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Book Reviews
Jay Drydyka; Bas De Gaay Fortmanb; J. Mohan Raoc; Séverine Deneulind
a
Department of Philosophy, Carleton University, Canada b Utrecht University, The Netherlands c
University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA d University of Bath, UK

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 Journal of Human Development and Capabilities
Vol. 10, No. 2, July 2009

Book Reviews
Development Ethics at Work: explorations — 1960–2002
Taylor
Journal
10.1080/19452820902941628
CJHD_A_394334.sgm
1945-2829
Original
United
202009
10
jay_drydyk@carleton.ca
JAYDRYDYK
00000July
and
Nations
ofArticle
Human
(print)/1945-2837
Francis
2009Development
Development
Programme
(online)
and Capabilities

Denis Goulet, 2006

Routledge, London and New York, 256 + xxxiv pp., ISBN 0-415-77021

Denis Goulet would not claim to have been the first person to approach
development issues from an ethical perspective, but he provided a distin-
guished and inspiring model to the many others who have adopted this
approach in the past 25 years. A nucleus of this group, including Goulet,
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organized themselves as the International Development Ethics Association in

1985. Some of the ideas that are now counter-hegemonic in development
thinking — such as agency and empowerment — were anticipated by him as
early as 1971. The essays collected in this volume document a critical
engagement with development policy and practice that spanned 40 years
and has since been taken up by an ever growing group of ethically-oriented
development thinkers.
The essays in Part I chronicle the path Goulet followed in shaping his
approach to development ethics. In his remarkable 1960 essay ‘Needed —
A Development Ethics for our Time’, he took his first step — which was
to urge a distinction between those kinds of development that are worthy
of being pursued as social goals, which sometimes he called ‘authentic
human development’, and those unworthy kinds which he sometimes
called ‘false development’ (p. 5) or ‘anti-development’ (p. 45). He was not
dogmatic about how this distinction should be drawn: that would be the
business of continuing reflection on the appropriate ‘ends and means’ of
development. This reflection, he thought, needed to be pluralistic, striv-
ing to reach agreement despite ideological as well as cultural differences
(p. 14). While persistent or increasing inequality is often an indicator of
maldevelopment, Goulet insisted that we ask, ‘inequality of what?’ —
anticipating Amartya Sen’s raising of this question by several decades.
Unlike Sen, Goulet did not answer this question with a full-blown theory;
he was mainly concerned to introduce the question into the discussion of
development and flag its importance. Many of his expressions should be
seen in this light, not as theories but as theoretical calls to action: for
instance, his idea that development should aim not for having more but
rather for being more (p. 8). This distinction is concretized somewhat in
Essay 3, with a view to giving it more leverage in development planning.
Part I concludes with essays that further illustrate development ethics, first
in the work of Goulet’s mentor Louis-Joseph Lebret, and finally in some of
Goulet’s field work.

ISSN 1945-2829 print/ISSN 1945-2837 online/09/020299-08 © 2009 United Nations Development Programme
DOI: 10.1080/19452820902941628
 Book Reviews

Goulet’s essays in Part II apply his development ethics perspective to

development policy debates between 1970 and 1995. In the first, on ‘gradu-
alism’, he argues that advocates of ‘authentic development’ must be
prepared, where necessary, to advocate changes in institutions, social struc-
ture, and prevailing values (pp. 76–77), and they should be wary of palliative
measures that merely pacify people who might otherwise be agents of
change (p. 79). This is supported by critical examination of some attempts at
such deeper-going change, either state-led, as in newly independent Guinea-
Bissau, or led by non-state actors such as the Sarvodaya Shramadana move-
ment in Sri Lanka, or the Self-Employed Women’s Association in India, or
finally village communities in Bolivia. These and companion studies in Part II
call for an engagement with people’s actual values that is not imprisoned by
tradition but, on the contrary, realizes “a philosophy of change founded on a
basic trust in the ability of people, no matter how oppressed or impover-
ished, to improve their lives, to understand the social forces that affect them,
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and eventually to harness those forces to processes of genuine human and

