3071-The political economy of new slavery

186 The Global Framework for Development
‘means’ issues), for which self-conscious ethical enquiry or ethics is
necessary.
Failures in the model
I shall argue that this model is seriously defective in at least three respects.
First, the goals of poverty reduction, development, peace, environmental
protection and human rights observance are far more controversial than
is often assumed. It is not that people disagree that these are indeed
core goals, rather they disagree about the interpretations of what they
really are, and why they are valuable. The assertion that failures in the
world are due to individual or institutional failure to follow agreed norms
underestimates the existence of real differences of norms or at least
interpretations of them; for instance, do certain kinds of ‘payment’
really constitute ‘corruption’, especially if they are seen as the oil of,
rather than the impediment to, development? Under what conditions
does ‘consent’ effectively transform into ‘being coerced’, if the work that
is offered turns out to be different or done under different circumstances
from what had been envisaged? This means that there have to be core
ethical debates about such questions, the answers to which matter since
some answers are better than others. Second, among these disagreements
will be disagreements about the relative priority of different norms (or
values to be promoted). Does poverty alleviation really have significant
priority over economic prosperity in general? Just how much should
a country or individual regard self- or national interest as trumping
humanitarian concerns? Does sovereignty trump human rights concerns
when issues of intervention come up? How important is the reduction
of economic slavery within the wider framework of poverty reduction?
It follows from these kinds of issues that the normative assumptions
above about what the key actors should do needs itself to be seriously
questioned or at least shown to be inadequate, since they fail to bring
out the complexity of the dilemmas of an ethical kind that can arise.
Third, the model is empirically inadequate, since the dynamics of the
world are more complex than is suggested. The neo-westphalian model
may indeed have to give way to a post-westphalian model, especially in
respect to the increasing role of individuals acting in a global arena – as
global citizens, as many would now say (see Dower, 2000, p. 2003).
Dimensions of development ethics
My interests here are very general, but they have a particular bearing on
the subject matter of development ethics. This is because the model and