international journal of social economics, volume 34, number 1, 2007: living in common and...

International Journal of

Social EconomicsLiving in common and deliberatingin common: foundational issues forsustainable human developmentand human securityGuest Editors: P.B. Anand and Des Gasper

Volume 34 Number 1/2 2007

ISSN 0306-8293

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Access this journal online _________________________ 3

Editorial advisory board __________________________ 4

Guest editorial ___________________________________ 5

Goods and persons, reasons and responsibilitiesDes Gasper ___________________________________________________ 6

Public goods, global public goods and the commongoodSeverine Deneulin and Nicholas Townsend _________________________ 19

Destabilising identity structures: the impacts ofdomestic and international policy programs in the1994 Rwanda genocideJerome Ballet, Francois-Regis Mahieu and Katia Radja _______________ 37

Education in pre- and post-conflict contexts: relatingcapability and life-skills approachesJean-Luc Dubois and Milene Trabelsi ______________________________ 53

International Journal of

Social EconomicsLiving in common and deliberating incommon: foundational issues for sustainablehuman development and human security

Guest EditorsP. B. Anand and Des Gasper

ISSN 0306-8293

Volume 34Number 1/22007

CONTENTS

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A deliberative ethic for development: a Nepalesejourney from Bourdieu through Kant to Dewey andHabermasJohn Cameron and Hemant Ojha _________________________________ 66

Sustainable livelihood approaches and soil erosionrisks: who is to judge?Tim Forsyth __________________________________________________ 88

Allocating responsibilities in multi-level governancefor sustainable developmentSylvia I. Karlsson ______________________________________________ 103

Note from the publisher_________________________________ 127

Call for papers ___________________________________________ 129

CONTENTScontinued

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International Journal of SocialEconomicsVol. 34 No. 1/2, 2007p. 4# Emerald Group Publishing Limited0306-8293

EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD

Dr James AlveyMassey University, New Zealand

Dr Josef BaratMinister of Transportation, Sao Paulo, Brazil

Professor Y.S. BrennerDepartment of Economics, University of Utrecht,The Netherlands

Professor Tan Chwee-huatFaculty of Business Administration, NationalUniversity of Singapore

Dr Floreal H. ForniCentro de Estudios e Investigaciones Laborales delCONICET, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Professor Patrick McNuttPatrick McNutt & Associates, Dublin and VisitingFellow, Manchester Business School, UK

Dr Daniel O’NeilDepartment of Political Science, The University ofArizona, USA

Professor Doktor Manfred PrischingKarl-Franzens-University, Graz, Austria

Professor Stylianos A. SarantidesUniversity of Piraeus, Greece

Professor K.K. SeoCollege of Business Administration, University ofHawaii at Manoa

Professor Udo E. SimonisWZB Science Centre, Berlin, Germany

Professor Clem TisdellUniversity of Queensland, Australia

Dr Matti VirenUniversity of Turku, Finland

Professor Jimmy WeinblattDepartment of Economics, Ben Gurion University,Israel

Professor Zhang WenxianFudan University, Shanghai, China

Professor Laszlo ZsolnaiDirector, Business Ethics Centre, BudapestUniversity of Economic Sciences, Hungary

Guest editorial

This set of papers derives from a joint workshop of two study groups of theDevelopment Studies Association of the UK and Ireland – the Group on DevelopmentEthics and its sister on Environment and Sustainable Development – which was heldat St Edmund’s College, University of Cambridge, on 26-28 March 2006. It is the first oftwo sets of papers from the meeting. The second set will appear in the Journal ofInternational Development later in 2007.

The two study groups had long seen strong connections between their core interestsand are very satisfied by the outcome of the cooperation. A call for proposals brought alarge response, from which a selection was made with reference both to inherentpromise and to the interconnections between the two groups’ concerns. This led to aworkshop programme with 20 papers under four headings:

(1) goods, rights and well-being;

(2) security and insecurity;

(3) public goods and the millennium development goals; and

(4) governance.

All papers had relevance to at least one other of these headings, which contributed torewarding discussions at the workshop and in the follow-up.

In this set the papers respond singly and collectively to the challenge identified in thetitle: “Living in common and deliberating in common – foundational issues forsustainable human development and human security”. The opening paper, “Goods andpersons, reasons and responsibilities” draws out the main themes and lines of argument.

We gratefully acknowledge the warm hospitality and contribution in organising theworkshop from Flavio Comim and Angels Varea of the Capability and SustainabilityCentre, St Edmund’s College. We also acknowledge with thanks the contributions of allthose who participated in the workshop and the financial sponsorship of theDevelopment Studies Association.

P.B. AnandBradford Centre for International Development, University of Bradford, UK, and

Des GasperInstitute of Social Studies, The Hague, The Netherlands

Guest editorial

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International Journal of SocialEconomics

Vol. 34 No. 1/2, 2007p. 5

q Emerald Group Publishing Limited0306-8293

Goods and persons, reasonsand responsibilities

Des GasperInstitute of Social Studies, The Hague, The Netherlands

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present exploration of themes that interconnect six studiesin environmentally and socially sustainable human development.

Design/methodology/approach – The article presents an overview of the papers included in thisspecial issue.

Findings – As humanity threatens to undermine its habitat, a social economics returns to coreconcepts and themes that became expunged from neoclassical economics: serious examination ofpersons, seen as more than given points of desire; a broadened perspective on types of good, includinga non-neoclassical conception of public goods as publicly deliberated priority goods that are not wellmanaged through free markets and “common goods” as shared bases vital for everyone; study of whatcommodities and goods do to and for people; a central role for public reasoning about which are publicpriority goods, rather than using only a technical definition of a public good; an acceptance of notionsof ethical responsibility and responsibilities concerning the provision and maintenance of publicpriority goods determined through public reasoning; and attention to institutional formats for suchdeliberation. Amongst the greatest of public priority “goods” are the concepts of common good andresponsibility.

Research limitations/Implications – The findings reinforce the agenda of socio-economics forcentral attention to the mutual conditioning of economy, society, polity, and environment, includinganalysis of the sociocultural formation of economic actors and of ideas of “common good”.

Originality/value – Cross-fertilization of theorization with cases from Costa Rica, Kenya, Nepal,Thailand, Rwanda, sub-Saharan Africa and global arenas.

Keywords Sustainable development, Socio-economic regions, Social economics, Social responsibility

Paper type General review

IntroductionAt the start of the twenty-first century, humankind faces “interesting times”. Globalclimate change linked to a carbon-rich lifestyle threatens to eliminate various smallisland states, destabilise many countries and bring spillover effects that will rock eventhe richest. Distress and ambition, widening comparisons and growing expectations fuelglobal-wide drives for respect, for consumption, for status and even predominance.These factors can fuel angry conflicts, intra-national and trans-national. The potentialfor larger conflagrations seems to increase. Presentday violent conflicts are alreadyfrighteningly large in impact: an estimated three to four million people have diedprematurely since the mid-1990s in the wars in the former Zaire, now DemocraticRepublic of Congo. In its small neighbour, Rwanda, following a fall of around 40 per centin national income per capita (in US dollar terms) as a result of world market shifts(Eriksson et al., 1996) some Rwandans suffered yet greater declines, for example losing

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at


The author wishes to thank to P.B. Anand and the contributors to the special issue, particularlySylvia Karlsson, for their comments on an earlier draft.

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International Journal of SocialEconomicsVol. 34 No. 1/2, 2007pp. 6-18q Emerald Group Publishing Limited0306-8293DOI 10.1108/03068290710723336

their land or job, as an IMF-designed economic programme enforced “structuraladjustment” on this fragile society. Many lost their lives, or their souls, as the countrywas then led into an Armageddon of scape-goating; between half a million and a millionpeople were chopped and bludgeoned to death in a matter of weeks in 1994. A metaphorused locally was “crushing the cockroaches”. Ballet et al. (2007) show how “economicadjustment” contributed to “identity shift” followed by ethnic “cleansing”. The effects ofsuch disintegration will not be kept for ever far from the fortresses of the rich, suggeststhe human security paradigm (UNDP, 1994): discontents, diseases, drugs, criminalnetworks, weapons, violent practices and refugees are all liable to spread.

Living together in peace requires deliberating together, and some acceptance ofbeing participants in a common human enterprise. Not only should rules andagreements be kept concerning foreseen cases and contingencies; but also people mustbe able to together constructively face unexpected risks and challenges. Livingtogether involves more than is assumed in many “rational choice” models of theinteraction of myriads of calculating individuals, each considered to be completelypre-formed and purely self-interested. The standard picture in prominent strands ofbusiness and management thinking, and in the associated social science, is a world of“Missing Persons” (Douglas and Ney, 1998). People are treated purely as economicagents, acquisitive individuals whose primary characteristic is a personal set of givenpreferences, which they calculatedly seek to fulfil. They are not real persons, formedfrom birth within society and potential participants in its processes of politicalmanagement, including concerning the formation and negotiation of preferences,processes that involve far more than a bargaining between fixed packages of desires.

The title of this overview paper reflects two studies that appeared in 1984 and havehelped to bring some reorientation of thinking in social economics and socialphilosophy, coincidentally both written by Fellows of All Souls College, Oxford: theEconomist Amartya Sen’s Goods and People and the Philosopher Derek Parfit’sReasons and Persons. Through a series of conundrums, about for example how weshould consider future generations, Parfit forced analysts to review the natures ofrationality, identity, and moral reasoning. He introduced a classification of existingconceptions of “What makes someone’s life go best” – hedonistic theories,desire-fulfilment theories, and objective list theories – which helped to trigger andorganise some of the subsequent investigations into the nature of well-being. His workemployed perhaps a subtler conception of persons than Sen’s – note his very use of theterm “persons” rather than “people” – yet Sen’s work as a whole has pushed theconceptualisation of well-being and its determinants further. Goods and People made aclaim about ends, namely that what is important is not the amounts of economic goodssold but how people live and can live. In a classic sister paper, “Rational fools” Sen(1977) discussed the persons who hold and pursue ends. Parfit was a pure Oxfordphilosopher, applying a sharp intellect in the seclusion of his study and the cloisters ofhis college – in intensive interchange with other such thinkers – to query andilluminate basic concepts and premises. Sen represents a marriage of that traditionwith the wider and richer materials of the social sciences, drawn not only from thearmchair, but also the cloister and the seminar room but from organisations,movements and experience around the world. “The world” is understood here in thefull sense, not only with reference to economically rich countries.

Goods, persons,reasons and

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The papers in this collection follow in the same spirit: probing and reworking basicconceptions in the light of attention to wideranging experience and widerangingtheory. The papers are by social scientists whose work is stimulated, tested andenriched both by philosophical investigations, such as exemplified by Sen and Parfit,and by a commitment to interdisciplinary and international comparison andcommunication, such as represented by Sen amongst others.

Overview of the papersThe papers are organised and discussed here in relation to two central themes: living incommon and deliberating in common. Nearly, all the papers deal with both; theemphasis gradually moves from the first to the second theme. Two more stronglytheoretical papers take the lead in, respectively, the first and second parts: Deneulinand Townsend for the theme of living in common; and Cameron and Ojha fordeliberating in common.

Deneulin and Townsend show the difference between conventional economicsconcepts of public goods and an older concept of “the common good”. While the formerare necessary so is the latter, which may rest on a more sophisticated understanding ofhuman personality and interaction. This is particularly important for currentdiscussion of global public goods. Two papers on intra-societal violence, by Ballet et al.,and by Dubois and Trabelsi, illustrate the breakdown of life in common and converselythe requirements of sustaining a life in common, including for some elements of sharedidentity, acceptance of mutual responsibilities, and appropriate life-skills including fordiscussion and deliberation. Ballet et al. focus on how people have partly distinctiveidentities and how these are constituted and can be reconstituted: in other words, howpeople are persons and can become monsters. Dubois and Trabelsi explore howeducation could help to consolidate people’s formation as responsible citizens who areable to listen and debate in public fora, as opposed to a formation as ready recruits forgenocide.

Cameron and Ojha extend this theme of deliberation in common. They head a set ofthree papers on environmental governance, including also those by Forsyth andKarlsson, that develop methodological and normative themes that have widerrelevance than for environment alone. Both Cameron-Ojha and Forsyth look atdeliberation in natural environment arenas: at the political frameworks for reasoningthat set who are included or excluded, on what terms, and by what means. Karlssonlooks at alternative principles for allocating responsibilities for public bads. Her focuson issues that cross national borders returns us to Deneulin and Townsend’s concernwith global public goods (and bads). Her conclusion reiterates the central importance ofa sense of common good, in order to secure these global public goods.

The papers show the broadening of a “sustainable development” perspective tocover social, cultural and political environments and values and not only physicalenvironments. Ballet et al. for example apply the precautionary principle to the socialenvironment of markets and polities. Sometimes called a “sustainable humandevelopment” perspective (Banuri et al., 1995), this broadened view is nowadays oftenand perhaps more effectively described as a “human security” perspective (CHS, 2003).We return to it at the end of the paper. The intervening sections consider in turn thethemes in the paper’s title: (public) goods, persons, (public) reasoning, and allocation ofresponsibilities.

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GoodsMost introductory economics textbooks present a picture of the organisation of “thematerial aspects of social life” that runs as follows. “Factors of production” are suppliedby “Households” and offered in factor markets where the buyers are the “producers” of“goods”. These goods are then sold in product markets, to other producers (asintermediate goods), or to Households in their role as Consumers which in turn allowsthe households/consumers to sustain their roles as suppliers of factors. This simpleperspective provides the framework for hundreds of pages of instruction, and indeedtypically for several years of university study. Economics is treated as centrally thestudy of a system of market activity, a system of flows of commodities. Cameron andOjha mention the attempts to extend such a model into the management of Nepal’scurrently more community-controlled forests.

Some major limitations of the framework are that: first, it directs primary attentionto monetized outputs regardless of their impacts on people; second, it ignores theenvironments of the system of market activity, and leads to their subsequentadmission only in marginal and subsidiary roles; third, it leaves a hole where personsshould have been partly malleable agents who seek to understand and in turn mouldtheir environments, including through constructing and reconstructing discursiveorders; and fourth, it suggests by default that a social order is or can be a bargainbetween a set of preformed individuals.

Goods and the goodA market-centred perspective can give the impression that the social world consists ofindividuals who exist prior to society and then interact in markets and quasi-markets.In the theoretical model of a perfect market system there is no need for individuals tojointly deliberate, as opposed to self-referentially calculate and bargain, because firstly,goods (commodities, including time) are the good, and secondly, market mechanismsprovide all necessary coordination in the world of goods.

Sen’s Goods and People built in contrast on an Aristotelian insight. Rather thanpresume that Goods are good – let alone take a monetized measure of the circulation ofcommodities as the central measure of human welfare – we should examine howpeople live: how long, how healthily, how peacefully, how far in accordance withreasoned values; in other words, we should consider what people do with goods andwhat goods do to and for people. This is, in part, an invitation to deliberate jointly.

Such a perspective has been absorbed into discussions of sustainable developmentand is why they interface easily with discussions of development ethics, other than in“deep ecology” views. It makes us ask: sustainability of what? and why? Rather thanassuming that maintenance of a particular form of land use is essential, for example,we should look at the sustainability of particular “environmental functionings” (TimForsyth, at the St Edmund’s College Workshop) and valued human outcomes. Thisconnects to a conception of public goods as publicly deliberated priorities formaintaining a society.

Public goods and the underlying notions of the nature of a public realmEconomic activity relies on a social basis and an environmental basis, and also affectsboth of these. Figure 1 shows the nesting of systems, and hints at the myriad ofinteractions. An economic system that undermines its social and environmental bases is


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unsustainable; for example if it promotes such strong forms of self-interested behaviourthat cooperation in providing necessary (global) public goods is undermined or neverattained. And while there is considerable tolerable variation concerning what can bemanaged by market rules, some things which are monetizable should never becomesubject to the market – body parts, for example, can be bought, as can lives via hiring ofcontract killers – on grounds both of ethics and, possibly, social sustainability.

Economic theory addresses the possible effects of the commodity system on itssocial and physical environments via the category of externalities, one type of “marketimperfection”. Part of the neoclassical economics definition of a public good, bySamuelson (1954), concerns non-excludability: I cannot feasibly exclude you from thebenefits (or costs) of the commodity I produce, even when you have not purchased it.The other part of the definition concerns non-rivalry: your consumption of the gooddoes not reduce its availability to others. Such a definition of public goods thinks aboutwhat is needed for a pure market system to function efficiently: namely, goods that arerivalrous and excludable, such that the prospective consumers have an incentive to payfor them and the prospective producers have an incentive to exclude those who do notpay. “Public goods” are defined as the opposite, in terms of the same technicaldimensions. “Problematic commodities” would be a better label. The need for publicdeliberation is not central in this conception.

Many of the “public goods” which rightly lie at the centre of public attention do notwell match Samuelson’s definition. Schooling, for example, is both excludable (one canfeasibly keep children out) and often rivalrous (more children in the classroom meansless attention from the teacher and less share of the resources; and the classroom canbecome full). Use also of a public facility like a city square or a cathedral is bothexcludable and potentially rivalrous. Wuyts (1992) points out that public economicscovers thus much more than neoclassical public goods. It concerns goods which aredeemed of public priority yet not sufficiently supplied through free markets, forexample because they have large favourable externalities; regardless of whether theywell fit the neoclassical definition. Conversely, “public bads” can include things whichhave large negative externalities and are oversupplied. The services of

Figure 1.The economy in context

PROCESSES IN THE NATURAL ENVIRONMENT

OTHER ACTIVITIES IN SOCIETY

OTHER MONETIZABLE ACTIVITIES(but some should never be monetized)

MONETIZED

Source: Gasper (2004)

ACTIVITIES

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well-functioning law courts are a public good – though people could certainly beexcluded and the use of courts is rivalrous – if and because they are publicly deemed apriority which is not appropriately supplied on a market basis, and which furthermorehas high favourable externalities for those not directly involved.

This alternative conception of public goods – social priority goods that are not wellmanaged through free markets – directs our attention to issues of social prioritizationand to who is involved in the deliberations to set priorities. As Sylvia Karlsson noted atthe St Edmund’s College Workshop, behind the often starkly diverging views betweendeveloped and developing countries on what are global public goods and globalcommons lie value differences, not merely different judgements about excludabilityand rivalrousness. While peace may be seen as a global, regional, national, and localpublic good, views differ about the priority of peace in specific locations. Peace in theCongo has received no priority from the dominant global powers.

Common good and common goodsSeverine Deneulin and Nicholas Townsend’s paper revives the idea of the commongood, and shows that it overlaps with but is not reducible to the neoclassical economicsconcept of a public good, which does not suffice for analysis of the environmental andinstitutional bases of human society. Neither irrelevant nor in itself erroneous, theneoclassical concept yet excludes centrally important matters and potentiallymisdirects our attention. Even the richer category that we have just seen, clarified byWuyts, de Swaan (1988), Gray (1993) and others, is not designed to embody all thesocial analysis and varied categories that we require. Should we for example callpolitical and family structures – which can indeed be affected by forms of commercialactivity – public goods? We should connect economics to the other social and humansciences, rather than imagine that it can swallow them.

