The irrelevance of poverty measurement for reaching normative conclusions about sovereign debt

CRISTIAN DIMITRIU

Norwich

Workshop; The importance of creditor-debtor relationships for making sense of current challenges to liberal/capitalist democracies'; 2017

University of East Anglia

In this paper, I make theidea that poverty outcomes are not necessarily morally relevant forassessing policies as clear as possible by discussing a specific caseof the global justice debate: sovereign debts. The claim I would liketo defend is that generating poverty among the population of a poorstate as a result of a loan is independent from the fact that suchdebt is morally binding. In other words, what makes a debtnon-binding is not the fact that it generated, or that it failed togenerate, poverty. Thus, it is misguided to measure poverty as a wayof testing the legitimacy of the international lending system. Theview I defend can be put in contrast with the one that Poggedefended. In a few writings, Pogge has argued or implied that whatmakes the current international lending rules unjust is that theygenerate poverty, or human rights deficits. Thus, he evaluateslending rules in terms of the results or effects they cause on thepopulation or, in other words, in terms of how much poverty theygenerate. So for Pogge lending to autocratic regimes is wrong, mainlybecause of the effects it will have on the population. If povertyincreases by, say, 20% after lending to an autocratic ruler, the loanwill be illegitimate, on the ground that it has made people worseoff. Pogge calls the rules by which these effects take place?borrowing privilege?.