societal development” (p. 144).
The essays of Part III remind us that, while globalization had by the end
of the twentieth century created a new international economic order, this
was hardly the new international economic order that had been demanded a
quarter-century earlier. To assess the degree to which globalization has
contributed to or detracted from authentic human development, Goulet links
Lebret’s criterion (not just having more, but being more) with the capabilities
(to function in ways that people have reason to value) of Amartya Sen
(pp. 180–182). From this perspective he searchingly explores the inequali-
ties that have been caused or worsened by globalization, and concludes
“another globalization is necessary, because another development is
necessary” (p. 209).
Although the work represented in this volume led to much more analyt-
ical work in development ethics, this further analysis is not contained in the
volume. The goal of these essays was not to dissect the issues microscopi-
cally, but rather to motivate others to bring development issues into an
ethical focus. That motivation has been the legacy of Denis Goulet, and it is
laid clearly and convincingly before the reader in these essays.

JAY DRYDYK © 2009

Jay Drydyk is with the Department of Philosophy, Carleton University,
Canada

300
 Book Reviews

World Poverty and Human Rights (2nd edition)

Thomas Pogge, 2008
Polity Press, Cambridge, UK, 304 pp., ISBN 9780745641430 (hbk), ISBN
9780745641447 (pbk)

The title of this book reflects its content: a confrontation between global
poverty and universal human rights. The author writes from a moral–philo-
sophical perspective. Thus, world poverty is approached as global economic
injustice and human rights as a moral justice discourse. The reader enjoys the
benefit of an extensive general introduction in which the basic facts are
presented, while the gist of the argument is already set out.
This is the second edition, with updates and a new chapter, like the
others based on an earlier published article. Apparently, the fundamental
data concerning world poverty have not shown any change for the better
since the book first appeared (2002), despite global economic growth. The
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number of undernourished people appears to be stagnant: almost 800 million

in 1996, 830 million in 2006. Particularly disturbing is the number of daily
deaths due to poverty-related diseases; this amount still stands at one-third of
the total (with over two-thirds of these children under five years old). Behind
that frightening figure lies a distribution of income that leaves no more than
1.2% to the poorest 46% of the global population. Pogge argues that the rich
part of our world is not only failing to contribute possible solutions to the
predicament of the global poor, but is actually a decisive part of the problem.
This view is based on the existence of a functioning global political-economic
order in which the OECD governments participate directly, as well as
through the international financial institutions that they dominate in both
treaty negotiations and actual policies.
Particularly convincing is the author’s response to ‘four easy reasons to
ignore world poverty’: futility (any effort to do something would be no more
than a drop in the ocean), jeopardy (eradicating world poverty would
demand an investment that the rich societies cannot bear), perversity (it
would lead to overpopulation and hence to more poverty-related deaths in
the future) and over-optimism (thanks to concerted global efforts there is
already sufficient progress in tackling world poverty). The latter is probably
the most dangerous blinker today due to the Millennium Development Goals’
shift of perspective to the year 2015, while based on merely soft commit-
ments at world summits.
Pogge’s analysis ends in a moral–political plaidoyer for a Global
Resources Dividend that would tackle the ‘Global Burden of Disease’ through
a shift of only 1% of global income to those who need it most. The moral
argument that should convince the world of decision-makers to adopt this
proposal is set out in chapters with titles such as ‘Human Flourishing and
Universal Justice’, ‘How should Human Rights be Conceived?’, ‘Loopholes in
Moralities’, ‘Moral Universalism and Global Economic Justice’, and ‘Cosmo-
politanism and Sovereignty’. Tough philosophical stuff, one would gather,
but Pogge writes quite lucidly, while confronting the reader with relevant
301
 Book Reviews