Deneulin and Townsend provide part of the required extension of vocabulary,through returning to the classical notion of “the common good” – the goodness of thelife that humans hold in common – and in fact identifying various specific “commongoods”. We noted a type of individualistic vision that neoclassical economics is oftenassociated with: individuals/households exist prior to society, with exogenouspreferences; social interaction consists of their bargaining and resultant cooperationand competition; the measure of societal good should be the sum of the fulfilment of theexogenous preferences. This vision takes as exogenous what are in reality endogenous:individuals and their conceptions of the good, of benefits and costs. It thus generates aninadequate conception of the good and of goods, inadequate both for explanation andfor human flourishing, perhaps even for human survival. In contrast, Deneulin andTownsend draw on an alternative vision in which people are more profoundly socialbeings. Let us draw it out explicitly. It contains a series of interconnected but separateideas, each of them significant, including the following.

. Individuals can only emerge and exist within a society. Requisites for thesociety’s viability, continuation or flourishing might be called elements of “thecommon good”.

. Some of these are “goods” with generally high favourable externalities which arenot merely nonrivalrous but which increase in supply when “consumed” likefriendship and love and trust.


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. Many vital elements of life in a society can be called “irreducibly social goods” –Charles Taylor’s term, employed by Deneulin and Townsend – including mostof its culture: language, norms, institutions.

. People’s conception of their own good is moulded by social interaction; theirvalues typically flow from a community and from life in that community.

. Further, their conception of “themselves” is in part – often in large part – social,in that they do not see themselves purely or perhaps even predominantly asindividuals, but rather or also as a family member and a member of variousgroups: of a locality (often more than one), of a profession, of a country, of anethnic group, of a religion and/or a political tendency, and so on. Using Balletet al.’s term, their “identity structure” is complex and social.

. Further still, people’s conceptions of the good are social: despite the historicalemergence and growth of more individualistic identity structures, theseconceptions contain besides a person’s own good also the good of others, thegood of the community, and a favourable valuation of the life in common. Inparticular, people put value on: the construction and maintenance of acommunity or communities; certain values that define the community, includinga conception of the right, and of justice, not only of the individual’s good inisolation; and affirmation of those values. This is in contrast to the neo-classicalconception where, if the exogenous individuals happen to have no concern fortheir fellows and their descendants, that is viewed as a particular lifestyle choice,rather than as a sign of personal and social pathology.

Just as the public goods concept includes the possibility of “public bads” so thecommon good concept must cover “common bads”. Community itself is notautomatically morally good. It is a source of effects, some good, some not.

In discussing the nature of goods we have been forced to consider the nature of thepeople for whom they are goods. With individuals understood as members within asociety, we connect to the Aristotelian conception of well-being for humans:participation in the life of the polis, a conception that is given form in contemporarytheories of social inclusion and in Doyal and Gough’s (1991) influential A Theory ofNeed.

PersonsPeople are not calculating machines, idiots savants or “rational fools” who assesseverything except a set of ends that they happen to arbitrarily, idiosyncratically andindividually hold. They are imperfectly reasoning, malleable, diverse persons: whobecome socialised and live within societies, and work within and through sets ofcultures, partly discursively constructed systems of meanings; who have limitedknowledge and some potential for cooperation and concern for the next generation(s).The societies possess means, less or more democratic or informed, for identificationand prioritization of public goods and assignation of social responsibilities.

As we saw, Jerome Ballet, Francois-Regis Mahieu and Katja Radja’s paper refinesthe picture by noting that people have multiple aspects of identity, being members ofnot just a single “society” for example the grouping which sets formal laws, but ofmultiple groupings; a point emphasised too by Sen (2006). Sen stresses the choices inprioritisation that people thereby have, and how people highlight different aspects of

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identity at different times. Besides, those sorts of situational emphasising, there can bestructural moves of identity: long term trends such as to more individualization, andeven relatively sudden shifts. Ballet et al. show how persons’ identities can bedangerously re-formed during periods of socio-economic crisis, such as preceded the1994 genocide in Rwanda. Their paper distinguishes successive aspects of thattragedy:

. Tensions grew within Rwanda, stemming from increasing demographicpressure, reliance on unstable agricultural export markets, widespread loss ofaccess to land, and extreme and rising inequality.

. Thus, after the coffee market declines of the late 1980s could no longer becushioned by government subsidies, IMF financial shock therapy in the early1990s administered shocks that were far more than only financial.

. Political leaders and aspirant leaders turned to appeals to one aspect (ethnic) offelt identity, as a way of mobilising or retaining support, in response to lossof other forms of support as well as an increased felt threat from 1988 in the lightof inter-ethnic conflict in neighbouring Burundi.

. The mechanisms of escalation included dehumanization of the other,“snowballing” of commitment in oppression, and fear of sanctions if one didnot participate; leading to hardening of the identity shift and to the move into a“shock therapy” of another kind: genocide.

. Safety mechanisms failed. “The international community” so assiduous inimposing financial “discipline” ignored warnings of imminent disaster, and evenlong ignored and minimised reports of the actual genocide. Ballet et al. considerthe issues of responsibility, and we can ask about the types of “identitystructure” that conduced to irresponsibility.

Jean-Luc Dubois and Milene Trabelsi point out how armed conflicts have legacies thatconduce to further violence. Violence violates people emotionally as well as bodily; itcan destroy good social capital, undermine positive capabilities and build negativeones. They discuss how appropriate schooling and education could reduce the dangerof exclusivist, and explosive, types of attitude formation; and more generally how thepublic goods of appropriate life-skills could support the common good of humansecurity. Ideally, the response to crises could include favourable re-forming ofidentities. Appropriate life-skills figure in UNESCO’s agenda that education shouldcover “learning to be” and “learning to live together” not only acquiring knowledge andlearning to do. “Learning to be” includes, amongst other things, strengthening of asense of personal responsibility and of skills of resilience. “Learning to live together”includes understanding interdependence and gaining skills of co-operation andco-determination. Such skills are often especially neglected in secondary and tertiaryeducation. Dubois and Trabelsi are inspired by Sen’s capability approach (Sen, 1999).On specific life-skills Sen’s generalized treatment says little (Gasper, 2000), but thereMartha Nussbaum’s more substantive capabilities approach has much to offer(Nussbaum, 1995, 1997, 2001). In addition a body of work in British education in the1980s and 1990s that emerged without connection to Sen or Nussbaum also called itselfthe capabilities approach.


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Dubois and Trabelsi remind us that efforts to strengthen positive personal andsocial capabilities can be readily undermined and outweighed by national andinternational forces and policies, such as Ballet et al. described. Education on learningto be and learning to live together is therefore not only for direct combatants orpotential combatants. National and international decision-makers are priority targetgroups. They are also key agents for fulfilment of one of the sets of conditions thatDubois and Trabelsi highlight: provision of a common vision for the future that canattract a majority of the people. Uganda offers perhaps a partial recent example,although flawed and fragile. The paper warns that for many leaders the allure of theprizes of war can outweigh training in social responsibilities. The responsibilities ofinternational decisionmakers must then, on the basis of the capacity principlediscussed by Karlsson, be activated. In an interconnected world, offering broadeconomic and educational support – rather than government-assisted export of armsand landmines – is an accumulated obligation as well as a prudential investment.

Reasoning, risks and governanceJohn Cameron and Hemant Ojha’s paper considers more fully than do Dubois andTrabelsi the requirements for a society which treats all members with respect. Theyapply Kant’s ideals of non-coercion and non-deception, but supplement that withreference to realities of social stratification and of encapsulation in group worldviewsand practices, where they draw in particular on the insights and formulations of PierreBourdieu. Their centrepiece is Jurgen Habermas’s vision of reasoned collectivedeliberation, as an extension of Kant’s ideal but also as a possible motor for change.They correspondingly adopt a richer, more realistic, picture of persons than as a set ofpresocial, fixed atoms of desire. Collective deliberation influences participants andtheir preferences:

From the perspective of communicative rationality, political agency (or citizenship) is anintersubjective enterprise, as people are connected to diverse networks of communication insociety. In that sense, they are not autonomous rational beings in themselves, as the waysthrough which they understand, interpret and channel resources are mediated byintersubjective processes. This reasoning questions aggregative models of liberalgovernance, which merely add up individual preferences without regard to deliberativeprinciples and collective ethics . . . Deliberation is a conscious exercise of communicativecompetence by social beings to understand, negotiate and transform human relations andethical norms (Cameron and Ojha, 2007).

Cameron and Ojha apply their system of complementary ideas from Kant, Bourdieuand Habermas to forest management in Nepal. They conclude:

This [Nepal experience] demands reframing of public debate both in procedural andsubstantive terms – procedurally to enhance the agency of the poor and marginalised groupsto effectively participate, and substantively to expose deceptive elements in the claims toethical authority on the part of the dominant technocratic habitus, and the associated elementof deception utilised to reproduce social inequality.

Tim Forsyth’s case study complements Cameron and Ojha’s. He shows in more detailthe mechanisms of technocratic distortion and veiled elite domination in agencies thatsupposedly defend the common good. Environmental planners and land managers dogo beyond a commodity focus to look at effects on environments and, in principle, on

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people; but they often employ widely generalized “narratives” about environmentalthreats, which sustain perceptions of environmental crisis and are used to justify theacquisition or control of natural resources by the State or by capitalist agents, ortypically by both in alliance. Research in the past generation has shown that thesenarratives have often been highly overgeneralized and misleading. Forsyth warns forexample of a strong unjustified tendency to assume that physical changes such aserosion and land-cover-clearance automatically constitute problems. His case studyfrom Thailand shows how the orthodox narrative of watershed degradation has beendefined by dominant social groups from the lowlands. Yet those social categories –upland and lowland – are too crude to well reflect biophysical reality.

Even the currently popular sustainable livelihoods approach (SLA), which looks atthe diverse ways in which rural people construct livelihoods with use of a range of“capitals” (“natural” “social” “financial” “human”, etc.), appears flawed by its impositionof overgeneralized external categories. Critically, Arce (2003) argued that institutionalanalysts of SLA have confused “assets” with “capitals” and have consequently reducedlocal deliberation because the different kinds of capitals are predefined and imported(Forsyth, presentation to the 2006 St Edmund’s College Workshop). Bourdieu talks ofeconomic, cultural, symbolic and political capitals, but for purposes of broadunderstanding not for prescription in specific cases. In contrast, mainstream economicsis in key ways a generalized, generalizing discourse – with its grand narrative of“consumers” and “producers” and its generalized categories of types of capital – whichcan conduce to the types of top-down control that Forsyth, Cameron and Ojha criticize.

Forsyth proposes closer attention to the social inclusions and exclusions in thepreparation and stabilization of truth claims: who is involved, who is not. The choicesof and within intellectual frameworks can either be made with public deliberationincluded or be concealed within inherited disciplinary formats that often provide coverfor the interests of predominant groups. Forsyth makes a case for granting localpeople, including poor people, epistemological respect and involvement in governanceof natural resources, given their close experience with specific local realities. “Thoushalt ensure that the number of voices that participated in the articulation ofpropositions has not been arbitrarily short circuited” (Latour, 2003, p. 106; cited byForsyth at the St Edmund’s College Workshop).

Cameron and Ojha share this view and, drawing on John Dewey, go further.Participation in analysis and decisionmaking can be fruitful in several ways: forreliable and insightful knowledge, for communication and absorption of knowledge,for representation of the interests of the disadvantaged, for building cooperation,capacities and even community, and as ethically valued in itself. Such social learningprocesses have to be institutionalised. We saw how Cameron and Ojha embed anidealist analysis within Bourdieu’s sociology of power and culture. They move towardsan enriched conception of Human Development that not merely stresses human agencybut sees it as socially moulded, constrained and discursively articulated.

Correspondingly, progress through consensus is far from guaranteed, as manyenvironment cases show. Aware of this, Cameron and Ojha adopt from Bourdieu asecond model of change: in addition to change via deliberation, change via crisis,notably cognitive crisis and rethinking. Material crisis sometimes brings rethinking,other times not. The Rwanda experience ominously reminds us that environmentalcrisis narratives are sometimes in part true, exclusive community affiliations are


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dangerous, risk and insecurity are subjective and manipulable as well as objectivecategories, and that the dangers that arise cover not only direct environmental damage,but also violence leading to multifarious social harm. Nepal is in a longstanding crisis(Blaikie et al., 1980). It rests at a crossroads between alternative authoritarianisms andalso the perspective of more democratic deliberation that Cameron and Ojha expoundand endorse.

ResponsibilitiesUsing a less painful case, the effects of agricultural pesticides, as suited fordevelopment of theory, Sylvia Karlsson considers the allocation of responsibilities forpublic goods and bads in national and transnational systems. What should be doneabout transnational public goods? She compares three criteria: culpability, capacity,and concern. Her conclusion is striking: the principles are complementary, butindispensable and for her case central is a sense of living in common and of mutualconcern.

By culpability Karlsson refers to causal responsibility, noting though thatidentifications of culpability involve both a cause-effect analysis and a moral analysisof responsibility. Out of the myriad of contributory conditions to an event only somewill be deemed morally relevant. You drive sedately in the correct lane and block myway as I overtake at speed in the wrong lane; you causally contribute to the collisionbut do not share culpability. Assignations of culpability reflect underlying choices ofsituation-framing, as shown by Forsyth in his discussion of environmental narratives.

The principle of culpability has major limitations in practice, due to the disputesover both cause-effect linkages and moral relevance. To some people the question ofIMF co-responsibility for societal collapse in Rwanda is absurd; to others thatresponsibility is clear. (Within the IMF itself there was some disquiet and rethinking,though unfortunately no cognitive crisis.) This leads us to consider also the principle ofcapacity. Here, in contrast, the capacity of “the international community” to haveprevented and/or to have later stopped the genocide is indisputable, as indicated byBallet et al. A combination of capacity, mandate and inaction implies culpableirresponsibility. Lack of responsibility for producing a problem does not mean onelacks responsibility for responding to it. Suppose actor A did not do act D which wouldhave prevented G from happening; that he was capable of doing D or had sufficientchance and capacity to develop that capability (thus one can be responsible for notbeing able to respond); and that he had the relevant formal responsibility – then hisinaction is culpable. While there are dangers of analysing organisations as if they wereindividuals, one can inquire into the “identity structure” in governments andinternational agencies that sit idly by during genocide and similar disasters (McNeilland St Clair, 2006).

Concern – whether directly for others or indirectly for oneself (as in “enlightenedself-interest”), is the necessary partner and supplement to the principle of capacity.Given the uncertainties in cause-effect chains at global scale, enlightened self-interesttoo has limited impact. Karlsson concludes that direct concern could be the mostpowerful criterion, and thus adds an instrumental argument for building of a globalethic, or more modestly put, for strengthening our awareness of and commitment tocommon goods.

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ConclusionAs humanity threatens to undermine its habitat, a social economics returns to coreconcepts and themes that became expunged from neoclassical economics: to seriousexamination of persons, seen as more than points of desire; to a broadened and situatedconception of types of good; to study of what commodities and goods do to and forpeople; to a central role for public reasoning about which are public priority goods,rather than trying to operate with only a technical definition of “public good”; to anacceptance of notions of ethical responsibility and responsibilities, concerning theprovision and maintenance of public priority goods, determined through publicreasoning; and to close attention to institutional formats for such deliberation. Thispaper’s outline of the concepts suggested that social persons share some “commongoods” some vital common bases; and that amongst the greatest of public priority“goods” are the very concepts of common good and responsibility. Much of this iseloquently expressed in Human Security Now, the report of the Commission on HumanSecurity chaired by Sadako Ogata and Amartya Sen (CHS, 2003). The set of papers thatfollow present arguments and cases – including from Costa Rica, Kenya, Nepal,Thailand, Rwanda, the rest of sub-Saharan Africa, and various global arenas – thatsustain and elaborate these contentions.

References

Arce, A. (2003), “Value contestations in development interventions: community development andsustainable livelihoods approaches”, Community Development Journal‘, Vol. 38 No. 3,pp. 199-212.

Ballet, J., Mahieu, F.-R. and Radja, K. (2007), “Destabilising identity structures: the impacts ofdomestic and international policy in the 1994 Rwanda genocide”, International Journal ofSocial Economics, Vol. 34 Nos 1/2, (In this issue).

Banuri, T., Hyden, G., Juma, C. and Rivera, M. (1995), Sustainable Human Development, FromConcept to Operation: A Guide for the Practitioner, UNDP discussion paper, UnitedNations Development Programme, New York.

Blaikie, P., Cameron, J. and Seddon, J. (1980), Nepal in Crisis, Clarendon Press, Oxford.

Cameron, J. and Ojha, H. (2007), “A deliberative ethic for development: a Nepalese journey fromBourdieu through Kant to Dewey and Habermas”, International Journal of SocialEconomics, Vol. 34 Nos 1/2, (In this issue).

CHS (2003), Human Security Now, Commission on Human Security, New York, NY.

Douglas, M. and Ney, S. (1998), Missing Persons, University of California Press, Berkeley, CA.

Doyal, L. and Gough, I. (1991), A Theory of Need, Macmillan, Basingstoke.

Eriksson, J. et al. (1996), The International Response to Conflict and Genocide: Lessons from theRwanda Experience – Synthesis Report, Steering Committee of the Joint Evaluation ofEmergency Assistance to Rwanda, Copenhagen.

Gasper, D. (2000), “‘Development as freedom’: moving economics beyond commodities – thecautious boldness of Amartya Sen”, Journal of International Development, Vol. 12 No. 7,pp. 989-1001.

Gasper, D. (2004), The Ethics of Development: From Economism to Human Development,Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh.

Gray, J. (1993), Beyond the New Right – Markets, Government and the Common Environment,Routledge, London.


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Latour, B. (2003), Politics of Nature, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.

McNeill, D. and St Clair, A. (2006), “Multilateral institutions, ethical discourses, and theascription or avoidance of responsibility”, paper presented at GARNET Workshop,Institute of Social Studies, The Hague.

Nussbaum, M. (1995), Poetic Justice: The Literary Imagination and Public Life, Beacon Press,Boston, MA.

Nussbaum, M. (1997), Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defence of Reform in Liberal Education,Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.

Nussbaum, M. (2001), Upheavals of Thought – The Intelligence of Emotions, CambridgeUnivresity Press, Cambridge.

Samuelson, P. (1954), “The pure theory of public expenditure”, Review of Economics andStatistics, Vol. 36, pp. 387-9.

Sen, A. (1977), “Rational fools: a critique of the behavioural foundations of economic theory”,Choice, Welfare and Measurement, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, reprinted in 1982, pp. 84-106.

Sen, A. (1999), Development as Freedom, Oxford University Press, New York, NY.

Sen, A. (2006), Identity and Violence, Penguin, London.

Swaan, A. de (1988), In Care of the State: Health Care, Education and Welfare in Europe and theUSA in the Modern Era, Polity Press, Cambridge.

UNDP (1994), Human Development Report 1994, United Nations Development Programme,Oxford University Press, New York, NY.

Wuyts, M. (1992), “Deprivation and public need”, in Wuyts, M., Mackintosh, M. and Hewitt, T.(Eds), Development Policy and Public Action, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 13-37.

Further reading

Deneulin, S. and Townsend, N. (2007), “Public goods, global public goods, and the commongood”, International Journal of Social Economics, Vol. 34 Nos 1/2, pp. 19-36.

