An%20Introduction%20to%20Development%20Ethics

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An Introduction to Development Ethics

• Formulation of USAID White Paper
• on Development Ethics
• October 2011

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CONCEPTS OF DEVELOPMENT ETHICS

• moral agency thinking and acting ethically

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The Goal Human Flourishing/Well-being

• Successful execution of a rational plan of life,
  by which the person determines the good for
  himself or herself.
• John Rawls
• That human persons are flourishing means that
  their lives are good, or worthwhile, in the
  broadest sense.
• Thomas Pogge

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Moral Vocabulary?

• Myth of value-neutrality
• Us and Them
• North and South
• experts/managers and beneficiaries
• Ethics as rules vs. ethics as principled
  motivation
• Ethical thinking, ethical discernment
• Ethical justification
• Development

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Development

• More than democracy
• What it isnt
• Goulets triple curse of underdevelopment
• Poverty
• Powerlessness
• Hopelessness
• The translation of economic opportunities into
  social opportunities
• Stability and peace
• Democracy and participation
• Justice, human freedoms/human rights

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Reality Check
ethics morality?
Developing Country Context Widespread
poverty Resource scarcity Weak institutions Inadeq
uate infrastructure Shallow (if any)
democracy Corruption Gender inequality,
SGBV Marginalized populations under
threat Environment under stress Unmanaged land
use Poor or no planning Significant health
challenges Inadequate education,
brain-drain Violent conflict, injustice
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Why Morality?

• An important way of thinking about development
  moving beyond Codes of Conduct or disclosure
  rules
• Qualitative focus to development pursued
  through discernment and moral intuition
• Development for what? For whom?
• Development meaning what? Who defines this?
• How much is enough? Who gets to decide?
• Who is responsible for development? Why?
• What about trade-offs? And the losers?

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Moral content?

• In less developed countries, growing extremes of
  wealth and poverty
• A pampered elite vs. those suffering the most
  crushing human poverty
• Instability, violent conflict, impunity
• Stability and development depend on social order
  and social order comes from
• social contract an agreement to behave
• power and coercion (and sometimes tyranny)
• cooperation and caring
• competition with rules and tradeoffs

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Human Dignity ?

• What to do in societies seemingly hostile to the
  concept of human dignity?
• Severe and worsening poverty
• Deprivation of opportunities
• Loss of hope, limited options
• Loss of voice, lack of power
• Dehumanization, extreme violence, SGBV
• Is respecting universal human dignity an
  important goal of development that ought to be
  prioritized by USAID?
• Merely rhetoric?

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Pursuit of the Common Good 1

• Policies and actions that best serve to promote
  the essential components of human well-being or
  flourishing for each person
• or
• Going for the best net score of individual
  interests within and among the whole community
  (utilitarian)
• i.e. sacrifices some peoples interests to
  further that of many others

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Pursuit of the Common Good 2

• What is the common good?
• Subject to moral disagreements
• Identified, agreed upon, and owned only through
  a participatory and deliberative democratic
  process
• reasoning together respectfully
• How does good governance facilitate the
  articulation of a societys sense of the common
  good?

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Pursuit of the Common Good 3

• Unavoidable trade-offs
• A moral justification must be provided to
  justify this sacrifice of perceived
  self-interest, and not simply the weight of
  majority interests.
• Richard Flathman
• Measuring the impact of trade-offs a
  decision-makers role
• advocate or expert?
• legitimacy?

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Common Good Goals Stability, Safety and Security

• Conditions of stability, order, predictability,
  and freedom from bodily harm
• Healthy environment to live within a country
  without becoming ill, or dying early
• Economic security
• Access to employment and/or other forms of
  welfare
• Rule of law and defense institutions that ensure
  safety police, judiciary, military

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Participation Voice Who Governs? Why? How?

• Power, wealth, and voice concentrated at the
  center national governments elites
• Weak or no accountability to non-elites, women,
  marginalized groups
• Governments generally fail to
• Offer and sustain vision-driven leadership
• Demonstrate a public service ethos
• Manage equitable distribution
• Facilitate local participation
• Listen to non-elite citizens

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Participation and Inclusion 1

• In conditions of scarcity, who ought to decide
• What good development and good governance
  mean
• What the obligations of good governance impose,
  and when they must be met
• What should be done when good governance values
  clash with other values
• Wheres the balance?
• Popular participation in governance vs.
  representative democratic institutions of
  government vs. elite control
• Hijacking or manipulating public participation

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Participation and Inclusion 2

• Is meaningful popular participation in
  decision-making a realistic expectation?
• expensive, prolonged, subject to failure
• who identifies the stakeholders? on what basis?
  who is excluded? why? with what mandate?
• Does donor-facilitated stakeholder
  participation reflect accurate demographic and
  power realities?

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Participation and Inclusion 3

• Deliberative Democracy is an ideal, not wholly a
  practical objective
• What role for ideals and principles?
• Careful structuring of the participatory and
  deliberative process
• Differentiate and consider different views of
  means and ends of development and good governance
• Balance between expert opinion and public values
• Everyone has voice, everyone is listened to

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Moral Visibility

• Illustrative moral and ethical dimensions
• freedoms and opportunities who enjoys?
• land ownership access rights who controls?
• environmental/ecological integrity who profits?
• inequitable distribution trickle down
• rights of vulnerable marginalized minorities
• democracy, deliberation, and participation
• gender equality and womens empowerment
• reducing corruption and promoting integrity
• mitigating/preventing violent conflict
• caring about people and the environment
• modeling public service

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Ideals 1

• Social justice
• Fair, even-handed treatment of all individuals
  and groups within a society
• Prerequisite for the achievement of human
  flourishing
• Rasmussen
• Care
• The caring relationship between self and others
• Gilligan