facts and illustrating his argument with convincing examples. Actually, he

might have used much less words to present his case but is hindered here by
the desire to reprint earlier articles, each of which could stand very well on
its own.
Rather crucial to the author’s argument is a distinction in legal and moral
rights. While legal rights are grounded in supranational, national and sub-
national legal systems, there are also moral rights “whose validity is indepen-
dent of any and all governmental bodies” (p. 58). It is a distinction that one
often comes across, particularly from a political science and philosophy
perspective. Unfortunately, those who handle it do not show much under-
standing of its generally weakening effect on human rights. Essential in the
concept of rights is protection of interests by law. Human rights are rights
turned to protection of fundamental human interests (i.e. those that are indis-
solubly connected with human dignity). Now the apparent problem lies in
what are sometimes derogatorily called ‘Manifesto rights’. Literally, we are talk-
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ing here of ‘proclaimed’ or ‘declared’ rights; the latter term refers directly to
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). We might, indeed, speak
of declared rights in contrast with ‘conclusive’ or ‘acquired’ rights. Yet, in
respect of concrete human rights, their ‘declared’ character entails a transfor-
mative function. In the case of the UDHR this has generally worked. Thus, one
might say that in the course of its 60 years it has acquired a strong legal
substance, including the ‘proclaimed’ economic, social and cultural rights.
Indeed, ‘rights without actual entitlements’, as I would prefer to call them
(rather than ‘manifesto rights’), stand not at the end but at the beginning of
processes of political, social and legal change. While certainly in the initial
stages of socio-economic transformation they tend to be used as primarily polit-
ical instruments, they do already serve as legal resources in actual litigation, too.
Strategically, in the attack on world poverty I would not start from a
moral–political perspective but rather take the UDHR as the foundation: a
universal legal document, beginning with Article 1: “All human beings are
born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and
conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”
This is in fact a global confession, specified in concrete human rights that
might be used as concrete legal resources but also as political instruments
towards structural reform.
“Our challenge, then”, concludes Barack Obama in his analysis of world
poverty in The Audacity of Hope, “is to make sure that U.S. policies move the
international system in the direction of greater equity, justice, and prosperity
— that the rules we promote serve both our own interests and the interests
of a struggling world” (p. 316). In the change of administration in the USA
lies more hope for those living in daily hardship than in any academic trea-
tise. Yet, it is in the ideas of scholars like Thomas Pogge that leaders like
Obama find their inspiration for concrete change.

BAS DE GAAY FORTMAN © 2009

Bas De Gaay Fortman is with Utrecht University, The Netherlands
302
 Book Reviews

International Trade and Labor Standards: a proposal for linkage

Christian Barry and Sanjay G. Reddy, 2008
Columbia University Press, New York, xvii + 207 pp., ISBN 978-0231-
14048-5

A common refrain among many observers is that growing economic global-

ization, outsourcing and policy competition among governments is produc-
ing a race to the bottom along several social dimensions. Nowhere is this
concern greater than in regard to low wages, employment insecurity,
discrimination, sweatshop conditions and other abuses of workers’ rights.
Barry and Reddy address this concern by arguing for making national rights
to engage in international trade conditional on the promotion of labour stan-
dards, linkage for short. Labour standards are identified with core Interna-
tional Labor Organization norms including freedom of association, rights to
collective bargaining, and elimination of forced labour, child labour and all
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forms of discrimination as well as decent wages. The authors’ basic claim is

that a class of proposals for linkage exists that can meet standard objections
that opponents of linkage have advanced. They base the claim on a tenet they
believe both rich and poor countries, both proponents and opponents of
linkage, share the goal of raising the level of advantage of the less advantaged
across the world. The main text is followed by four illuminating commentar-
ies (by Kyle Bagwell, Rohini Hensman, Robert Goodin and Roberto Unger)
that support and widen the possibilities and rationales for linkage from
diverse angles.
The authors’ attractive proposals (summarized in Chapter 7) draw their
strength from their relatively comprehensive approach to the issues in
contention and the care they devote to what critics of linkage have said.
Economists’ rejection of linkage hinges crucially on a narrowly construed
idea of what linkage is, and how it is to be implemented. The conventional
view interprets linkage as a system of trade sanctions (mainly punitive tariffs)
aimed at discouraging low labour standards in developing countries. Barry
and Reddy argue in favour of linkage that does not rely exclusively on sanc-
tions. Instead, in their proposal, sanctions are combined with rewards in the
form of greater market access, including lowered tariffs and supplemented by
offers of direct financial transfers from the North. The appeal of this broader
package lies not only in the sharing of the burdens that higher labour stan-
dards are expected to impose on the South, but also in dispelling anxieties
about possible opportunistic misuse of linkage to further protectionist goals
in the North.
The proposals are complemented by a deep analysis of the institutional
conditions under which they are to be designed and implemented (in Chap-
ter 6). This serves to invalidate objections to linkage that take the current
institutional setup and division of powers (as between the International
Labor Organization and the World Trade Organization) as immutable or
misread the theory of economic policy pioneered by Jan Tinbergen (On
the Theory of Economic Policy, 1952, North-Holland, Amsterdam). Barry
303
 Book Reviews