Dubois, J.-L. and Trabelsi, M. (2007), “Education in pre- and post-conflict situations: relatingcapability and life-skill approaches”, International Journal of Social Economics, Vol. 34Nos 1/2, pp. 53-65.

Forsyth, T. (2007), “Sustainable livelihood approaches and soil erosion risks: who is to judge?”,International Journal of Social Economics, Vol. 34 Nos 1/2, pp. 88-102.

Karlsson, S.I. (2007), “Allocating responsibilities in multi-level governance for sustainabledevelopment”, International Journal of Social Economics, Vol. 34 Nos 1/2, pp. 103-26.

Parfit, D. (1984), Reasons and Persons, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Sen, A. (1984), “Goods and people”, in Sen, A. (Ed.), Values, Resources and Development, BasilBlackwell, Oxford.

Corresponding authorDes Gasper can be contacted at: [email protected]

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Public goods, global public goodsand the common good

Severine DeneulinUniversity of Bath, Bath, UK, and

Nicholas TownsendUniversity of Kent, London, UK

Abstract

Purpose – Public economics has recently introduced the concept of global public goods as a newcategory of public goods whose provision is central for promoting the well-being of individuals intoday’s globalized world. The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent to which introducing thisnew concept in international development is helpful for understanding human well-beingenhancement.

Design/methodology/approach – The paper considers some implications of the concept of thecommon good for international development.

Findings – The concept of global public goods could be more effective if the conception of well-beingit assumes is broadened beyond the individual level. “Living well” or the “good life” does not dwell inindividual lives only, but also in the lives of the communities which human beings form. A successfulprovision of global public goods depends on this recognition that the “good life” of the communitiesthat people form is a constitutive component of the “good life” of individual human beings.

Originality/value – The paper suggests that the rediscovery of the concept of the common good, andidentification of how to nurture it, constitute one of the major tasks for development theory and policy.

Keywords Social responsibility, Globalization, Public interest

Paper type Conceptual paper

1. IntroductionGlobalization is a term that now permeates everyday language. Old concepts are beingrevised in the light of the reality of the world as a global village. The concept of publicgoods has not escaped this global remake. In their seminal book, Global Public Goods:International Cooperation in the 21st Century, Kaul et al. (1999) underline that people’swell-being does not depend only on the provision of public goods by nationalgovernments, but increasingly depends on the provision of global public goods thatonly international cooperation can secure. They argue that the concept of global publicgoods helps us respond to the new global challenges of the twenty-first century. Thebook discusses a wide range of global public goods which national governments alonecannot secure, such as financial stability, peace, the environment, and cultural heritage.For example, the well-being of Bangladeshi people might be affected by severe floodingcaused by climate change which their national government can do nothing to prevent.Only international cooperation among governments at the global level can provide the



Preliminary versions of the paper were presented at the DSA workshop “Peace, Security andSustainability: Exploring Ethics in Development” Cambridge, 27-28 March 2006, and at the“Capability and Education Network” meeting at the Institute of Education, London, 19 May.

The authors are very grateful to Des Gasper for his careful comments, as well as to Ian Gough.They also thank the participants for helpful suggestions.

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Vol. 34 No. 1/2, 2007pp. 19-36


DOI 10.1108/03068290710723345

global public good of climate stability. Recognizing the existence of global publicgoods, and securing their provision, is central for promoting the well-being ofindividuals in today’s globalized world.

This paper examines the extent to which introducing the concept of global publicgoods in international development indeed helps us to better respond to the newchallenges of this century. It argues that the concept of global public goods could bemore effective if the conception of well-being it assumes is broadened beyond theindividual level. “Living well” or the “good life” does not dwell in individual lives only,but also in the lives of communities which human beings form. A successful provisionof global public goods depends on this recognition that the “good life” of thecommunities that people form is a constitutive component of the “good life” ofindividual human beings.

The second section examines the concept of public goods and discussessome problems generally associated with their provision. It underlines that in theliterature public goods are considered as instrumental to individual well-being and tobe provided to this end. However, there exist public goods which defy the assumptionthat collective action, and the ensuing public goods provision, is always instrumentalto individual well-being. The third section contrasts collective goods and “commongoods” and goes on to show that human action is sometimes undertaken for the sake ofthe good life understood as intrinsically in common. This has been referred to by theterm “the common good” in the history of Western political thought. As the politicalcommunity has traditionally been the highest form of community, the fourth sectionanalyzes the concept of the political common good and clarifies some conceptualambiguities related to it. The final section considers implications of the concept of thecommon good for international development. The paper concludes by suggesting thatrediscovery of this concept, and identification of how to nurture the common good,constitute one of the major tasks for development theory and policy.

2. Public goods and global public goodsPublic goods have long been a central concept of public economics[1]. They arecharacterized by non-excludability and non-rivalry in their consumption. A good isnon-excludable if a person’s consumption of it cannot practically be excluded. The goodcan in practice not be provided while keeping some customers out. It is non-rival if aperson’s consumption does not reduce the benefits of someone else’s consumption of thegood. A typical example of a public good is street lighting. It is there for all to benefitfrom, irrespective of the consumers’ contribution to its provision. The good isnon-excludable as nobody passing on the street can be excluded from the lighting, and itis (more or less) non-rival as each individual on the street benefits from it without thebenefit for one detracting from that for others. The literature discusses the “purity” ofpublic goods and shows there are relatively few wholly pure examples. Street lighting isnot pure to the extent that there can be rivalry in consumption, i.e. crowding out of somepeople from the benefits. There are less pure public goods, such as free health emergencyservices. A certain number of people using an emergency service does not detract fromothers’ access to the service, but, more obviously than with street lighting, there is asaturation point where too many people using it prevents others from doing so.

Given the non-excludable and non-rival nature of public goods, they cannot beprovided satisfactorily through a market mechanism but have to be provided through

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some form of public action (e.g. via taxation). Public provision does not necessarilyentail government provision. Public goods can be provided by other actors thangovernments. For example, even if a beach cleaning service is ensured by a privatewater company through water user fees, a clean (and publicly accessible) beachremains a “public good” (although an impure one). It is non-rival in the sense that somepeople using the beach do not prevent others from using it, and it may be notexcludable in the sense that nobody can be acceptably excluded from using the beach,whether users have contributed to the cleaning costs or not.

Our aim is not to undertake an extensive review of the literature on public goods[2].For the sake of our argument, we would like to underline two points: that the provisionof public goods is central to securing human well-being, and that, given theircharacteristics, public goods are open to free-riding and vulnerable to what is known asthe “failure of collective action”.

If we take Sen’s (1999) definition of human well-being in terms of the freedoms thatpeople have reason to choose and value, or if we take Nussbaum’s (2000) list of centralhuman capabilities, it is obvious that human well-being would not be secured withoutthe existence of public goods. For example, the “freedom to be healthy” depends on theexistence of basic infrastructure such as hygiene campaigns, access to basic sanitationfacilities and drinkable piped water. Hygiene campaigns are a public good in the sensethat posters or widespread advertising about, e.g. the spread of HIV/AIDS are availableto all. My seeing the advert and receiving the information does not reduce anotherperson’s possibility of seeing the advert (non-rival), and nobody can be excluded fromseeing the posters on the street (non-excludable). The provision of a sewage system isanother example of a good whose public health benefits for a city cannot excludeanybody living there (even if some lack finance needed to access it individually), andwhose use by one individual does not reduce the benefits of someone else’s use of it(assuming it is adequate for the population it serves). We could go on listing all the publicgoods whose provision is central for human well-being.

The second aspect of public goods which we would like to underline is the absenceof correlation between a person’s contribution to its provision and her use of it.Consider such public goods as street lighting, road maintenance and clean beaches.Holidaymakers enjoy the use of these goods while not contributing to their provisionthrough council taxes. Given this absence of correlation between pay and use, it hasbeen a well-known problem that public goods are open to free-riding, that is, one canuse the good while not making any contribution. Some residents in the south-west ofEngland resent paying the highest prices for water supply in the UK on the groundthat their payments cover the cost of cleaning beaches used mainly by tourists, who arein this respect free-riders.

Another consequence of the characteristics of public goods is that often they arebetter supplied through public provision, which individuals can influence throughpublic action[3]. If governments fail to provide the public good of accessible courts or awell functioning police force, individuals acting alone do not have power to secure theirprovision. What is needed is “collective action” that is, action which “arises when theefforts of two or more individuals are needed to accomplish an outcome” (Sandler,1992, p. 1).

Yet Olson’s (1965) pioneering study of The Logic of Collective Action underlined thetragedy of the absence of such action that arises from individuals balancing the costs


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of participating in it against the uncertainty of its benefits. For example, the fact thatmillions of people protested against the Iraq War in 2003 did not change the outcome.Given the uncertain benefits of collective action, rational individuals might preferstaying comfortably at home rather than enduring the costs of travelling to London toprotest and spend a whole day in the cold and rain. This argument is also often used toexplain the lack of political involvement of people living at the edge of existence. Giventhe uncertain benefits of political protests or campaigns, it is more rational for people tokeep on working long hours for subsistence pay than to bear the costs of collectiveaction, such as union organizations, which might not bear fruit. All benefit from asuccessful outcome of collective action, even if some have not participated in it.

The concept of public goods has recently acquired a global dimension. Kaul et al.(1999, p. 16) define global public goods as those which “tend towards universality inthe sense that they benefit all countries, population groups and generations”. Theyhave the following characteristics “at minimum”:

. their “benefits extend to more than one group of countries”; and

. they “do not discriminate against any population group or any set of generations,present or future”.

Anand (2004, p. 216) extends this by proposing three criteria by which a good qualifiesas a “global public good”; it should:

(1) cover more than one group of countries;

(2) benefit not only a broad spectrum of countries but also a broad spectrum of theglobal population; and

(3) meet the needs of the present generations without jeopardising those of thefuture generations.

Like other public goods, global public goods vary in “purity” a pure global public goodbeing one whose non-excludability and non-rivalry characteristics have a trulyuniversal dimension. Some aspects of the natural environment fall into this category ofpure global public goods, such as sunlight and a climate in which human habitation ispossible. The benefits of such goods are accessible unevenly in different locations, butdespite this they benefit the earth as a whole and, therefore, all countries, without (atleast in the short or medium term) “consumption” by some preventing or reducingconsumption by others, and without consumption by any country being excludable.Impure global public goods are marked by a lesser universality. Kaul et al. (1999, p. 453)arranged global public goods according to the following typology:

. natural global commons (such as the ozone layer and climate stability);

. human-made global commons (such as scientific and practical knowledge,principles and norms, and cultural heritage); and

. global policy outcomes (such as peace, health and financial stability).

Thus, global public goods are goods whose characteristics are such that their provisioncannot be left to market mechanisms (unlike private goods) or national governmentaction (unlike domestic public goods). In the absence of an international body endowedwith the power of levying taxes to finance global public goods or endowed with thepower of making enforceable laws to provide them, voluntary co-operation and global

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collective action are currently two ways of ensuring supply of global public goods(Anand, 2004, p. 223). Voluntary donations of governments towards internationaldevelopment aid are one way of financing the global public good of increasedknowledge of how to prevent malaria or HIV/AIDS. Global social movements, such asthe green movement, are another form of action aimed at securing the global publicgood of a non-polluted environment. The creation of a “Global Fund” distinct frominternational development aid, is another way which has been proposed to provideglobal public goods[4].

Some authors have questioned whether the definition of public goods given inneo-classical economics (as outlined above) is adequate. They have argued that theextent to which a good is perceived as “public” does not depend as much on itsinherent characteristics as on prevailing social values within a given society aboutwhat should be provided by non-market mechanisms. There are goods whichpossess a non-excludable and non-rival character but which societies do not valueas “public”, i.e. they do not value the good as something to be provided by publicprovision. Wuyts (1992) gives the examples of sanitation in nineteenth centuryEurope and twentieth century South Africa under apartheid (Gasper, 2002). While inEurope, sanitation became a “public” issue which concerned both rich and poor –sewage systems were valued as necessary in order to prevent the spread of diseasesfrom marginal to privileged areas – South Africa did not value sanitation as a“public” good. Instead of public provision of sanitation facilities in marginal areas, itrelocated poor black people to remote townships and valued transport from thetownships to privileged white areas as a “public” good worthy of state provision.Wuyts (1992) concludes that public goods are socially defined and constructedaccording to what is perceived as a “public need” rather than containing certaininherent characteristics of non-excludability and non-rivalry. Given this, we mightcall these “public priority goods”.

In this way, Gasper and Wuyts point out a misleading aspect of the standardeconomic definition of public goods given earlier. A good which is non-excludable andnon-rival might still be perceived as not worthy of public provision and hencenon-“public”.

In addition to this, there is another important shortcoming of the economic conceptof public goods, namely that these are seen only as instrumental to each individual’swell-being. We argue that the mainstream international development theory faces amajor challenge not only to incorporate the concept of global public goods into itsethical underpinnings but also to conceive of human well-being beyond the frame ofreference given by individualistic socio-economic theory.

The recent literature on global public goods assumes that they are instrumentallyessential to a flourishing human life, and that, therefore, there is a strong case forputting mechanisms in place to provide them. Indeed, climate stability is essential tothe well-being of billions of people, if not everyone, on the planet. Without it,innumerable human lives are at risk of flood, drought and or increasingly frequentextreme weather conditions. Scientific knowledge is another example of a global publicgood crucial to individual human well-being. The discovery of penicillin andantibiotics enabled millions of lives to be saved. Given this assumption, currentdebates focus on the design of the institutions necessary for their provision. Kaul et al.(1999, p. 450) conclude their study with the following policy recommendations:


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. creation of international laws which address the global nature of public goods;

. promotion of participation of civil society at the global level; and

. giving people and governments the necessary incentives to take action for theprovision of global public goods.

While research is being done about various ways of providing global public goods,there is little research examining the justification for their provision. Their instrumentalvalue for individual well-being seems a sufficient justification. However, whether welook historically or trans-culturally, we can find examples of public goods which defyvaluation as only instrumentally beneficial for individuals. Consider the place ofcathedrals in their medieval civic settings and equivalent buildings in non-Christiansocieties. As well as expressing belief in a realm that transcends immediate time andplace, they are an example of such human-made or natural features of a city that give itbeauty and, over time, contribute to defining its identity. Cathedrals are public goodsto the extent that, first, no one can be excluded from the complex combination ofbenefits that they give, including such identity formation and architectural beauty, and,second, the appreciation of them by some does not reduce the possibility of othersreceiving the same benefits. Such civic events as carnivals give a partly similar range ofbenefits. Such benefits accrue to people as participants in a city’s life, not to individualsconceived of as distinct from this. Moreover, often medieval cathedrals did not have animmediate favourable instrumental effect on their builders’ well-being, as these didtheir work for negligible monetary reward and at great health costs. Why did peopleput such collective effort into buildings that they would not even enjoy in their lifetime?Writing about cathedrals as among the remaining puzzles of collective action, Sandler(2001, p. 74) asks the question, “What makes generations work collectively in aneffective manner for some goals and not for others?” He concludes that the existence ofcollective action depends on answering that question.

Surprisingly, the literature on global public goods has dealt very little, if at all, withthe goals underpinning collective action and the provision of global public goods. Thenext section argues that, when human actions are undertaken for promoting people’swell-being, it is not only the “good life” of discrete individuals which matters but alsothe goodness of the life that humans hold in common, which has been referred to as the“common good”. While the concept of the common good has been central in the historyof Western political philosophy, it is in recent literature subject to some conceptualconfusion. Before discussing the relevance of the concept of the common good forinternational development, we first need to seek conceptual clarity. This is what thenext two sections aim to do.

3. Common goodsThere are several definitions of the common good. In a recent articulation of its classicalconception, Dupre (1994, p. 173) defines it as “a good proper to, and attainable only bythe community, yet individually shared by its members”. For Maritain (1946), a majorThomist Philosopher of the twentieth century, the common good is constituted by goodsthat humans share intrinsically in common and that they communicate to each other,such as values, civic virtues and a sense of justice. Cahill (2004, p. 9) defines the commongood as “a solidaristic association of persons that is more than the good of individuals inthe aggregate”. In the major recent study on the topic, Hollenbach (2002, p. 81) describes

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the common good as the good of being a community, as “the good realized in the mutualrelationships in and through which human beings achieve their well-being”. Whilethese various definitions need such clarification as we hope to give, let us say in light ofthem that the common good is not the outcome of a collective action which makeseverybody better off than if they acted individually, but is the good of that sharedenterprise itself. It is the good of the community which comes into being in and throughthat enterprise.

As these definitions already suggest, those who use this concept speak both of“common goods” plural, and of “the common good” singular, the latter being in somesense overarching, macro as opposed to micro. No doubt the language of “commongood” can be used imprecisely, vaguely and rhetorically. This section aims to showhow it may be used with some analytical precision and thereby to spell out themeaning it tends implicitly to have even when used without clear elucidation. Weproceed by distinguishing conceptually between collective action/goods and commonaction/goods.

People produce very many goods by acting together rather than alone because it isinstrumentally necessary or (even if not necessary) convenient or efficient to do so.Examples include buildings, roads, meals for workforces, waste disposal. Each of uscould build a house, of sorts, alone but we could not do so very conveniently. So we usecollective action. However, once such goods have been produced, we can (at least inprinciple) each benefit from them alone – live in the house, travel on the road. For suchgoods that are produced through collective action because of instrumental necessity,convenience or efficiency, there is nothing which means their benefits cannot accrue toindividuals alone. Certainly people often benefit together from such goods: they live ina house together, they eat in the workplace canteen. But sharing such goods isincidental to what makes them good if, for example, those sharing a house are neitherfamily nor friends but do so only for reasons of economy. In this case, both theproduction of and the benefiting from such a good is collective, but it is the latteraccidentally. While the sharing is instrumentally beneficial for each recipient, there isnothing intrinsic to the good itself which requires it to be shared. Such goods are,rather, commodities whose supply requires collective action – this undertaken forinstrumental reasons but not on account of the inherent nature of the goods – andwhose consumption might or might not be shared. Let us for simplicity call all suchgoods “collective goods”. Most if not all public goods identified as such in economicsliterature fall into this category.

There is another, rather different, kind of shared good, comprising those whichintrinsically are common goods[5]. Compare with the examples above an orchestral orchoral musical performance, a celebratory dinner, or a team sport. Taking the first ofthese, unless the various musicians each play or sing their particular parts, performingtogether for the audience, the good simply could not exist at all. Its “production” isinseparable from, indeed is exactly the same thing as, the good itself: the good lies inthe action together which generates it. Moreover, benefiting from the good is byparticipating in that action, whether in the orchestra or audience. This is to say that theshared action is intrinsic, as well as instrumental, to the good itself and also that itsbenefits come in the course of that shared action. Goods of this kind are, therefore,inherently common in their “production” and in their benefits.


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Suppose a well has been dug in a village which means that women of the village nolonger have to walk long distances for water. Despite the convenience of the well in thevillage, sometimes the women might decide still to walk together outside the village toget water, because this is a good opportunity to be together as a group, an experiencethe benefits of which are inseparable from its being shared. That is, their walkingtogether is inherently a common good – they have no need to do it for any other endthan being together and its “goodness” for them comes from the action itself beingcommon. Their walk is analogous to the concert or team game.

