopoly over law and governance in a defined territory, which should be targeted by Poggean reformers, and not just certain sovereign privileges. While not necessarily all Western citizens have the duty to be Poggean reformers, very many probably do, and these ought to be asking what they can do to build a more just, less coercively-governed world. I conclude by suggesting that, as a first step to dissolving sovereignty, international law be reformed so as to recognize the right of recursive secession. |