and Reddy also affirm the importance of transparency, participation and

consensus at all stages of realizing their proposals.
One may reasonably doubt that everyone, whether economists writing
on linkage or governments, shares the authors’ quasi-Rawlsian commitments.
This implies that the primary source of disagreements over linkage may have
to do with policy ends rather than with the choice of policy means, given
agreed upon valuations. The point is exemplified by the position taken by
Kyle Bagwell, a commentator (pp. 101–116) and key protagonist in the
debates over linkage. Like most economists, Bagwell takes the Pareto crite-
rion as the origin and end point of his analysis, evaluating international agree-
ment solely by “the extent to which it facilitates mutually advantageous
policy choices among governments” (p. 106). Suppose, as Bagwell does, that
the World Trade Organization is an institutional solution to the terms-of-trade-
driven prisoners’ dilemma (wherein governments imposing import tariffs fail
to take account of the costs thereby mutually imposed on foreign exporters).
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Then, a government may be able to protect its markets by ‘artificially’ lower-

ing labour standards and to engender a race to the bottom. The dilemma can
be resolved by taking the existing national labour standards as the baseline
from which a regime of import tariffs is agreed upon. Any subsequent lower-
ing (raising) of labour standards by a country can keep the regime undis-
turbed in terms of external effects imposed provided the agreement requires
a compensating lowering (raising) of tariffs by that country. It follows, then,
that the linkage system based on carrots and sticks that Barry and Reddy
propose must come into conflict with the World Trade Organization (or any
other institutional arrangement) whose aim is to resolve the trade-based inter-
national conflict among national policies: their proposal effectively calls for
shifting the baseline labour standards of the current world trade regime. The
proposal is even more radical in the case of a rise in labour standards in the
South’s export industries — for not only are these effectively a tax on
exports, so a burden on the North, but they also require trade concessions
on the part of the latter.
Such disagreements demonstrate that the debate over linkage properly
belongs in a rather complex political economy of international negotiations.
In this light, the authors’ policy proposals must be seen as aiming not just to
resolve a technical issue over the choice of correct policy means, but actually
to influence the choice of the right ends as well. Arguably, the Paretian crite-
rion does better justice to national sovereignty than does the quasi-Rawlsian.
But it does not follow that the Paretian criterion has greater chance of
success since its application at the international level may be inconsistent if
national regimes are far from being Pareto optimal in the first place (and,
therefore, riven by conflicts). Hypothesizing the latter not to be the case
comes easily to economists. But for the rest of us to act on that hypothesis
would be foolhardy, not least because negotiations will almost surely be stale-
mated over the identification of baseline standards or, worse, result in a link-
age that, like so much of the so-called system of international governance,
only further entrenches existing inequalities of wealth and power and
304
 Book Reviews

asymmetries of economic structure and ideological influence both within

and across nations.

J. MOHAN RAO © 2009

Professor of Economics, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, USA

Raíces intelectuales de Amartya Sen: Aristóteles, Adam Smith y Karl

Marx [Intellectual Roots of Amartya Sen: Aristotle, Adam Smith and
Karl Marx]
Pablo Sánchez Garrido, 2008
Centro de Estudios Políticos y Constitucionales, Madrid, 574 pp., ISBN 978-
84-259-1423-2