A characteristic of common goods is that they cannot be chosen by individualsalone. They can neither be constructed by individuals separately, nor are they acollectively generated “resource bank” available to individuals to choose, or not choose,from. Yet neither do they exist only because of some kind of forced co-operation.Common goods exist because of a tradition of shared action which makes thempossible, and in which people participate freely, thereby sustaining and developing it.Of course particular people may freely choose to begin to participate or to cease to doso. But, rather than being attainable simply by individual choice of a pre-existingresource, such goods exist only in the common action that generates them.

Collective goods and common goods are similar, then, in that to exist they bothrequire shared action. But for collective goods, this is accidental to the nature of thegood itself, whereas for common goods, it is intrinsic. Collective action that extends therange of commodities from among which individuals can choose to benefit cannotmake available common goods to anyone. These require something qualitativelydifferent, co-ordination of action with others because the good for each is found inthis itself.

To the extent that human wellbeing is constituted by benefiting from commongoods, public policy may undermine rather than contribute to human wellbeing if itfails to recognise common goods and so is formed and implemented without suchrecognition. Its effects could make some very valuable common goods unsustainable oreven directly destroy them. Relatively little attention has been given to common goodsin development economics, largely because its ethical foundations have beenarticulated in terms of the preferences or free choices of individuals, as we will discussin the fifth section.

Moving beyond such “micro” common goods, we may speak of “the common good”when what is in view is not just a one-off common good (such as in the examples given,a concert, a team game, a shared walk) but is one that endures through time and, inparticular, is a good for a group of people whose lives interact in multiple ways, usuallybecause they share the same physical living space. This could be a monastery, a villageor town, the ancient polis or the modern city. The common good of a town is analogousto a concert, but one that continues indefinitely. As the residents participate in the lifeof the town, they generate a good that could not exist otherwise and which is partlyconstitutive of the wellbeing of each of them. Consider the city of London: to the extentthat in our work and travel and play we participate in the irreducibly common actionsof, say, crowds, queues, rush-hour, Sunday afternoon on the London South Bank, andso on (ad infinitum), we help to engender an extraordinarily complex and obviouslyirreducibly common good – one entirely unavailable to any of the individualsconcerned acting separately. The good of any communal or cultural entity cannot bereduced to goods which could in principle be enjoyed by each of its constituent

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members alone. Such a common good is definitive of “community” as opposed to of acollectivity. The latter’s purpose is instrumental to production of goods such as publicgoods, whereas the former’s end is the common good its shared life itself generates. Wespeak of the common good because it is not just a discrete and passing common good,but is that of people together precisely as they form a community.

In concluding this section, it may be worth emphasising two clarifying points. First,there are of course both common goods and common “bads”. Analytically, what makesa good common is not what makes it good. Many would see rush-hour as a “bad” evenif at the same time it has some part in what people appreciate in a city’s life overall.Racism always corrupts a common good; the apartheid laws structured a common bad.At a “micro” level, it is obvious that what can be the great common goods of friendship,marriage and family prove often to be “bads” (although a reason for this couldsometimes be that participants assume they are commodities and so misunderstandhow they can be common goods). Our aim is not to romanticise common goods. Thesecond point is related: to refer to the common good of a town, city, etc. does not implyfor a moment that what this good actually consists in will be agreed by all; on thecontrary, this may be and usually is highly contested. Yet recognising this does notnullify the claim that we may speak of “the common good” in this way. Indeed in theAristotelian conception which more than any other has contributed to forming Westernthought on this issue, deliberation together about what constitutes the good of the polisformed an inherent part of its common good. This leads us to a further conceptualclarification regarding the concept of the common good, namely that the common goodis a specifically political concept which has implications for the role of political action.

4. The political common goodLet us first notice that, just as speaking of the common good of a community does notimply that there will be agreement within it about the “content” of that common good,so also speaking of the common goods of various neighbouring or overlappingcommunities does not imply that these will be easily in harmony. On the contrary,dominant understandings of their respective common goods within such communities,and corresponding practices, may well be in sharp conflict. Consider a village in ruralEl Salvador from which many adult males have migrated to the US for work and sendback earnings as remittances. Suppose, further, that such migrants pool a largeproportion of the remittances in a common fund in order to finance services such asschools, roads, public parks and health centres. They do this given the state’s apparentinability to provide such services, motivated by concern for the “common good” of theircommunity, as a “solidaristic association of persons”.

However, the common good of the local community understood in this way mightclash with the common good of another grouping. While migration might be good forimproving the common life of the village, it might harm the common life of familieswho have to cope with the male members of the family abroad. While the solidaristicassociation of the local community is in this way reinforced through migration, thesolidaristic association of the family might be under strain. It might also have negativeconsequences for the solidaristic association of the country as a whole. Migration mayhave perverse effects on redistributive policies, reducing the level of solidarity amonginhabitants of the same country – the central state does not have incentives to financepublic services for the poor or to implement redistributive policies since the poor


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finance these services themselves by migrating to Northern countries[6]. This exampleimmediately draws attention to three levels of community – family, local and national– and makes clear that a recognition that we may speak of the common good in relationto all these (and other) levels is not naıve about conflict. The pervasiveness of suchtensions and conflicts in practice points to the potential benefits that a more centralpolitical authority may bring in seeking to resolve such tensions and conflicts justly.

This brings us to what we could call the “special” sense that “the common good” hasconventionally had in western political thought. It has been used especially of the onesovereign or “perfect” political community, in relation to which “lower-level”communities are seen as parts of a whole. Such an understanding stems from Aristotleand was given more developed expression by Aquinas (1981). The latter used the term“public good” to refer to the common good of the specifically political community in thesense of that which has sovereignty and, therefore, authority over “lesser” communitieswithin it. He was taking inspiration from Aristotle for whom the highest good is that ofthe polis[7]. Aristotle understood this distinctly political community as one endowedwith the power to deliberate about what is just and unjust, and the power to make lawson the basis of that deliberation[8]. Aquinas followed Aristotle’s definition of a politicalcommunity. This public good may be distinguished in Aquinas’s usage from theprivate goods of individuals and the private common goods of families and households(Finnis, 1998b, p. 179). The common good of the political community, that is, the“public good” is related to individual goods but is not their sum[9]. Rather therelationship is that of the whole and its parts (ratio totius et partes):

The common good is the end [purpose/goal] of individual persons who live in community, inthe same way as the good of the whole is the end of all its parts[10].

The influence of Aquinas’s use of the term “public good” to refer specifically to thecommon good of the political community has given rise to some confusion incontemporary ethics: the economic and political definitions are often mixed together,with the “common good” sometimes used to refer to the modern economicunderstanding of “public good”. For example, Geuss (2001, p. 37) writes that, “Thecommon good is [. . .] an increase in the number of temples and bridges usable by all”.

Or:

The most primitive notion of the common good is of some external state of affairs thatmembers of a group would do well to bring about, such as building a dam or bridge (Geuss,2001, p. 46).

What members of a group do well together is obviously to be distinguished from whatthey bring about (the commodity of a public good in the economic sense). The latter isexternal to, and independent of, the relationships which exist among the members of asociety. In contrast, the common good inheres in the relationships themselves(Hollenbach, 2002, p. 8). It lies in their being and doing together, not in a separateoutcome that this produces.

It is worth noting that some writers have questioned whether the “public good” inAquinas’s sense has intrinsic or only instrumental value. In interpreting Aquinas,Finnis (1998b, p. 187) argues that the common good specific to the political communityis instrumental to individual flourishing, even if it is inherently inter-personal (forexample, distributive justice and peace):

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The specifically political common good is instrumental to make people good citizens. It is toassist individuals and families do well what they should be doing.

Other interpretations of Aquinas point in another direction. Pakaluk (2001) argues thatFinnis’s interpretation of the political common good as instrumental to individualflourishing is internally inconsistent. On the one hand, Finnis holds that the privatecommon good of marriage is inherently good. The union of two partners is not onlyinstrumental to each other’s well-being. On the other hand, he holds the view that thespecifically political common good is instrumental to the well-being of each of themembers of the political community. According to Pakaluk (2001, p. 64), Finnis has notgiven sufficient reasons for this way of distinguishing between the two:

If we say that one’s relationship to one’s spouse is somehow constitutive of a person’shappiness [or well-being], and thus not a mere means to it, why not the same of one’srelationship to fellow citizens generally?

While adjudication between rival interpretations of Aquinas is not the primarypurpose here, Finnis’s reading sits very oddly against the background of theAristotelian “civic humanist” tradition, of which the defining feature is the claim thathuman wellbeing is found in participation in the life of the polis and which findsexpression deeply in Aquinas, in the context of a Christian theological worldview. Civichumanism’s claim is that the common action generated by such participation is wherethe good life is experienced or enjoyed; the “public good” so understood is not onlyinstrumental to some other set of “private” goods. The shared life of the politicalcommunity is a good in itself. It is what “enable[s] people both to participate actively inbuilding up the common good and to share in the benefits of the common good”(Hollenbach, 2002, p. 201). Low political participation confines people to pursuing thegood they can in their private lives, limiting their freedom to determine the conditionsof the life they share together (Hollenbach, 2002, p. 100).

Conceiving the common good as the good of the specifically political communityraises the immediate question of what in practice the “specifically political” communityis. Is such political community defined by the borders of a nation-state? Addressingthis very important question would be the subject of another paper. What we wouldlike to highlight here is that, just as there is potential conflict among communities atdifferent levels about what constitute their common goods, there is also potentialconflict among what members of different “sovereign” political communitiesunderstand to be their common goods. Some authors, such as Lisa Cahill, areincreasingly aware of the limitations of conceiving the common good within the limitsof the political community defined by the boundaries of the nation-state. Cahill (2005,p. 54) argues that the concept of the common good articulated by Aquinas and theCatholic social tradition is outdated. She proposes the concept of the “global commongood” which she defines as “participation of all peoples in a diverse and differentiated,yet solidaristic and collaborative, world society”. Research on the concept of the globalcommon good is at a very incipient stage, and is an avenue of inquiry which is beyondthe scope of this paper.

We have given attention to Aquinas’s understanding because of his use of “publicgood” for the common good of the specifically political community. This has created,as underlined earlier, some confusion with the economic concept of public goods. Let us


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clarify the conceptual differences between public goods in the economic sense on theone hand and common goods, both micro and macro, on the other. We note four points.

First, in one important respect, public goods and common goods appear similar,namely that in the same sense in which public goods are non-rival, common goods arealso. Consider the examples of the common goods of orchestral performances and teamgames. So long as all of the participants in the common action that generates thecommon good sustain their participation in this, all participants benefit from the goodin question. It is not possible for some to consume some part of them so that less is leftfor others. This is because “consumption” is inseparable from “production”. Indeed,common goods appear to be more than non-rival, in the sense that their supply canincrease when people “consume” them, as goods such as friendship and mutual love ortrust show.

A second point can be made about the non-rivalry criterion, this time drawingattention to a contrast. Whereas the purity of public goods is limited by the potential forsaturation, that of common goods is threatened by a kind of opposite, non-participation.Their pure status is diminished to the extent that there is withdrawal from or distortionof participation in the common action that generates them. Adultery distorts marriagebecause, at least in the traditional Christian and Western understanding, the commongood of marriage is constituted in part by mutual practice of fidelity. Divorce that mightfollow adultery means intentional withdrawal by at least one spouse from theparticipation that generates the common good. This “micro” example indicatesthat common goods are vulnerable to non-participation just as public goods arevulnerable to saturation.

Third, in respect of the quality of non-excludability, there are senses in whichcommon goods both share and do not share this with public goods. The latter is themore obvious: common goods, whether micro or macro, are almost always defined byreference to a specific group of people – a couple, family, town, nation-state, etc. – andthey describe a good primarily for this group. Other people, therefore, are not onlyexcludable but are, in a sense, excluded. To put this differently, given that commongoods are generated by participation, non-participants cannot benefit from them inwhat might be called an “internal” or “immediate” way. However, the benefits of suchcommon goods can “spill over” to others and they often do so, for example, throughhospitality: some learn what good family life is like not through their own but throughbeing welcome in another. While common goods are in that obvious way notnon-excludable, for “internal” participants themselves they do share this quality ofpublic goods. When someone is able to participate – to play in the orchestra, to takepart in civic life – she benefits from the good (she cannot be excluded) because thegood is received in participation itself.

Evidently these contrasting features of common goods with respect tonon-excludability mean that definition of the boundaries of the “community” inwhich the common good inheres is important. While full exploration of the issues isbeyond the scope of this paper, we note two points. One is that at least some commongoods depend on specifying who may participate, for example, members of theorchestra or two teams of 11 players. The second point is potentially more importantfor international development: in the case of macro common goods, if the good is toexist at all, then enabling those who theoretically are members of the relevantcommunity to participate in practice is a prerequisite. While the concept of “social

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exclusion” that is prominent in social policy discourse can be read simply in terms ofexclusion from consumption, it can also be interpreted in terms of exclusion from thepossibility of benefiting from the common good. This suggests the importance of aconcept of necessary conditions for the possibility of participation in the common good.

Fourth, the typology of global public goods presented by Kaul et al. and outlinedabove includes in its category of “human-made global commons” goods such as“cultural heritage” and “norms and principles”. “Cultural life” undoubtedly denotes acommon good – it exists only as people participate in it. The degree of solidarity whichinheres in a given society, or what Kaul et al. call “equity” is another instance of a truecommon good. We suggest that “global public goods” such as scientific knowledge(which is a product of collective action) need to be carefully distinguished from“common goods” which inhere truly in action in common, rather than being its product.When participation in the common good of solidarity ceases, the common good ceasesto exist. When collective action to produce scientific knowledge ceases, knowledgeproduced remains available. Even if, as just indicated, there are ways in whichcommon goods have a non-excludable and non-rival character like neo-classical publicgoods, these two features are presented in terms of participation and generation of thegoods themselves and not in terms of consumption of a commodity. This suggests thatthe typology presented by Kaul et al. could be misleading in presenting some commongoods as public goods.

5. Concluding remarks: well-being and the common goodOne reason for drawing attention to the concept of the common good in currentdevelopment ethics is simply that widespread assumptions about human well-beingamong theorists and policy-makers lead to it being overlooked. A consequence is thatthe question of whether giving it attention in policy-making might lead to real benefitsfor people is not addressed. We suggest, in concluding, that the concept of the commongood is of non-negligible significance for international development.

Development ethics has tended in its underlying assumptions about humanwell-being to espouse, whether deliberately or by default, what can be called (followingTaylor, 1985) “atomism”. According to atomism, society is conceived as a large numberof distinct individuals, or atoms, each pursuing their own conception of the good life.They may see this in hedonist terms, as a matter of maximising pleasure, or inlibertarian terms, as a matter of maximising individual free choice, or in “expressivist”terms, as a matter of each individual giving full expression to what is unique withinhim or her. Such atomistic conceptions of human well-being combine well withrecognition of contemporary value pluralism: there is no longer a shared commonconception of the “good human life” let alone the “good polity” so people just have todetermine for themselves how they will live and what it means for themselves to live a“good life”. John Rawls’s theory of justice has been the most influential articulation of apolitical philosophy that appears to fit with atomism: endowed with a set of primarygoods, individuals are free to pursue the good life as they each conceive it, providedthey respect the two principles of justice[11].

Amartya Sen’s capability approach can be ranged alongside “atomistic” theories ofthe good in the sense that the end of development and political action is to expand thefreedoms that individuals have reason to choose and value. Development is a matterof giving more opportunities for each individual to live a life of his or her choice.


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This does not mean that other people’s lives do not enter into an individual’sconception of the good life; indeed other regarding concerns such as sympathy andcommitment can be central elements within what a person has reason to choose andvalue. This does not mean either that common goods such as family relationships donot enter as components of individual well-being (Sen, 2002). What this means is thatno teleological account of the good that societies ought to promote beyond (individual)freedom is offered. While Sen’s capability approach has focused on the well-being ofindividuals as the end of development, the common good tradition outlined in theprevious two sections leads to a conception of human freedom as oriented towards atelos which includes both the good of individuals and the good of the communities inwhich individuals live.

One could argue that Nussbaum’s (2000) capabilities approach is an attempt toanchor the “freedoms that people have reason to choose and value” within the telos ofthe good human life. However, her version, with her list of central human capabilities,continues to situate the telos of all human actions in the freedom of each individual tolive a life of her choice. One could also argue that there are traces of the common goodtradition within Sen’s capability approach itself. Dreze and Sen (2002) emphasise thecrucial importance of political participation as an intrinsic component of humanwell-being. Public debate is indeed central for articulating a society’s values andfleshing out the capabilities that people have reason to choose and value (Sen, 2004a, b).Despite these traces, the capability approach remains centred on the freedoms ofindividuals when it comes to assessing development and does not explicitlyacknowledge the goodness of life in common in its ethical evaluation of states ofaffairs[12].

Introducing the concept of global public goods leaves the current foundations ofdevelopment ethics unchanged. Global public goods are commodities whichcontribute to giving better opportunities for each individual to live a life shechooses to live. The global public good of climate stability enables individuals morefully to live lives of their choice with less risk of damage from extreme weather. Theglobal public good of scientific knowledge such as of the vaccine against tuberculosis,enables millions of people not to have their life shortened or damaged by the diseaseand so increases their choices. The global public good of peace gives opportunities topeople to live a life they have reason to choose and value without it being hamperedby conflict and its consequences. Such global public goods can be understood, then, asserving to improve the lives of individuals by expanding their opportunities to live alife of their choice.

The concept of the common good takes us beyond seeing the well-being of discreteindividuals as the only proper goal or telos of human action. It enables recognition thatthere are goods, including many that are non-trivial for human well-being, the benefitsof which may be received by people only in a common enterprise. Of course, the peoplewho benefit from such goods can be conceived of discretely. The point is that it is onlyin relationships, structured as necessary to enable the common action that “produces”common goods, that lives which benefit from such goods can be lived. In this way, thegood for each person can be conceived of only by reference to the good of the otherswith whom her good is possible. Analysis which focuses only on individual preferencesor choices cannot capture common goods because what makes them good is

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endogenous to the living of the life in which those goods are simultaneously generatedand enjoyed.

Seeing development ethics founded not only on the idea of the freedom of eachindividual to live a life she has reason to choose and value but also on the idea of thecommon good has different implications for our understanding of what governmentsshould do to promote human flourishing. In the former perspective, political authorityis limited to securing the right of individuals to choose and to enabling them to exercisetheir choice. For example, political authority should guarantee adequate provision offood so that people have the “capability to be well nourished should they so choose” (totake Sen’s well-known fasting monk vs starving child example). Nussbaum (2000) hasstrongly argued that the role of political authority is to give opportunities for eachindividual to exercise central human capabilities, should they choose so, but is not torequire them to do so. Political authority is seen as enabling and coordinating collectiveaction to secure public goods which are conducive to improving individual well-being.But collective action is not motivated by any other goal other than the instrumentalvalue of the public good for each individual’s life. Individuals willingly pay taxes tofinance an extensive road network and efficient refuse disposal service so that they canbetter live the life they choose to live. The community in which people live, such as thecity or nation-state, is instrumentally useful for the generation of goods sought byseparate individuals who consume goods together (bridges, sewage systems, thepolice). We have argued that, what international development crucially needs is notonly another category of commodities such as global public goods, understood assecuring or increasing the possibilities for individual choice, but also a conception ofthe good life in common.