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Ideals 2

• Distributive justice
• On what basis should social institutions
  distribute burdens and benefits? Enforced how?
• John Rawls
• Civic virtue, integrity, transformative
  leadership, followership
• Aristotle
• Joanne Ciulla
• Human rights and freedoms
• Amartya Sen

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Reality Check

• Survival takes priority over dignity
• Margalit
• Political leadership in the South is often
  top-down or even autocratic
• Neither accountable nor inclusive
• Seldom issues-driven
• Power prevails over principles
• Low public expectations of integrity
• Thin view of the public good, weak social
  capital
• Large segments of the population (women) lack
  voice

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ETHICAL GOVERNANCE

• moral demands and good governance

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Moral Demands

• Human rights claimants and duty bearers
• What happens when human rights cannot be met
  right away?
• Basic human needs met first
• In scarcity, how distributed?
• Centralized planning, or the free market?
• Expecting and enforcing good governance
• Is democracy enough?
• Demanding tangible performance standards from
  public servants

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Challenge to Good Governance

• What ought decision-makers to do to respect and
  respond to those moral demands that recognition
  of basic human dignity entails?
• What about
• social justice and equity?
• human flourishing?
• the common good?
• participation and inclusion?
• safety, stability and security?
• a caring, compassionate society?
• democratic values?
• social capital?

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Development For What?

• Ideals of human and social well-being
• The decent society honor in equal measure
  universal human dignity
• Margalit
• Respecting what is truly human
• Rousseau, Kant, Nussbaum, Sen
• Achieving freedom and human agency
• Sen, Crocker

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Objections and Responses

• core methodology of normative analysis

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Five Objections

• 1) Moral issues are largely arbitrary and
  subjective in nature, changing in scope and
  intensity
• 2) Seeking common ground on moral concerns risks
  upsetting the status quo
• 3) The quality of a moral dialogue on substantive
  issues depends upon uncommon tolerance,
  reflection, mutual respect, and a deliberative
  ethos rare in governance processes
• 4) Moral values and systems are largely
  unreliable in policy making universalism vs.
  relativism
• 5) Moral values are extremely difficult to
  measure, monitor and evaluate

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Response to 1

• moral issues are largely arbitrary and subjective
  in nature, changing in scope and intensity
• Morality is not arbitrary
• persuasively justified and rational
• ethics is the systematic and critical study of
  moral beliefs, values and concerns
• In ethics, our values and beliefs are organized
  into various (and to some extent, competing)
  systems, each of which exhibits coherence and
  matches our considered judgments and deeply felt
  beliefs

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Response to 2

• seeking common ground on moral concerns risks
  upsetting the status quo
• Yes attending to moral concerns risks upsetting
  the status quo by thoughtfully challenging the
  existing economic and power relationships within
  any given society
• The existence of widespread poverty, corruption,
  injustice, and the lack of universal respect for
  human dignity demand such a challenge

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Response to 3

• the quality of a moral dialogue on substantive
  issues depends upon uncommon tolerance,
  reflection, mutual respect, and a deliberative
  ethos
• If this claim were accepted, it would be
  difficult to imagine a societys moral progress
  over time
• Leadership of morally virtuous persons is not a
  necessary condition to progress
• The application of an ethical framework to the
  participatory process may facilitate a moral
  dialogue of substance and quality

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Response to 4

• moral values and systems are largely unreliable
  in policy making
• Certain values are universal and fundamental to
  human nature
• e.g. Universal Declaration of Human Rights
• Local culture, tradition, and context ought to
  significantly influence and shape the
  implementation of development initiatives
• provided they are responsive to universal values

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Response to 5

• moral values are extremely difficult to measure,
  monitor and evaluate
• Empirical data says much about progress in
  achieving morally desirable goals
• birth weight of babies a good proxy for
  measuring shortcomings in quality of life and the
  need for better nutrition and health care
• Qualitative factors are subject to meaningful
  evaluation through a variety of techniques, from
  focus groups to surveys
• the experience of poverty, the enjoyment of basic
  freedoms and opportunities, and the prevalence of
  respect for human dignity

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DATA DRIVEN ETHICAL DEVELOPMENT

• measuring ethical progress in development

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Measuring development 1

• Poverty thresholds (Colliers Bottom Billion)
• 8 Millennium Development Goals
• Happiness and well-being human suffering
• Womens empowerment gender equity
• Political freedom
• free, partly free, not free (Freedom House)
• Economic progress
• gross domestic product (GDP)
• gross national product (GNP)
• physical quality of life index (PQLI)

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Measuring development 2

• Human Development Index (HDI)
• Capability Approach
• Level and quality of democracy
• USAIDs Strategic Framework for Africa
• Reduce corruption
• Increase civil societys effectiveness
• Strengthen democratic governance and rule of law
• Increase participation of marginalized groups
• Improve fairness and inclusivity of political
  processes

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Standard Tools for Evaluating Development

• Through the Democracy Good Governance Lens
• Political economy analysis
• Power, rules of the competitive game
• Who is included, who is excluded?
• Economic analyses
• Market analysis
• Cost-benefit analysis
• Perceptions analysis
• Customer satisfaction
• Service delivery

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Less Conventional (for USAID) Tools for
Evaluating Development

• Through the Democracy Good Governance Lens
• Human development analysis (HDI)
• Other normative analyses
• Human rights, capability approach, Kantian duties
• Environmental analysis
• Gender analysis gender audits

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It is one thing to design democratic
institutions, quite another to educate or
persuade citizens to live by democratic
precepts. Laurence Whitehead