A few of Amartya Sen’s books have been translated into Spanish, such as
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Desarrollo y Libertad, Etica y Economia o Calidad de Vida, but all papers

written by Sen and published as journal articles are accessible in English
only. Moreover, the secondary literature on the capability approach in
Spanish is rather limited in comparison with what is being published in
English. The Spanish-speaking reader therefore remains rather excluded from
academic discussions about the capability approach. But this book by Pablo
Sánchez has changed the landscape of Spanish scholarship on the capability
approach.
The book constitutes a minefield of information with regard to Sen’s
writings. Through nearly 600 pages, the book retraces, as its title says, the
intellectual roots of Amartya Sen’s thinking on poverty and inequality, engag-
ing with most, if not all, of Sen’s writings throughout his life. This is a journey
into the intellectual history of the capability approach, which leads us from
Sen’s experiences of Indian partition and communal violence to his interac-
tions with the three Cambridge ‘Marxists Masters’ (Joan Robinson, Maurice
Dobb and Piero Saffra), to Sen’s continuous engagement with neo-classical
economists.
Faithful to the continental philosophical tradition, this book conducts an
exhaustive hermeneutics of Sen’s thinking, situating it within the intellectual
and historical context from which it emerges. The capability approach did
not start out of the blue in 1980 with the publication of the Tanner Lecture
‘Equality of What?’ — as is often thought given that it is the first publication
where the term ‘capability’ is used. On the basis of a detailed biography of
Sen’s life in both India and the United Kingdom, and on an extensive
research in the archives of Trinity College about the post-war intellectual
climate of the Cambridge Economics faculty, Sánchez shows how the
capability approach is the product of many influences that have shaped Sen’s
thinking. He singles out three major intellectual influences: Aristotle, Adam
Smith and Karl Marx. The book is consequently divided into three major
parts: the Aristotelian, Smithian and Marxist influences on Amartya Sen’s
thinking.
305
 Book Reviews

The author not only shows how the capability approach is indebted to
each one of these giants of political thought, but he also describes the
personal histories that have made these three figures particularly important
in Sen’s thought — in a chronological order of influence: Amiya Kuma
Dasgupta for Marx, Martha Nussbaum for Aristotle, and Emma Rothschild for
Smith. The author carefully shows how Sen gets inspiration from each one of
them and mixes them together into an original melting pot. Thus, the capa-
bility approach cannot be classified as Aristotelian, Smithian or Marxist! In
that sense, Sánchez shows how Sen is to a great extent a true heir of India’s
intellectual scene, which Amiya Kuma Dasgupta (Partha’s father) character-
ized as full of contradictions.
Without making the explicit argument, Sánchez implicitly documents
that it is precisely the eclecticism of Amartya Sen’s thinking that has not only
made the capability approach innovative and extremely influential in policy
circles, but has made it resistant to critiques. To socialist critiques, Sen can
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answer that his capability approach is inspired by Marx but without commit-
ting himself to a critique of capitalism. To neo-classical critiques, he can
answer that his thought is rooted in Adam Smith’s thinking. To liberal
egalitarian philosophers, he can answer that the capability approach has
Kantian roots, despite strong connections with Aristotelian social democracy
(notwithstanding his reluctance to commit to a conception of the good). This
heterogeneity of influences makes it indeed very difficult to situate Sen, and
his capability approach, within a particular current of thought. Is Sen a
political liberal? Is he an Aristotelian social democrat? Is he a Marxist? Is he
an endorser of free markets?
Unfortunately, the book does not handle the intrinsic ambiguity of Sen’s
thinking beyond stating that he always finds a middle way between two
incompatible positions. Even the section on Aristotelian roots of the capabil-
ity approach is full of quotes from Kant, leading to the conclusion that the
idea of freedom contained in the capability approach is actually closer to
Kant’s view of freedom than Aristotle’s, and one can note in this respect
another significant influence on the conception of freedom taken by the
capability approach: Isaiah Berlin.
My worry is that this search for a middle way does not always go hand
in hand with consistency. There is definitely a permanent tension between
the incompatible positions that Sen tries to bring together, and Raíces
intelectuales fully reflects this tension. Sen is fundamentally an eclectic
thinker, picking up what he wants from various authors to suit his audience.
Whether one can always reconcile incompatible positions with intellectual
coherence is another matter that Sánchez falls short of discussing. Nonethe-
less, the book is a masterpiece for all those who are interested in the herme-
neutics of Amartya Sen’s thinking and the intellectual (and personal) genesis
of his capability approach. A pity it is available only in Spanish.

SÉVERINE DENEULIN © 2009

Séverine Deneulin is with the University of Bath, UK
306