Recognising the life in common of a city or nation as a species of good unavailableto anyone except by the irreducibly common action which makes it what it is raisesfurther questions. Among these are: how is the common good generated or nurturedand how can we ensure that the common life of a community is good and not bad?Addressing these questions would require again another paper. We emphasise herethat there is no guarantee that participation in common action will generate somethinggenuinely good. It might lead to bringing into power a government which might usenuclear weapons or which introduces unjust structures such as those of apartheid[13].Human actions are always fallible because they are human. However, that the“possibility of moral evil is inherent in man’s constitution”[14] does not nullify theclaim that the good for each of us is found and sustained in relationships, whether atthe level of the family, neighbourhood, country or the world, and that public policyought to recognize and nurture them if it is not to undermine human well-being.

Notes

1. The standard concept was introduced in economic theory by Samuelson in 1954. See Hudsonand Jones (2005) for a discussion of Samuelson’s concept of public goods, and the way votersperceive the degree of “publicness” of public goods.

2. For summaries of the literature on public goods, see Cornes and Sandler (1996), Cowen (1992)and Sandler (2001).

3. Dreze and Sen (2002, p. v) define public action as “policy and governance, on the one side,and cooperation, disagreement and public protest on the other”.


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4. For discussion of different modalities for financing global public goods, see Anand (2004)and Sandler (2002).

5. The term “common goods” is a synonym for what Taylor (1995) calls “irreducibly socialgoods”. We prefer to use the term “common good” instead in order to better render account ofthe linkages between a common good at the micro level and the common good at the macrolevel. This discussion owes much to Taylor’s work.

6. For a discussion on the linkages between migration and the common good, see Deneulin(2006a).

7. “Every state is a community of some kind, and every community is established with a viewto some good; for everyone always acts in order to obtain that which they think good. But, ifall communities aim at some good, the state or political community, which is the highestgood of all, and which embraces all the rest, aims at good in a greater degree than any other,and at the highest good” (Aristotle, 1995, 1252a1-6).

8. “Hence, it is evident that the state is a creation of nature, and that man is by nature a politicalanimal. [. . .] Now, that man is more of a political animal than bees or any other gregariousanimals is evident. Nature, as we often say, makes nothing in vain, and man is the onlyanimal who has the gift of speech. [. . .] The power of speech is intended to set forth [. . .] thejust and the unjust. And it is a characteristic of man that he alone has any sense of good andevil, of just and unjust, and the association of living beings who have this sense makes afamily and a state”(Aristotle, 1995, 1253a1-17). “Justice is the bond of men in states; for theadministration of justice, which is the determination of what is just, is the principle of orderin political society” (Aristotle, 1995, 1253a37-40).

9. Summa Theologica Qu. 58 art 7. ad secundum. For Aquinas on the common good, seeespecially Finnis (1998a).

10. Summa Theologica IIaIIae qu. 58 art 9 ad. 3.

11. Note that this does not imply that Rawls’s theory is dependent on or entails atomism.

12. Nussbaum’s version does so to some extent; but see Deneulin (2006b, chapters 2 and 3) on theabsence of a telos in both Sen and Nussbaum’s capability approach beyond individualfreedom.

13. For a discussion of unjust structures, see Deneulin et al. (2006).

14. “What is meant by calling man fallible? Essentially this: that the possibility of moral evil isinherent in man’s constitution” (Ricoeur, 1986, p. 133).

References

Anand, P.B. (2004), “Financing the provision of global public goods”, World Economy, Vol. 27No. 2, pp. 215-37.

Aquinas, T. (1981), Summa Theologica, Christian Classics, Allen, TX, Complete English edition,translated by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province.

Aristotle (1995) in Barnes, J. (Ed.), Politics, The Complete Works of Aristotle,Vol. 2, PrincetonUniversity Press, Princeton, NJ, Revised Oxford Translation.

Cahill, L.S. (2004), Bioethics and the Common Good, Marquette University Press, Milwaukee, WI.

Cahill, L.S. (2005), “Globalisation and the common good”, in Coleman, J.A. and Ryan, W.F. (Eds),Globalization and Catholic Social Thought: Present Crisis, Future Hope, St Paul University,Ottawa, pp. 42-54.

Cornes, R. and Sandler, T. (1996), The Theory of Externalities, Public Goods and Club Goods,Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Cowen, T. (1992), Public Goods andMarket Failures, Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, NJ.

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Deneulin, S. (2006a), “Individual well-being, migration remittances and the common good”,European Journal of Development Research, Vol. 18 No. 1, pp. 45-61.

Deneulin, S. (2006b), The Capability Approach and the Praxis of Development,Palgrave/Macmillan, Basingstoke.

Deneulin, S., Nebel, M. and Sagovsky, N. (2006), Transforming Unjust Structures: The CapabilityApproach, Kluwer/Springer Verlag, Dordrecht.

Dreze, J. and Sen, A. (2002), India: Development and Participation, Oxford University Press, Delhi.

Dupre, L. (1994), “The common good and the open society”, in Douglas, R.B. and Hollenbach, D.(Eds), Catholicism and Liberalism, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 172-95.

Finnis, J. (1998a), Aquinas: Moral, Political and Legal Theory, Clarendon Press, Oxford.

Finnis, J. (1998b), “Public good: the specifically political common good in aquinas”, in George,R.P. (Ed.), Natural Law andMoral Inquiry, Georgetown University Press, Washington, DC,pp. 174-209.

Gasper, D. (2002), “Fashion, learning and values in public management: reflections on SouthAfrican and international experience”, Africa Development, Vol. 27 Nos 3/4, pp. 17-47.

Geuss, R. (2001), Public Goods, Private Goods, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.

Hollenbach, D. (2002), The Common Good and Christian Ethics, Cambridge University Press,Cambridge.

Hudson, J. and Jones, Ph. (2005), “‘Public goods’: an exercise in calibration”, Public Choice,Vol. 124, pp. 267-82.

Kaul, I., Grunberg, I. and Stern, M.A. (Eds) (1999), Global Public Goods: International Cooperationin the 21st Century, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Maritain, J. (1946), The Person and the Common Good, University of Notre Dame Press, NotreDame, IN.

Nussbaum, M. (2000), Women and Human Development, Cambridge University Press,Cambridge.

Olson, M. (1965), The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups,Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, MA.

Pakaluk, M. (2001), “Is the common good of political society limited and instrumental?”, Reviewof Metaphysics, Vol. 55 No. 1, pp. 57-94.

Ricoeur, P. (1986), Fallible Man, trans. Charles A. Kelbley, Fordham University Press,New York, NY.

Sandler, T. (1992), Collective Action: Theory and Applications, Harvester, London.

Sandler, T. (2001), Economic Concepts for the Social Sciences, Cambridge University Press,Cambridge.

Sandler, T. (2002), “Financing international public goods”, in Ferroni, M. and Mody, A. (Eds),International Public Goods: Incentives, Measurement, and Financing, Kluwer, Dordrecht.

Sen, A. (1999), Development as Freedom, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Sen, A. (2002), “Symposium on development as freedom: response to commentaries”, Studies inComparative International Development, Vol. 37 No. 2, pp. 78-86.

Sen, A. (2004a), “Capabilities, lists and public reason”, Feminist Economics, Vol. 10 No. 3,pp. 77-80.

Sen, A. (2004b), “Elements of a theory of human rights”, Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 32No. 4, pp. 315-56.


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Taylor, C. (1985), “Atomism”, in Taylor, Ch. (Ed.), Philosophical Papers II: Philosophy and theHuman Sciences, Cambridge University Press, New York, NY, pp. 187-211.

Taylor, C. (1995), “Irreducibly social goods”, in Taylor, Ch. (Ed.), Philosophical Arguments,Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, pp. 127-45.

Wuyts, M. (1992), “Deprivation and public need”, in Wuyts, M., Mackintosh, M. and Hewitt, T.(Eds), Development Policy and Public Action, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 13-37.

About the authorsSeverine Deneulin is a Lecturer in International Development, Department of Economics andInternational Development, University of Bath. Severine Deneulin is the corresponding authorand can be contacted at: [email protected]

Nicholas Townsend is a Lecturer in Christian Ethics, South East Institute of TheologicalEducation/University of Kent, London. E-mail: [email protected]

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Destabilising identity structuresThe impacts of domestic and international

policy programs in the 1994 Rwanda genocide

Jerome Ballet, Francois-Regis Mahieu and Katia RadjaUniversity of Versailles Saint Quentin, Versailles, France

Abstract

Purpose – To analyze the impact of policy on people’s identities, and the conflicts which can resultfrom this.

Design/methodology/approach – The case of the Rwanda genocide is used to examine identitydisturbances related to policies.

Findings – Identity adjustments generated by policies can have devastating effects such as genocide.This raises the issue of national decision makers’ responsibilities as well as those of the internationalinstitutions advocating and enforcing such policies.

Research limitations/implications – This study implies that we need to consider the impacts ofpolicies on people’s identities and to extend such empirical research.

Practical implications – The issue of institutions’ responsibilities must be discussed, for bothnational and international institutions; and a precautionary principle in decision making must be setfor expert advisors.

Originality/value – The paper addresses the links between economic policies and their effects onindividual identity, an area which has not yet been examined in economic studies.

Keywords Public policy, Conflict, Social responsibility, Genocide, Rwanda

Paper type Conceptual paper

IntroductionThe question of individual identity is not new in economics but a growing number ofstudies have emerged recently (Akerlof and Kranton, 2000, 2005). However, the linksbetween economic policies and their effects on individual identity have not been yetexamined in economic studies. Our paper tackles this issue. It stresses the impacts ofpolicies on individuals’ identity structures and the effects of such a change in identitystructure. Consequently, it raises the question of policymakers’ responsibilities andproposes a social precautionary principle.

In the first section, we stress the idea of “identity structure”. Each person is definedby an identity structure comprising several elements ranked according tocircumstances. On the one hand, we consider that identity is arranged in severaldomains (family, work, friendship, etc.), forming a set of elements of the self; on theother hand, we assume that this set is structured and typically displays a stableranking among its elements.

In the second section, we illustrate our analysis with the example of Rwanda in thenineties. We underline that economic policies and programs may strongly affectidentity structure, so much so that people may shape and modify the ranking of the



The authors express their gratitude to Des Gasper and P.B. Anand for their comments onprevious versions of this paper.

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Vol. 34 No. 1/2, 2007pp. 37-52


DOI 10.1108/03068290710723354

elements determining their identity structure. In such circumstances, consequences canbe disastrous, as seen in the Rwanda experience.

In a third section, the vulnerability of the identity structure (and indeed of someother structures) leads us to argue in favour of a social precautionary principle whichwould be applied in economic policy programs. This principle involves the issue of theresponsibility of national and international institutions for dramatic experiences whichthey have helped to cause.

Identity and the structure of self-definitionAccording to Moldoveanu and Stevenson (2001), we find two divergent approachesin relation to the issue of personal identity. On the one hand, to use their terminology,an “Aristotelian” approach designates the person as a unity; on the other hand, a“Heraclitian” approach considers “Self” as a broken up entity, comprising a set ofelements without connection and in conflict. Between these two traditions, theseauthors try to solve the individual identity issue by reference to coordination[1].

In fact, the question of unity or multiplicity in individual identity has given rise todebates between these two approaches. According to Williams (1976), to speak aboutthe multiplicity of the “Self” is a nonsense, but this assertion seems to rest on anAristotelian presumption incorporated into language. Thus, on the contrary, otherauthors (De Sousa, 1976; Dennett, 1978; Hofstadter, 1981; Lycan, 1981) argue for theidea of a multiplicity of the “Self”. De Sousa (1976) illustrates this multiplicity througha simple and hierarchic structure of elements named “Homunculi”.

Economic theory has also been confronted with this question. Through theconception of a multiplicity of the “Self” Steedman and Krause (1986) consider that theindividual optimizes his behaviour and solves his “Self” conflict in the same way thathe optimizes his choices by selection of a basket of goods. But most of the debate hasdealt with the question of the unity of the person and of the “Self” across time inrelation with the individual’s rationality. Elster (1977) interprets for instance theexistence of time preference as a form of “akrasia”. Hence, he considers that rationality,in terms of economic meaning, is called into question since choices made in a givenperiod can be later reconsidered in a hypothetical way and can cause regrets. In thisperspective, Ainslie (1982, 1986) underlines the dichotomy of priorities between theshort and the long-term. Thaler and Sefrin (1981) see the issue in terms of “self-control”.Then they analyze the achieved strategies by individuals to solve the tensions theyface concerning the coherence of choices across time. For Ballet and Radja (2005),identity changes occurring over time are analyzed with reference to emotional shocksand changes which affect individuals.

More recently, Ballet and Bazin (2006) adopt a static vision on the multiplicity ofidentity and develop a model of tensions within identity schemes. Following thismodel, our objective is to conceive identity as a multiplicity of ranked elements.However, two differences must be noted. First, the Ballet-Bazin model focuses on themotivations of economic agents and their links with the person’s choices, reflectingfinally his/her identity. Here in contrast, we do not emphasize the motivations issueand we conceive identity through a set of objective and subjective elements to whichthe person refers in order to be identified. In other words, the person is characterized bya set of objective and subjective elements which are used for defining an identity. Also,the previous model is static and analyses identity tensions for a given time. We insist

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here instead on identity transformations across time, through changes occurring in theranking of elements defining identity. We propose an approach that treats identity as aranking of characteristics.

Let us consider that the person may be represented by a set of characteristics (V):

V ¼ {c1; . . . ; ci; . . . ; cn}

These characteristics are either of an objective nature such as the age and sex, or of amore subjective nature such as the fact of being selfish or not, risk-oriented orrisk-averse, tolerant or intolerant, etc. We underline two aspects. Firstly, thesecharacteristics are defined on domains. Secondly, and linked with the first aspect, thesecharacteristics allow the person to become identified with other persons and so to forma community of membership (Tonnies, 1944). So, a person will feel belonging to orbecome identified with the old persons community, women, and/or other forms ofcommunity. Of course we use the term “community” in the broad sense as a group ofindividuals recognizing themselves mutually. Moreover, the community is perceivedas a subjective group with unstable borders since some characteristics can be used ornot by any potential member to become identified. So, we do not consider thecommunity as an objective entity defined by an outside look, but as a subjective groupof individuals having a feeling of membership. In this intersubjectivity, the type ofaltruism is a key factor: altruism is related to the picture of everyone by others and thepicture of others by myself (Ballet and Mahieu, 2003a). These forms of altruism can bevolatile: depending upon events, they can be benevolent, malevolent or neutral, rangingacross a spectrum. So, in the identity structure we find both structural (or permanent)characteristics and conjunctural (or temporary) features

Because of the multiplicity of characteristics, every person will feel more or lessclose to some others, and therefore, becomes identified more or less with severalcommunities of membership. These multiple memberships can bring no problem, butin a lot of cases, as soon as the individual comes to make choices, identity tensionscome out (for instance, in spouse selection or choices of transfers, e.g. altruisticbehaviour, among several groups). So every person comes to establish a ranking ofthese memberships according to how (s)he weights the characteristics.

Let us consider the person k, and his/her ranked set of weightings of characteristics:

ckj s ck

n s · · · s cki

where cki is the characteristic i of individual k. Note that these characteristics are

individual and can be arranged according to community affiliations that canbe multiple for a given period of time. Obviously, an individual can simultaneouslyvalue several characteristics in the same way.

This ranking gives an identity structure. We argue that this ranking can berestructured when changes in environment and circumstances occur. In otherwords, the individual’s identity through his set of memberships is not frozen acrosstime. Some characteristics or memberships strongly weighted in a given period canbe downgraded compared to other characteristics or memberships in the nextperiod.


39

For instance, consider that the person k in period t has this ranking:

ck;tn s ck;t

j s · · · s ck;ti

and in period t þ 1 a new ranking:

ck;tþ1n s ck;tþ1

i s · · · s ck;tþ1j

How and why do such changes occur? We undertake such an analysis in the followingsection for the specific case of Rwanda at the beginning of the 1990s.

Identity disturbances and conflicts: the case of RwandaGenocide begins with the reconsideration of identity. A person’s sense of self isembedded in a social context. Seeing oneself through the eyes of the others can beconsidered as a variety of altruism in the common sense. For instance, created signs – ayellow star in Europe, a blue scarf in Cambodia, differentiated housing (ghettos) – mayrefer to characteristics, even imaginary characteristics (persons’ height and religiousorigins in Rwanda and Burundi). In most of the cases identities are re-built andcontrolled by the State to marginalize some social groups.

In 1994, the genocide of Rwanda caused the death of nearly 800,000 persons in arecord time of three months. The ethnic conflict left stigmata for numerous generations.The identification with one camp or other is marked for a long time, giving definitely anidentity for individuals. How could identity membership lead to such genocide?

The simplest thesis considers ethnic membership as an objective datum and as anessential variable for understanding the conflict. In this exogenous vision of ethnocideand ethnic groups, economic fragmentation is postulated as if ethnic groups had a realexistence. For instance, Easterly and Levine (1997) have constructed an indicator ofethnic fragmentation on the basis of data published by Soviet geographers. So anindicator may be conceived with the number of ethnic groups and the population of eachethnic group. Then regressions may be done between the number of ethnic groups andthe economic performance. According to these authors, ethnic diversity helps to explainthe relatively poor economic performances in Africa. The economic analysis of conflicts(Collier and Hoeffler, 1998) has shown faint relations between the numbers of ethnicgroups and the frequency of conflicts. Under certain assumptions, risks of conflicts canbe calculated according to the number of ethnic groups. Bates (2000) points out forinstance that this risk follows a U curve in relation to the number of ethnic groups.

We adopt some arguments which aim at rejecting this type of analysis. Ethnicidentity is only one element among others in the definition of the individual’s identity.In the case of Rwanda, one of the mysteries is related to rugo, the basic economic unitwhich can eventually be subdivided into several rugos according to the naturalincrease of the initial family. Unions could have been tied with persons who issuedfrom different ethnic groups. The community of blood is coupled with a community ofmembership, this membership being a representation of the person by the others[2].

Our analysis tries to understand how the ethnic variable has been weighted inpersons’ identity structure. As De Lame (1996) and Verwimp (2003) underline, ethnicityplayed no role in the daily activities of the peasants in the past. As discussed above, weconsider the identification of persons as a subjective process. Since, the 1930s, theintroduction of the identity card in Rwanda explicitly assigned an ethnic origin andconduced towards a quasi-objective acceptance of an ethnic membership

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categorization. But even in that case, ethnicity is not an objective datum, it is only thecultural product of a policy. We need also an analysis of the use of the ethnic variable inthe genocide.

We consider that ideological factors highlight the ethnicity variable in the identitystructure so that this structure is V ¼ {c1,. . . c E,. . . cn} with cE the ethniccharacteristic. At the same time, we also judge that ideological factors are not sufficientto understand the key role of this variable in the genocide. In other words, ideologicalfactors do not by themselves explain the predominance of the ethnicity variable in theidentity structure during the 1990s:

ck;1990E s ck;1990

3 s · · · s ck;19901

We highlight the role of economic factors in the excessive valorization of the ethnicityvariable.

We examine two questions. The first one concerns the factors which haveinfluenced the change of the identity structure. The second deals with the issue thatindividuals were finally influenced by this variable to kill their neighbours. These twoquestions are distinct because the ethnic variable, or any other variables, can becomepredominant in the identity structure without resulting in such a cataclysm. Uvin(1998), for example, offers a detailed study of the impacts of development policiesimplemented by NGOs and the international community. According to him, thesepolicies had in most cases some consequences for peasants, of humiliation andfrustration. Yet while his work is rich in terms of analyses, it does not sufficientlyelucidate the question of participation in genocide. The link from frustration andhumiliation to crime needs to be examined.

Our objective is not to review all the factors having contributed to the genocide. It isrecognised that the history of the ethnicisation started in the distant past and wastransformed into conflicts and recurrent civil acts of violence leading to a real civil warin the 1980s (Eriksson, 1996). We focus on the economic factors in order to throw lighton the responsibilities of politics and institutions in development.

The economic factors that contributed to conflictGenocide emerged in a conducive economic context. We posit the conjunction of threemain factors. This does not mean that other factors did not play an important role. Butwe consider that the three factors we introduce had in most cases the effect of changingthe position of the ethnicity variable in the rank-order in the identity structure. In thefollowing section, we introduce elements that contributed to genocide, principallylinked to policies encouraged by international institutions, but that did not, in our view,contribute directly in the building of the identity structure, but rather came todestabilize and worsen the already dangerous situation.

The first factor is demographic-economic. It concerns the scarcity of land and moreparticularly the density of population. Bonneux (1994) and King (1994) consider thatoverpopulation is the determinant of conflicts. According to these authors, the densityof population was so strong that the youngest could not have access to land, whichwould have led them to extreme violence in their behaviour. Such analysis remainshowever very summary. Andre (2005) offered a more detailed view of the problem. Shealso underlines that land becomes comparatively scarce in comparison with labour. Forinstance, in the area which she more specifically studied, the medium size of plots


41

passed from 9.4 ares per capita in 1988 to 8.2 ares in 1993[3]. In this context of scarcity,she underlines that land management was becoming more individual and private. Apart of the population – those to whom in the past the use of a plot of land was grantedin exchange for their work – was becoming more and more excluded. Access to landbecame expressed more and more through the claim of exclusive rights. The socialsystem produced then the exclusion of persons who had experienced in the past asecurity through occupation of lands (Andre and Platteau, 1998). These processes ofexclusion did not only affect young persons. As Andre underlines, there was a doublerestriction in reference to the lineage of the persons. A first restriction took place inrelation to the members who did not belong to the lineage, notably foreigners andimmigrants. Then, within a lineage, the rights of access were restricted to the membersconsidered to be legitimate by the lineage. These processes of exclusion affected youngpersons, but also disabled persons, women and particularly widows (Andre 1996).

According to Andre (2005), in this context conflicts over access to land increased,fuelled by the development of a land market and by the use of rights written in formallaw rather than in the customary law. As she underlines, of the totality of landstransferred, the purchases of land passed from 29 per cent in 1988 to 40 per cent in1993, meaning that transfers by customary law decreased. This increase in purchasescorresponds to an increase in distress sales occurring during consumption orproduction shocks and when households had to face a series of unanticipated expenses.The formal and written law became then a weapon for a well-informed populationhaving favoured relations with the administration or the judicial institutions. So, somelands moved under the control of rural or urban elites or under the control of personsclose to these elites.

Progressively, trust and reciprocity in terms of exchange and in social relationsbecame eroded, leaving in place a mistrust and a more general social tension. In such acontext, migrations undoubtedly exercised an additional pressure. For DeLame (1996),the ethnic variable which had earlier played no role in daily relations betweenindividuals acquired a marked importance with the arrival of Hutu migrants fromBurundi in 1988.

The second factor concerns the changes in altruism and the destruction of socialcapital by the implementation of agricultural policies orientated first to coffeeproduction, then to tea. Rwanda depends strongly on its agriculture which represents40 per cent of GDP. The exports of coffee and tea represented 80 per cent of totalexports at the beginning of the nineties (Marysse et al., 1994). Agricultural growthremained nonetheless deficient in comparison with the population growth (Maton,1994). The national agricultural policy based on coffee experienced two differentperiods. The first period included the boom of 1976-1979 which coincided with acomparatively high international price of coffee. The producers were expecting someguarantees of a fixed purchase price. The substantial difference between the price paidto the producers and the international price was hoarded by the government ofHabyarimana. From 1986, we have the second period, a period of decline marked by theliberalisation of the international coffee market and the abolition of the system ofquotas. The production of coffee was then supported financially by subsidies to theproducers. In 1987, 3 billion Rwanda francs (RWF) were injected in the form ofsubsidies, 1.6 billion in 1988, 2 billions in 1989, 4.6 billions in 1990, 1 billion in 1991,2 billions in 1992 and 1 billion in 1993 (Tardiff-Douglin et al., 1993; Verwimp, 2003).

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The Habyarimana regime encouraged coffee disproportionately in order toguarantee its own authority (Verwimp, 2003). This policy discouraged other forms ofagriculture, notably the banana. The Habyarimana government tried to reducestrongly the cultivation of banana because it constituted a rival culture to coffee interms of allocation of land[4]. Contrary to coffee, it was very difficult for thegovernment to control the production of banana and to earn payoffs that couldhave been appropriated because the banana production was essentially intended forthe local market. Moreover, Bart (1993) shows that the banana and particularly bananabeer played a considerable role for the peasants. Banana beer constituted a notnegligible part of income in a situation of survival, and skins of bananas were used tocover the soil as natural fertilisers. Besides, the cultivation of banana was less labourintensive than coffee, and gave peasants more time for other social activities.Particularly, banana cultivation is associated with strong social ties and bonds.Banana beer through its production, its distribution and its consumption, constitutes aculture and a way of life related to a strong social bonding process. From this point ofview, agricultural policies mainly orientated towards coffee production had adestructive impact on social relations and reinforced antagonisms leading to conflicts.Such a point of view was expressed by Mahieu (2001) and Ballet and Mahieu (2001) forthe case of Burundi. We can apply this analysis for Rwanda. Agricultural policy basedon coffee not only affected the incomes of the peasants, it also destroyed the socialstructures, thus favouring the increasing reference to the ethnicity variable.

The third factor concerns the policy of purchasing loyalty to the Habyarimanagovernment in a depressed economic context. From an analysis of policiesimplemented by Habyarimana from 1990 till 1994, Desforges (1999) defends the ideathat the Rwandan elite had knowingly chosen genocide as a political strategy to stay inpower. Verwimp (2003) considers also that the political system had opted for genocideto solve these difficulties. This author provides an analysis of the loyalty supply to thegovernment (Hutu) and an analysis of the repression towards others (Tutsi).

Until 1990, the government had encouraged the loyalty of the peasants through apolicy of a fixed purchase price for coffee. When the market crisis occurred for coffee,the government continued through subsidies to maintain the production. In 1990,Rwanda recorded the highest subsidies. From this period, subsidies declined verydistinctly. In 1990, the price paid to the producers passed from 125 RWF/kilo to100 RWF/kilo. One bag of coffee allowed Rwandan peasants in 1990 to buy only half ofwhat they could buy in 1980 (Tardiff-Douglin et al., 1993 quoted by Verwimp, 2003). Inspite of risks and repression, this economic situation led to the destruction of coffeeplants by peasants (Willame, 1995; Uvin, 1998). Loyalty that had been bought at highcost declined seriously.

To escape from this situation and to maintain power and authority, theHabyarimana government reorientated agriculture towards the production of tea.Policymakers did not hesitate to move thousands of households from their lands toimplement the cultivation of tea in certain areas[5]. Especially, the government usedthe ethnicity variable to justify the difficulties.

Politicians tried to retain Hutu loyalty by the grant of various rewards. Theserewards not being able to be purely monetary (through the prices paid to the peasants),the price of loyalty took other material forms such the appropriation of Tutsi lands,cash theft from the victims, the slavery of Tutsi women, free beer distribution, etc.


43

(Desforges, 1999; Verwimp, 2003). At the same time, the enemy (Tutsi) were to besubjected to the worst of repressions. These policies provoked a stronger identificationof individuals as belonging to specific groups (the loyal and the enemies) and generateda large number of civil conflicts.

These three factors exercised a joint force favouring the identification of personswith a particular group, destroying the former social relations and reinforcingantagonism. The ethnic identity variable which had before been unimportant in dailyrelations, became the central element governing the relations between individuals.

Why did identity become a cause of violent crime?We must ask the question: how could persons who until then lived together with theirneighbours have suddenly participated in such bloody conflicts? We saw that theidentification with a camp could have been developed in a supportive economiccontext. But what about the participation of the persons in genocide? We canacknowledge in the other individual a person different from ourselves, but how can weexplain the behaviour of killing this other person? Certainly, the policies of loyalty andrepression set up by the Habyarimana government produced many crimes and acts ofviolence. But in a context of collective action, as in the case of genocide, it is necessaryto find compelling reasons to act, for otherwise free rider behaviour undermines thecollective action. The analysis which we provide is based on rational choice, so that theparticipation in genocide is the result of a rational (reasoned) behaviour and not a“temporary madness”. Two arguments are examined.

The first argument deals with the logic of fright. Reyntjens (1996) and Lemarchand(2002) stressed the role of fright in the behaviour of Hutus. They show the rise of frightfollowing the putsch in Burundi in 1993 where the Tutsi army killed the Hutupresident. This event in the neighbouring country caused the growing radicalisation ofthe Hutu leaders in Rwanda and produced a shock in the Rwandan population. Themurder of President Habyarimana in 1994 then provoked an immediate reaction of theextremists in order to protect their lives. These behaviours are rational because theyrefer to premeditated acts in a given situation. The fright of the Hutu population facingthis event in terms of expectations for a political change in their disfavour, would haveencouraged the Hutu mass in the massacre of the Tutsi population. For this reason,Lemarchand (2002) qualifies the Rwandan genocide as a “retributive” genocide ratherthan an “ideological” genocide.

This point of view is not shared by Verwimp (2003). According to him, genocideremains basically ideological, even if it is related to the logic of fright. But according tothis author, the fright of the Hutu population is not a fright towards perceived orexpected predatory behaviours by the Tutsi population, but a fright of the Hutustowards the extremists within their own group. The risk of sanction by the elite andextremists of their own group hung over the Hutu population if they did not participatein genocide. So, Hutus would have been led to kill Tutsis. In that case, fright alsoappears as an incitation for acting, but its origin is strongly different. The fact thatduring genocide, the category of moderate Hutus was also victim of the extremistHutus (Eriksson, 1996) pleads in favour of this interpretation.

This last interpretation gives a special place to conformity behaviour by thepopulation in relation to norms. Verwimp (2003) underlines that the organisers ofgenocide did everything in their power to persuade the Hutus that killing was the norm

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and that this norm was dominant. By the use of propaganda on the radio, of violentdisplays on streets, and sanctions regarding the persons who did not want to joingenocide, the organisers of genocide diffused the message of duty for Hutus. Inaccordance with the bandwagon effect (Gupta, 1990; Kuran, 1995), the more that thenumber of persons joining a massacre increases, the more the norm to kill is obviousand the stronger the risk of sanctions linked to deviance regarding that norm. Then itbecomes rational for every person to conform to the norm and to participate actively ingenocide. The bandwagon effect encourages every person to prove his responsibilitytowards his own group even if responsibility implies crime. This brings us to oursecond argument.

The second argument deals with commitment. Bouvier (2004) and Ballet andMahieu (2005) defend the idea that the participation of ordinary persons in dreadfulacts such as crimes and ethnic conflicts can be explained by the necessity of coherencewith oneself in relation to one’s obligations or opinions. Individuals are then stronglyinvolved in criminal acts which they carry out with rationality in order to remain inconformity with their commitments. This argument is associated with two theories ofcommitment: the theory of commitment to oneself of Kiesler (1971) and the theory ofjoint commitment of Gilbert (1996, 2004).

The theory of commitment in relation to oneself underlines that persons who engagein insignificant acts may be led to commit, for reasons of coherence with their initialcommitment, and, consequently, with their identity, acts with more seriousconsequences. Being engaged in the first act, no matter how trivial it might be,pushes the persons to maintain their commitment in conformity with the first act, eventhough the subsequent acts are no longer insignificant at all. In a way this is a questionof not going back on one’s decision in relation to the standpoint one has adopted in thefirst instance, and thereby of maintaining one’s identity. Hence, Bouvier (2004)suggests this as a reason for ordinary persons having collaborated with the Nazis, oryoung Europeans or Americans having joined the ranks of radical Islamism inAfghanistan.

The theory of joint commitment, in turn, stipulates that the person recognisesbeliefs that are personal in the sense that the person accepts them and freely submitsherself to accepting them, even though the beliefs are not genuinely her own.According to the principle of “silence means consent” the persons are induced to accepta number of collective beliefs. In so far as these persons do not express theirdisagreement with these beliefs, they finally feel committed and conform to them. Theythereby accept and conform to their party’s or a leader’s decisions, in spite of nothaving openly expressed their opinion on these decisions. They feel themselves jointlycommitted by virtue of the absence of an initial rejection and feel an obligation towardstheir reference group. For the sake of responsibility in relation to the group, they canthus be driven to commit criminal acts. As a consequence, moral commitment cantranslate into criminal engagement.

In both approaches, the commitment of the person, her feelings of responsibility andcoherence – be it in relation to herself or in relation to her community – can push her toengage in criminal acts. At this stage, altruism figures as an increasing factor in socialcrisis, the picture of others changing very rapidly. Malevolent forms of altruism canrapidly grow. A population issued from the same rugo may divide itself until the onset


45

of murder. This can be seen as a foolish “passion” but has in fact emerged “rationally”in terms of each individual’s decisionmaking.

The fact that individuals participate rationally (i.e. had conscious reasons toparticipate) in genocide does not erase the responsibility of institutions whichrecommended during this period severe economic structural adjustment policies inRwanda and thereby fuelled those reasons. This issue will be examined in the nextsection.

The responsibilities of political leaders and policymakers and the principleof social precautionEriksson et al. (1996), in their synthesis of the international evaluation of emergencyassistance to Rwanda after the genocide, underline and insist on the responsibility ofthe international institutions in the genocide[6]. In particular, they note that strongsigns indicated that a climate and structures were present that could encouragegenocide and political crimes. But “the international community” largely ignored thesesigns. It showed lack of foresight and of responsibility, and by its hesitancy also gave afavourable signal to those who got ready to perpetrate the genocide. Eriksson et al. alsounderline that once the genocide started, the international community still showedhesitation that contributed to the development of the phenomenon. The internationalcommunity was culpable for not intervening not only before genocide but also duringthe genocide.

Eriksson et al. (1996, p. 11) consider that “the essential failures of the response of theinternational community to the genocide in Rwanda were (and continue to be)political”. This should not be read as putting aside the purely economic responsibilitiesof the international institutions and stressing only their political responsibilities. Onthe contrary, we argue here that the genocide arose in a conducive economic contextwhich was partly due to economic policies recommended by the internationalinstitutions. Thus, international institutions have not only a political responsibility butalso an economic responsibility in the Rwandan conflict. They failed to see or ignoredthe fragility and vulnerability of the social networks in terms of the volatility ofaltruism and the ability to rebuild ethnicity. This fragility of persons is linked to theirsocial agency and frees the person to use a negative capability (such as the capabilityto murder).

The question of responsibilityThe responsibility of the institutions constitutes a delicate issue since a certain “actingunity” should be accorded them, i.e. a personality, or else it is impossible to charge tothem any responsibility. At best the responsibility will be carried by the leaders or thehead of these institutions or decision makers. But for the individuals in the decisionprocess, responsibility is not synonymous with culpability. In many law cases, this lineof demarcation was used. In the case of Papon in France, Maurice Papon, a formerPrefet (Higher State Civil Servant) during the period of Vichy in France, had signedacts of deportation. His defence underlined the fact that while Papon had not donenothing he had only applied and implemented the rules, instructions and the directivesfrom the State institution. In that case, while Papon could have been accorded a certainresponsibility, he would not be guilty of crimes. Thus, while culpability impliesresponsibility, the reverse is not true.

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Karlsson (2007) distinguishes three categories of criteria for allocating governanceresponsibility: culpability, capacity and concern. Contrary to the culpability principle,the capacity principle rests on the capacity to address the problem. The concernprinciple is based on motivations concerning actions against suffering.

The criterion of culpability is certainly most difficult to implement in a contextmarked by a long chain of causality. It is indeed necessary to define where theresponsibility starts and where it ends within a whole set of interdependent actions. Inthe case of genocide, one possibility is to assign responsibility only to the people whocommitted crimes of violence. And as we underlined previously their responsibilityseems clear since they acted with pure rationality. However, their acts result also froma deliberated policy promoted and pursued by a powerful leadership group. Desforges(1999) and Verwimp (2003) support indeed that the dominant political elite deliberatelychose the the genocide to solve its problems. The policies of purchase of loyalty and ofrepression were both essential vectors. But it must not be forgotten that thedestabilizing context was also the product of the policies favoured and even imposedby the international institutions. In this perspective, it is also possible to determine acertain culpability of the international institutions if we can prove that their policiescontributed significantly to the situation.

Economic policies recommended and implemented by the international institutionsIf the responsibility of the domestic political leaders is obvious, the internationalinstitutions have also a share of responsibility because of the policies they implementedand which contributed to destabilize the identity structure of the individuals. Inparticular, the structural adjustment programme imposed by the IMF and adopted byRwanda in 1990 had two critical impacts for the economy that destroyed an alreadyextremely vulnerable system.

First of all, the reduction of funds injected into the Rwandan economy (which wasan instrument of pressure employed by the international community to supposedlypromote democracy in the country), and the budget restrictions imposed as a conditionof aid, were translated into a net reduction of subsidies to the coffee producers andthreatened the guaranteed price policy. In 1986 for a farmer 1 kg of beans could buy1 kg of coffee, whereas in 1993 1 kg of beans only bought 1/3 kg of coffee (Verwimp,2003). The policy of purchasing loyalty towards Habyarimana through agriculturalpricing lost its force and led on to repression and ethnic scapegoating.

Second, the double devaluation enforced by the IMF in order to relaunch the exportproducts, notably coffee, compensated only partly for the fall of the coffee pricefollowing the liberalisation of the market imposed by the international institutions(Marysse et al., 1994). This devaluation had on the contrary a predominantly perverseeffect by reducing the purchasing power of the peasants, contributing to a growingimpoverishment (Andre 1997). For instance, the value of food exports in millions of USdollars was 104.7 in 1989 and only 88.6 in 1990; and GDP per capita fell in US dollarterms by 40 per cent in 1989-1993 (Eriksson et al., 1996. p. 15). This impoverishmentstrongly exacerbated the unequal distribution of land, via the operation of the landmarket favouring the rural and urban elite (Maton, 1994). The consumption habitsdisplayed by this elite were simply inaccessible for the rest of the population (Uvin,1998; Andre 2005), leading to feelings of frustration and envy, favouring malevolenceamong individuals.


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Both the elements which we have just seen underline the non-neutrality of policiesimposed by the international institutions and the role they played in genocide. Theydestabilised an initially very fragile situation that was already under high pressure.The responsibility of institutions cannot be restricted to political aspects ofintervention and non-intervention but also concerns the economic aspects, where therewas massive preceding intervention via the punitive enforced structural adjustment.

Responsibility of experts and principle of precautionThe strong responsibility of the international institutions, through their policies, leadsus to propose three principles: a principle of culpability of the “experts” andpolicymakers, a principle of precaution and a principle of sanction.

The first principle deals with the culpability of experts and policymakers. Asunderlined by Mahieu (2000), if the responsibility of the economists and internationalpolicymakers through their policy recommendations and their impacts on decisionmakers is obvious, yet it receives too little attention. Unfortunately, if the expertrespects the dogma of his institution and expounds the supposed coherence of itsprogram, he does not risk being worried and especially because he is concerned onlywith economic aggregates. Happiness and unhappiness of populations is not includedas being the problem. However, consequences of the populations’ choices aresometimes dramatic, as was the case for Rwanda. For this reason DeMartino (2005)criticizes the policies that were implemented in developing countries in the 1990s andargues for a professional ethics code for economists based on two principles. The firstone is “do no harm”. It means economists have to give great attention and weight to thepotential harm done by any policy. This first principle permits us to recognize theculpability of economists when potential harm is not taken into account. The secondone is the precautionary principle: precautions should be taken to avoid or mitigatepossible harm. It consists in an enlargement of the principle of precaution associatedwith the social consequences of any economic policy and was entitled for this reasonthe “social precautionary principle” (Ballet and Mahieu, 2003a,b).

According to Ballet et al. (2005) the overall implication is to examine all the likelyand possible consequences (positive and negative) of policies. It pleads for the choice ofa maximin criterion in economic decisions, at least when there is a significant chance ofmajor negative consequences (Ballet et al., 2005; DeMartino, 2005). It means that onceall the significantly likely negative consequences of the comparative scenario areestablished, political decision should choose the option which will produce the leastbad possible consequences. The maximin criterion could be viewed as excessive, forinstance in cases where there is a one in a billion chance of the major negativeconsequences. But if the negative consequence is the death of people this criterionseems reasonable because a compensation principle could not be applied. The dead willnever come back and monetary compensation has no real sense. In other cases, wecould imagine an application of the maximin criterion in terms of a lexicographic orderwith a ranking of situations from those with the worst consequences through to thebest. Then responsibility leads to a sharing of responsibilities between stakeholderswho contribute to consequences of the policy. As Ballet and Mahieu (2003b) underline,the social precautionary principle implies also an ethics of discussion and the priorityof research on the likely impacts under alternative scenarios.

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Third is the sanction principle. It is necessary to give a sense of responsibility to theexperts and policymakers by providing procedures for punishment in cases of seriousnegligence. These procedures have to guarantee sanctions that match theresponsibilities of each person. It will probably encourage more prudence in terms ofdecisions and a more serious valuation of consequences of policies. An ethics codewithout sanction would be unenforceable. Sanctions refer for instance to exclusion fromthe economists community, monetary compensation to victims, penal sanctions, etc.

ConclusionThe genocide of Rwanda can be analysed as the result of a domestic political strategy,but at the same time as the consequence of disastrous economic policies imposed byinternational organisations on fragile and vulnerable societies.

We argued first that identity does not have a single dimension but is made fromvarious elements classified by every person. But this ranking can be changed underpolitical pressure. If genocide is partly the product of politics, then policies’ effects onindividuals’ identity structures must be seriously taken into account. Thedestabilisation of social states comes from disturbances in these identity structuresprovoked by policies and especially their impact on altruist characteristics. The case ofRwanda illustrates this phenomenon well. The ethnicity variable, even when imposedby the ideology of the dominant politics, could not have been implemented as the onlyvariable of inter-recognition between persons. But the national economic policies likethe purchase of loyalty, amplified initially and then destabilized by the internationalorganizations’ policies, profoundly favoured the crisis and contributed directly to thegenocide.

In a context where identity tensions had become intense, the recommendations ofthe international institutions contributed directly to the phenomenon of genocide,helping to drive the pressure towards explosion point. By not taking into account thestresses on the vulnerable Rwandan society, they destabilised and worsened thesituation.

We must tackle the responsibilities of policymakers and decision makers, especiallythe international community and international experts, and think about rules andsanctions to be adopted so as to avoid new disasters. The criterion of the socialmaximin appears here as a pertinent criterion in high-risk situations. Expectationsmay be made concerning the impacts of social policies, for instance on enhancingcapabilities in a vulnerable society. Using a social precaution principle requires that wesimulate the possible impacts of development policies and discuss how to shareresponsibilities.

Notes

1. For a different approach, see Lester (2003).

2. The identification of a person by others leads to self-identification in this kind of society asthis common sentence shows: “I do not know whom I am, but others know and wonder why Iam still alive”.

3. One are is a hundred square metres.

4. For Pottier (1993), the government of Habyarimana also attempted to eliminate the bananaculture because they feared informal rituals in the banana plantations.


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5. According to the NGO Human Right Watch, present and future gains from tea plantations(Mulindi region) were surrendered to Egypt for an amount of 6 million US Dollars. Thisincome would have been used for arming.

6. Eriksson et al. drew this conclusion from the multi-volume Joint Evaluation of EmergencyAssistance to Rwanda, commissioned by the Scandinavian governments. They insisted ontwo aspects: firstly, significant risks of conflicts and genocide existed but internationalinstitutions did not draw attention to them. Secondly, when genocide started, theinternational authorities did not react and waited for a long time before deciding anyintervention.

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Ballet, J. and Mahieu, F.R. (2003b), Ethique economique, Ellipses, Paris.

Ballet, J. and Mahieu, F.R. (2005), “Responsibility agency achievement as a recognition ofpersonal identity”, paper presented at the Workshop on Identities and Capabilities,St Edmund’s and Robinson Colleges, University of Cambridge, Cambridge.

Ballet, J. and Radja, K. (2005), “Emotional capabilities as identity roots”, paper presented at theWorkshop on Identities and Capabilities, St Edmund’s and Robinson Colleges, Universityof Cambridge, Cambridge.

Ballet, J., Dubois, J-L. and Mahieu, F-R. (2005), L’autre developpement. Un developpementsocialement soutenable, L’Harmattan, Paris.

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Further reading

Vidal, Cl. (1991), Sociologie des passions (Cote d’Ivoire, Rwanda), Karthala, Paris.

Corresponding authorJerome Ballet can be contacted at: [email protected]

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Education in pre- and post-conflictcontexts: relating capability and

life-skills approachesJean-Luc Dubois and Milene Trabelsi

Institute of Research for Development,Centre of Economics and Ethics for Environment and Development,

University of Versailles St Quentin-en-Yvelines, France

Abstract

Purpose – Conflicts, especially when they turn into civil war or genocide, have irreversibleconsequences for people. The impact is not only economic as shown by several quantitative studies,but also social and ethical since it deeply affects the mind and behaviour of both current and futuregenerations. The main issue is, therefore, to avoid the eruption of such conflicts, in both pre andpost-conflict situations, by implementing preventive approaches. The purpose of this paper is toaddress this issue.

Design/methodology/approach – Even if macro-analyses bring up a series of objective causalfactors to explain the reasons of uprisings and conflicts, we insist on the importance of people’smicro-attitudes when confronted by such events. The freedom of the agent to react appropriately inorder to generate peace, and his responsibility towards the other, become nowadays essential and haveto be improved by appropriate innovative education programmes.

Findings – Learning to live together and to behave with esteem and confidence, can contributesubstantially to the peace-keeping or peace-building processes, especially in pre and post-conflictsituations. Such specific capabilities connect to the “life skills” education programme and could bringvital new opportunities.

Practical implications – However, the economic or political causes of societal failure may stillremain, at the macro-level, and jeopardise these opportunities, with the risk of transforming thesepositive capabilities into negative behaviour. Therefore, implementing in addition a socialprecautionary principle and appropriate investigation tools such as observatories and sentinel sitesmay be required to monitor such risks.

Originality/value – The paper offers insights into the following issue: to what extend and underwhich conditions will micro-level measures effectively contribute to peace-keeping, in the case ofpre-conflict situations, and to peace-restoring in the case of post-conflict contexts.

Keywords Education policy, Social responsibility, Sustainable development, Conflict management,Peace, Social skills

Paper type General review

1. IntroductionNotwithstanding a decrease in the numbers recorded of inter-state or intra-state armedconflicts in the last 15 years, they have become devastating in character, with hugeirreversible consequences that include both a high toll of deaths, and also mutilations,rapes and various traumas that produce generations of disabled people. Such asituation produces regressive dynamics in the setting up of capabilities. It generates alife where people use their capabilities for destructive objectives, like in the case ofchild soldiers, and for mafia-like relationships. Such capabilities are based on fear anddefiance as resources, favouring regressive attitudes. In such a context, it is difficult to



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DOI 10.1108/03068290710723363

develop the positive capability to live the life that one reasoningly aspires to and peopleare obliged instead to adjust their own preferences and expectations downwards.

The key issue is to avoid such situations and their economic and socialconsequences, by looking for appropriate preventive mechanisms. The conventionalway consists in looking for the factors that cause the conflict to explode and, throughappropriate policies, to reduce or suppress these causes at the macro level. This mayrequire the use of traditional military force, despite its increasing inability tosuccessfully bring a conflict to an end and promote a lasting peace.

But nowadays, armed conflicts are more often the product of individuals and groupswithin their own state, rather than inter-state conflicts. Such a context requires us tore-think the issue of security by promoting individual-based action, while keeping atthe macro level a strategy framework relating security to development. The focus hasto be put on the micro level of the behavioural choices of the people and on theircorresponding attitudes. Groups of persons can strongly contribute as social actors andcitizens to the making of peace through the use of their own freedom of choice.

This could be done through the improvement of personal and group capabilities tomake people more able to choose and decide what they want to do and be, with theobjective of living better, for themselves and with others, even when the others arequite different. This also refers to the capacity of people to act as social agents andcontribute to peace by concrete actions. The capability approach (Sen, 1999) brings aninteresting framework for such analysis. Through the development of some specificcapabilities, including imagination, emotion and affiliation (Nussbaum, 2000;Hoffmann, 2006), it also provides particular insights for action, in order to livetogether and enjoy a life with others.

UNESCO recommended, through its program on quality education for sustainabledevelopment, to implement in the education curriculum the teaching of specific “lifeskills” namely “learning to be” and “learning to live together” besides the usual trainingto know and to do, and this can easily be related to the reinforcement of people’s positivecapabilities. The issue then becomes: to what extent and under which conditions willsuch micro-level measures effectively contribute to peace-keeping, in the case ofpre-conflict situations, and to peace-restoring in the case of post-conflict contexts?

Our paper tries to bring insight into this issue. It consists of three parts. The firstpart will give an overview of contemporary world conflicts, with reference tocharacteristics of armed conflicts and main factors contributing to their occurrences.The second part will show how to relate the capability approach and life skillseducation, as part of sustainable human development. The third part will discuss theweak points in such a view and the risks of failure due to economic and political factorsat the macro level.

2. The situation of armed conflict since 1990[1]2.1 An overviewSince, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, which brought the end of the cold war, armedconflict has undergone a series of major changes.

First, the number of conflicts in the world began to decrease. During the last decadethe number of conflicts decreased from 51 in 1991 to 29 in 2003 (UNDP, 2005), amongwhich armed conflicts fell from 31 in 1991 to 19 in 2004 (SIPRI, 2005).

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Second, the nature of armed conflict has also changed. There are less internationalconflicts and more civil wars. In 2004, every one of the 19 major armed conflicts whichwere active during the year was classified as intra-state. The result is that civilianshave become more easily victims of these wars, being targeted during the fights ortaken as hostages. Among the four million war deaths which occurred in the 1990s,about 90 per cent were civilians (SIPRI, 2005).

Third, the geographical localisation has changed (Durand et al., 2006). Conflicts arenow more widely dispersed over the world both at the regional and the internationallevels. The intra-state conflicts are sometimes interrelated like for Burundi, Rwandaand the Democratic Republic of Congo or, in West Africa, for Guinea, Liberia, SierraLeone, and Cote d’Ivoire. The same thing occurs in Europe with the Balkans issues.

Fourth, the duration of conflicts is increasing. Long lived and recurring conflicts arebecoming dominant on the world scene. SIPRI Research has demonstrated that, whileover two thirds of the 51 conflicts listed since 1990 have in principle been solved, 16 outof the 19 remaining conflicts in 2004 were at least ten years old, among which ten wereat least 25 years old. Among the 19 active conflicts in 2004, 11 showed an increase inintensity over 2003 (SIPRI, 2005).

Africa currently represents about 40 per cent of the world conflicts and several ofthe bloodiest wars of these last fifteen years. Between 1970 and 2002, 35 conflictsoccurred, most of them being civil wars. In 2003, 20 per cent of the African populationand 15 countries were involved, generating eight million refugees. The Rwandagenocide in 1994 eliminated an estimated almost one million victims. The civil war inthe Democratic Republic of Congo caused the premature death of about 7 per cent ofthe population, around 3-4 million people. In Sudan, the civil war between northern andsouthern parts of the country extended over two decades, killing two million peopleand making six million move away. This harsh conflict once solved, a new crisissponsored by the state burst out in the western region of Darfur, which has led overtwo million people to move from their homes, among which are 200,000 who fled toChad. In the 1990s, other conflicts emerged in Europe, including in Moldavia,Macedonia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo, with ethnic cleansing occurringthroughout much of the Balkans region.

Armed conflicts and especially civil wars jeopardise the development process bygenerating irreversible direct human costs. The deaths, rapes, wounds and handicapsare immediate corollaries of the conflict. The same applies to all the consequences dueto the stress and the various psychological traumas. Other human costs may be lessvisible and less easy to quantify because they have an indirect impact on the people.This is the case with the collapse of food production and distribution systems, the lossof income, and the dysfunctioning of education and health services. When poor peoplelose their capacity to ensure health care, to maintain children at school and to makenutritious food, the consequences may quickly lead to a deadly end. Between 1960 and1995, about 18.5 million people died due to internal conflicts with such consequences,half of them in Africa and 80 per cent in poor countries (Stewart et al., 2001).

Once started, a conflict increases the complexity of issues which are already difficultto solve, and accumulates the human costs in an irreversible way. More generally, allthe opportunities missed because of the conflict also have an impact on the wellbeing ofthe next generation by increasing illiteracy, disability, handicap, etc. This weakens the


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sustainability of a country in the long run and pleads in favour of looking forpreventive strategies.

2.2 Some of the main causal factorsSearching for the main causal factors of conflict occurrences could help inunderstanding the reasons why they burst out and the means to prevent them andmaintain peace.

Both econometrics and qualitative analysis can be used to pinpoint the main factorsthat could play a key role in the surge of a conflict. Among these factors are the level ofwealth and poverty, the level of inequality, the importance of natural resources, theeconomic policy, the number of ethnic groups, and the population size. Thecombination of these factors increases or decreases the risk of conflict. The smallestprobability, i.e. one chance out of one million for the period surveyed (1960-1992), isassociated with countries with a high GNP, a good level of natural resources, a greatnumber of ethnic groups, and a small population. On the other hand, a low level ofGNP, insufficient resources, two ethnic groups, and large population, together increasethe risk to 99 per cent (Collier and Hoeffler, 1998).

An unsolved issue is the hierarchical ranking among these factors. Econometricsgives information on the relative weighting of these factors when considering theprobability of conflict occurrence. But such probabilities are calculated at a macro andregional level. They may change seriously when local areas are considered with theirpeculiar socio-economic contexts.

Some may think that the richest nations, which spend more on militaryexpenditures and have more wealth to protect, would be more involved in armedconflicts than the poor nations. In fact, econometrics and factorial analysis give anotherpicture. They distinguish rich and peaceful countries from poor countries. In the latter,the war generates a new economic setting that could last by supporting its own rangeof activities (Humphreys, 2003). The levels of wealth and growth reduce the probabilityof armed conflict (Collier and Hoeffler, 1998) while economic recession increases it(Blomberg and Hess, 2002). A country with a GNP per capita of $250 had a 15 per centprobability of conflict during the next five years. For a country with a $650 GNP percapita, this probability was reduced by half. It was reduced by half once more for a$1,250 GNP, to 4 per cent. Beyond $5,000, the probability became less than 1 per cent.Since, poverty also increases the duration of conflict (Fearon, 2002), development andpoverty reduction efforts should be the first priority for public policies, in terms ofconflict prevention.

Inequality also plays a role in conflict occurrence, but econometric analyses are notas convincing here as they are with poverty. It seems that inequality between groupshas a greater influence than inequality between individuals. However, economicanalysis shows that all forms of compromise ensuring the redistribution of goods,assets, information, power, etc. between opposed groups reduce the probability of aconflict occurrence (Azam, 2001).

Natural resources also impact on the probability of conflict occurrence. Countries inwhich wealth depends highly upon the exports of raw materials were more likely to beexposed to internal violence. The maximum risk, i.e. 56 per cent, corresponded to alevel of exports situated at 27 per cent of GNP. Without natural resources the riskstabilised at 12 per cent. Minerals and oil resources are more a source of conflict than

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are agricultural raw products. However, it seems that it is less the possession of naturalresources exports that counts, but the way they are managed, how strong the state isand how uncorrupted the government. Botswana, a producer of diamonds, is oneexample of good management.

Some of the public policies of the early 1990s may have generated various forms ofviolence, by weakening the state’s functions, by generating inequality through growthand by changing the usual process of (re)distribution through tax release and fiscalmeasures. However, econometrics analyses are not clear on these links. Others factors,like the size of the population or the number of ethnic groups, also play a role. The riskof conflict decreases when the number of ethnic groups increases, bipolar societiesbeing those with the greater risk.

Qualitative studies indicate other important factors, including: the political habitswithin the country, the regional geopolitics, local culture and tradition, the role of themilitary, access to weapons, institutional weaknesses, and the perception by people ofeconomic crisis.

3. From capabilities to life skills and peace educationMost of the armed conflicts are now civil wars. They involve people who have thedouble status of soldiers and victims and can, according to circumstances, be either oneor the other. In such a context, the issue of security has to be re-thought, by giving aparticular focus on the individual’s role, while, in the meantime at the macro level of thestate, a strategy framework relating security to development has to be defined. But,focussing on the micro level of the people and their behavioural choices implies toconsider them as social actors or citizens who have the capacity to interact with theothers who are in the same situation. It is through their attitudes, and the direct use oftheir freedom of choice, that individuals and groups of persons can contribute to themaking or the restoring of peace.

The objective is, therefore, to reinforce, through appropriate development strategies,those specific capabilities which contribute to the fact of feeling well and living inharmony with the others. This has to be done at the levels of individuals or groups,especially for those who differ by culture, religion or ethnicity. Therefore, it alsoconcerns people’s capacity to act as social agents to build up peace by concrete actionswith others. In that way, the capability approach brings an interesting framework,which can be used for action and evaluation.

Sen supposes that individuals, with their personal characteristics and within a set ofeconomic and social opportunities and constraints, will use their resources andendowments (commodities, assets, capital, primary goods, formal rights, etc.) inappropriate functionings to reach their objectives. Their capability set, as a combinationof the various attainable functionings vectors, shows the conversion of individual orcollective endowments into potential functionings. Therefore, the capability of a personconcerns the degree of freedom that this person may enjoy, her power of choice betweenvarious options of life; it transforms a formal freedom, given by the law, into a realfreedom (Sen, 1999). Nussbaum proceeds in a parallel way by distinguishing, within thegeneric capability of a person, various vectors of potential functionings. She suggestedten central human capabilities among which the capability of affiliation, which includes“being able to live together with and towards others . . . being able to imagine thesituation of another and to have compassion for that situation” (Nussbaum, 2000).


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Reinforcing such capabilities is important in the phases of reconstruction after aconflict. It gives the opportunity to transmit capabilities to future generations in orderto move away from the previous situation of dysfunctioning and set new foundationsaimed at ensuring a socially sustainable development. This contributes to the generalvision of development as recommended by Sen for whom reinforcing the person’scapability and agency will be a source of growth and of sustainability (Anand and Sen,2000; Sen, 2000). Within this framework, Nussbaum allows us to define more preciselythe specific capabilities that are required in a given context, i.e. in particular pre orpost-conflict situations.

By this route, the “life skills” view can be related to the capabilities approach. Theterm “life skills” emerged about a decade ago in relation with the need to address whatcould help learners to cope with risks, decision making, emergency situations andsurvival strategies. Specific education modules were designed to train them in the waysto react when faced by such situations that they may encounter in their lives. In thiscontext, the “life skills” view also addressed the request to foster the learners’ personaldevelopment, to help them unfold their potential and enjoy an accomplished private,professional and social life. Finally, the concept of “life skills” was progressivelyassociated with an education aiming at the acquisition of specific essential behaviours.

At the World Conference on Education for All, in Jomtien in 1990, the importance ofteaching skills that are particularly relevant to current life was raised. Ten years later,in Dakar, a framework for action was adopted defining the four key pillars that arerequired to ensure a quality education in the long-term, i.e. learning knowledge,learning to do, learning to be, and learning to live together.

. Learning to know: education will allow students to acquire the basic instrumentsof knowledge, i.e. the essential learning tools of communication and oralexpression, literacy, numeracy and problem-solving. This will help them gain abroad general knowledge, with an in-depth knowledge of a few areas, anunderstanding of their rights and responsibilities, and, most importantly, tolearn how to continue learning.

. Learning to do: education will help students to acquire the occupational skillsand the social competencies that would enable them to make informed decisionsabout diverse life situations. This would facilitate functioning in social and workrelationships, participating in local and global markets, and using technologicaltools to meet basic needs and improve their quality of life and the lives of others.

. Learning to be: education will contribute to the development of the personality inorder to enable people to act with greater autonomy, judgement, critical thinkingand personal responsibility. All aspects of the people’s potential are concerned,for instance, memory, reasoning, aesthetic sense, spiritual values, physicalcapacities and communication skills. This would contribute to a healthy lifestyle,an enjoyment in sports and recreation, the appreciation of one’s own culture, thepossession of an ethical and moral code, the ability to speak for and defendoneself, and a resilient attitude.

. Learning to live together: education will strengthen the skills and abilitiesnecessary to accept the interdependence with other people, to manage conflict, andto work and plan with others towards common objectives and a common future.This would improve respecting pluralism and diversity (for example, in gender,

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ethnicity, religion and culture) and participating actively in the life of thecommunity.

The two last dimensions, learning to be and learning to live together, are the so-called“life-skills” since they deal with those important psycho-social capabilities that peopleneed in order to live in harmony with others and to be able to master correctly theirown lives.

Education should not only provide information but also develop the ability to usethis information, including strengthening human agency and attitudes towardsustainable development (UN, 2005). The idea of “quality education for sustainabledevelopment” developed for UNESCO, integrates the life skills approach in a widerperspective. It aims at helping people to better understand the world in which they liveand therefore to act better when addressing issues such as poverty, consumption andenvironmental degradation, HIV/AIDS, conflict and violation of human rights, etc.Then the focus on life skills is a focus on specific capabilities, which make it possible toovercome crisis situations, and to contribute to people’s capacity of resilience and ofgenerating a better future.

Within this framework, one can consider life skills as particular capabilities thatshould be reinforced, through the implementation of a suitable education policy, in thecontext of human development. They can be used to avoid the upsurge of seriousconflicts, by improving attention to others and overcoming mental traumas due tosocial tensions and frustration. Developing these capabilities among children andteenagers during their school curriculum, on an individual as well as a collective basis,would set up the foundations for a development which could become, in the long run,socially sustainable. Becoming adults, these children would transmit by their ownbehaviour such values to the following generation.

Unfortunately, most current education programmes pay too little attention to thesedimensions. In rich countries, political ideology and traditions are often combined todefend elitist objectives which far outrank the life-skills orientation. The case of Franceis typical. If primary education focuses on the four dimensions of learning (to know, todo, to be, to live together), making young people and their parents quite satisfied withthe education system, in secondary schools and colleges the focus is only put on twodimensions, learning how to know and to do, leaving aside the key social requirementsexpressed by the life-skills view.

For poor countries, the situation is different because resources allocated toeducation are scarce: the priority is then naturally oriented towards learning to knowand to do, which are seen as the prime necessary conditions to promote human capitaland ensure growth. This is at the cost of learning to be and to live together, eventhough those remain the conditions for sustained social stability and peace and,therefore, also for economic growth.

The 2000 World Forum of Dakar on Education for All organised a session on thetheme “education in emergency and crisis situations” and invited all countries to“respond to the needs for education systems suffering from the side-effects of wars,natural disasters and political instability”. At the same time, Margaret Sinclair, inher book Planning Education in Emergency and Reconstruction Contexts (2000)explains why:


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. . . special measures of emergency education are required as long as the population continueto “suffer from this side-effect” [. . .]. The initial phase of post-conflict reconstruction requiresin fact to implement specific measures to allow the children to return quickly to school, whileschooling infrastructures, at the regional and national levels, are nearly completely destroyedin their country (Sinclair, 2000, p. 26).

Education is perceived as an essential need by the majority of people in a countryhaving gone through a war. Therefore, it is necessary to think about the content ofeducation that should be implemented to favour a lasting peace in post-conflictcountries: a content which will consider, through appropriate teaching and learningprocesses, those specific capabilities that are the “life-skills”. The correspondingprogrammes may not remove the tensions between people, or between groups ofpeople, but they would help to manage them and avoid a new shifting into a war, civilwar, or even worse, genocide. However, this will require reviewing the existingeducation programmes and curricula, designing appropriate teaching modules, andtraining the teachers and school directors to this new way of thinking and thetechniques that go with it.

4. What are the conditions for success?For those reasons, we suggest that the usual education priorities should be stronglyreconsidered in the case of pre-conflict and post-conflict situations, by referring to allthe four pillars of a quality education for sustainable development. The teaching of thelife-skills dimension of education is absolutely required as a priority to avoid the risk ofarmed conflicts or urban guerrillas. Life-skills should be at least considered asimportant as the usual dimensions of education based on knowledge and learning to do.

4.1 An ideal patternIn the case of open conflict situations, when wars, social crises, political instability andnatural disasters appear, with refugee camps, and precarious installations in ruinedvillages and destroyed urban districts, countries usually require emergency actionsand humanitarian aid as a priority. However, in such situations schooling still remainsa stable need, a desire which calls to be satisfied, a requirement that has to be fulfilled.This is why the return of children to school and the continuation of teaching arenowadays regarded as an important component of emergency or immediatepost-emergency policy.

The situation differs between countries in a pre-conflict context, where the conflicthas not yet blown up into military or urban guerrilla action, and countries in apost-conflict context, where military action has stopped and peace is underconstruction. In the first case, countries need the means to maintain peace, while inthe second they have to restore peace in the middle of remaining tensions. Post-conflictsituations cover, for instance, the cases of Rwanda, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and even Maliwhere the peace process was brought with success through to the end. An interestingpre-conflict situation illustration is the case of the suburbs of French cities in late 2005,where a kind of urban guerrilla campaign was conducted by French young people offoreign origin (Draı and Mattei, 2006; Via le Monde, 2005). In both pre-conflict andpost-conflict situations, there is a need to re-generate the feeling of belonging to thesame social body and to find ways of living together. It is necessary to re-create thecapacity to live together and imagine a new common future.

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Armed conflicts usually destroy physical capital, but one forgets that they alsodestroy human capital which results from years of education, experiences, and regularhealth care. The war economy that results produces new forms of inequality andmakes people more vulnerable. Moreover, conflicts tear the social bonds andrecompose them on new bases by denying basic rights, generating perverse forms ofsocial capital through Mafias and other corrupted social bonds. For instance, armedmilitia do not respect international conventions; they persecute and kill civilians,recruiting teenagers by force and mutilating children.

In this context, the reference to socially sustainable development makes it possibleto better understand the impact of wars and look for the means of preventing them.The investment in human capital, through education and health, is a significant way toensure social durability. For instance, it can be noticed that in several post-conflictcountries, where the social fabric was torn by the war, participation initiatives aimingat adult education were a considerable success. People’s consciousness was raisedthrough civic education on their rights and their responsibilities, and this strengthensattitudes which reinforce peace.

These post-conflict situations, like any natural disaster, offer a unique opportunityto rebuild: here to rebuild the education system by avoiding the mistakes of the past, todesign specific programs and new teaching methods that will disseminate the ideal ofpeace in a population suffering from various physical and psychic traumas. They makeit possible for the teachers to invest more in the creation of school syllabi and thecontinuous training of the trainers. The reconstruction phase allows reshapingtextbooks by cleaning out those parts which led to ethnic and religious divisions,intolerance and hate, and by proposing new models of behaviour which suggestpeaceful solutions when facing tensions. But the corresponding policies will have tomaster the social tensions which were exacerbated, to protect the identities of thevarious groups of people constituting the society, and to promote social agreement andindividual achievement, by avoiding exclusion and social fractures, and generatingnew networks linked by joint interest.

Several countries are now integrating life skills in their national curricula becausethe benefits of life skills education in terms of outcomes are increasinglyacknowledged. India’s National Curriculum Framework for School Education of2001 includes life skills in areas linked to health, consumer rights and legal literacy.School-based programmes in Zambia reflect an even wider application of life skills,grouping these under three headings: skills of making effective decisions, skills ofknowing and living with oneself, skills of knowing and living with others. Somecountries have infused life skills throughout the curriculum, as in Bosnia-Herzegovina,Mali and Jordan. Others have included them into a specific topic of the curriculum suchas health in the Nepal national life skills education programme. Other countries, likeAfghanistan, Lesotho and Sri Lanka, have opted for a specific curriculum on life skills(Hoffmann, 2006).

4.2 Some risks of failureEven if this “ideal peace-keeping pattern” seems plausible, there are still strong risks ofcollapse when the micro-attitudes of the people, acting to generate a long lasting peace,find themselves in opposition with economic and political trends at the macro level. Inother words, if improving people’s capabilities to be and to live together is necessary in


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pre- and post-conflict context it may be not sufficient. If the causes of armed conflicts atthe macro level still remain active, education will not have all its power as a tool topromote peace. This implies that specific conditions at the economic and political levelare also required to ensure social sustainability. Four sets of conditions can beenvisaged when looking at the feasibility of a sustainable peace.

The first set is based on the economic rationality of conflict as seen throughcost-benefit analysis. Some groups benefit in monetary terms from the conflict, whileothers do not. Moreover, the conflict may last, if dominant groups benefit from it. Aspecific pattern of incomes results from the new order of social interactions generatedby the conflict. In that case, the economic condition for restoring peace will be tochange the benefit balance of the conflict among the various partners, which requiresintroducing incentives, threats and sanctions.

The reference to Sen and Nussbaum helps us to go beyond this classical utilitariancost-benefit analysis by considering ethical concerns and focussing on people’scapabilities of choice and agency. In this framework, a second set of conditions wouldbe, following Perroux (1965), to share a common vision for the future and to generate acollective consensus on a vision that may attract a majority of people: “conflicts canonly be reduced within the framework of a collective project such as the collectivebenefits of a new nation, a regional union being constructed, etc.”.

The third set of conditions is related to the factors that contributed, at the macrolevel, to the bursting out of the conflict. Econometric analysis and qualitative studiespointed out such factors, including the level of poverty and inequality, naturalresources, public policies, the quality of institutions, the trust in the government, etc.Appropriate action would then be to reduce the impact of those causes of the conflictwherever it looks feasible, i.e. to reduce poverty, master inequality, improve the Statecapability, reform public policies, etc. Such action would have to be tailored accordingto the socio-economic context by ranking these factors and considering the localconstraints for feasibility. For instance, public policies will have to avoid jeopardisingpeople’s existing social rights or traditional sharing habits. This requires setting uplimits, in terms of social precautionary principles, in order to avoid triggeringirreversible consequences. Such principles express, in innovative terms, the concern forjustice and sharing, with the purpose of avoiding the frustration which may lead tosocial explosion. In that way, current policies focus on poverty reduction but forget toconsider at the same time the issues of vulnerability, social exclusion and inequality.The inequality of capability, for instance, is extremely sensitive and can be a majorcause of sustainability collapse, as shown in the case of French suburban youth (Balletet al., 2005; Dubois, 2005).

Once the macro-level factors are stabilised, the teaching of life skills, i.e. learning tolive together and learning to be, can become the priority. The issue is that the poorestcountries which are those most affected by conflicts have the weakest educationsystems, the capacity of which is often eroded by budgetary constraints. In pre orpost-conflict situations, military expenditures often take priority over social investment.For instance, since 1990, the ratio of education expenditures for low income countriesrepresents 4.2 per cent of the GDP for the peaceful ones and 3.4 per cent for those inconflict situations, i.e. a difference of about a fifth. For those countries having too scarceresources for education, restoring and maintaining peace should be supported with thehelp of the international community, by considering that peace is a global public good

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that deserves to be financed through external assistance. This provides the fourth set ofconditions for sustainability.

These sets of conditions for sustainability are defined in order to ensure thefeasibility of education for peace and to make it more efficient. However, even with thesetting up of limits, it may be difficult to oppose those political leaders who are ready toset societies on fire by manipulating their people for their own benefit, as was done inBosnia-Herzegovina and in Cote d’Ivoire. In that case as General Cot, formerCommander in Chief of UN troops in Bosnia-Herzegovina, said at a university meetingin 1991 on the conditions for peace: “if we had arrested at the beginning the four firstpolitical leaders that began to proclaim hate against the other communities, we wouldhave avoided the war” (Dubois, 2001). Even a specific training on responsibility forthese leaders may not be sufficient to maintain peace, when compared to the benefits interms of power, honours and assets that they are expecting from a conflict situation.

5. ConclusionThe search for a lasting peace is not new. Many philosophers and thinkers of ancienttimes devoted their lives to that objective. Some examined the desire for peacecompared to war (Aristotle), the bond between domestic peace and social peace(St Augustine), the possibilities of safety brought by peace (Hobbes) and the realisationof oneself during peace (Spinoza). Others attempted to seek the conditions for apermanent or “perpetual” peace, because it is during periods of peace that human rightsare guaranteed and respected (Grotius, Rousseau, Castel de Saint Pierre, Kant). Forthem, the conditions of a sustainable peace come either from specific agreementsbetween states, or from alliances between peoples confirmed by unions and federations.

The capability approach allows us to go further by considering that a lasting peaceis the result of the decisions and choices of the persons themselves. They can use theirown capability set, individually or in relation with others, to maintain or restore peace.This view fits much better to guide action in a world where civil wars becomepredominant.

The recommendation of UNESCO to develop the teaching of life skills in nationalcurricula goes in the same direction and contributes to education for peace. In face of anuncertain future with multiple challenges, appropriate education may bring a newopportunity to countries which just came out of harsh conflicts and must live withirreversible consequences that are not easy to compensate for. It gives an opportunityfor progress by emphasising prevention and, through freedom and social justice, abalanced management of tensions, avoiding the slide into a civil war. All fit in theglobal objective of human development by reinforcing people’s capabilities in order toenable them to better function and find a flourishing path in life.

In this context, it is the responsibility of the international community to financesupplementary educational programs in the poorest countries by considering thatpeace is a global public good. This can be done in accordance with policy measuresaiming at reducing poverty, developing individual capabilities and improvinggovernance. It requires that macro economic or political causes which generate theconflict, at the national level, be suppressed or at least held under control. There is arisk that the expected positive role of education at the micro level, through the teachingof life skills, be weakened or shifted away from a positive end, if the key conditions ofsustainability at the macro level are not fully respected. In that latter case, instead


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of reinforcing social cohesion, education can exacerbate frustrations, with the risk oftransforming the positive capabilities into negative behaviour that will pursue orrestore the conflict. The education process contains ambivalent potentials that need tobe regulated if one wants to avoid such negative shifting.

For this reason, we require a social precautionary principle based on determinedlimits for the key conditions of sustainability, as previously defined. The regularmonitoring of these conditions could be done through appropriate investigation toolssuch as observatories, watch systems or sentinel sites. For instance, a peaceobservatory, by gathering specific analysis and collecting appropriate indicators, couldlook at the respect given to the key sustainability conditions and evaluate the impact ofthe life-skills education programmes. Through regular reports it would give a pictureof the current situation and help to prevent the upsurge of armed conflicts.

Note

1. To describe the current situation of armed conflict in the world we refer to data and analysesfrom research teams such as the research programme on economics of conflicts in the WorldBank, the world and national Human Development Reports of UNDP, the StockholmInternational Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the Centre for Peace and Human Security(CPHS) in Paris, and the International Peace Research Association (IPRA).

References

Anand, S. and Sen, A. (2000), “Human development and economic sustainability”, WorldDevelopment, Vol. 28 No. 1, pp. 2029-49.

Azam, J-P. (2001), “The redistributive state and conflicts in Africa”, Journal of Peace Research,Vol. 38 No. 4, pp. 429-44.

Ballet, J., Dubois, J-L. and Mahieu, F-R. (2005), L’Autre Developpement, le developpementsocialement soutenable, L’Harmattan, Paris.

Blomberg, S.G. and Hess, G.D. (2002), “The temporal links between conflicts and economicactivity”, Wellesley College Working Paper 2000-11, World Bank WPS, Washington, DC.

Collier, P. and Hoeffler, A. (1998), “On economic causes of civil wars”, Oxford Economic Papers,Vol. 50, World Bank WPS, Washington DC, pp. 563-73.

Draı, R. and Mattei, J-F. (2006), La Republique brule-t-elle ? Essai sur les violences urbainesfrancaises, Editions Michalon, Paris.

Dubois, J-L. (2001), “Les recherches des economistes sur la paix”, Culture de la paix: cles du 21emesiecle, UVSQ, IDRP, Les actes du Colloque 28 avril, pp. 36-40.

Dubois, J-L. (2005), “Searching for a socially sustainable development: conceptual andmethodological issues”, paper presented at International Conference on Ethics, Economicsand Law: Against Injustice, Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto, 28-30 October.

Durand, M-F., Martin, B., Placidi, D. and Tornquist-Chesnier, M. (2006), Atlas de lamondialisation: comprendre l’espace mondial contemporain, Presses de sciences Po, Paris.

Fearon, J. (2002), “Why do some civil wars last so much longer than others”, Stanford Universityworking paper, World Bank WPS, Washington, DC.

Hoffmann, A-M. (2006), “The capability approach and educational policies and strategies:effective life skills education for sustainable development”, in Reboud, V. (Ed.), Sen: uneconomiste du developpement, AFD, Paris.

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Humphreys, M. (2003), “Aspects economiques des guerres civiles”, Revue Tiers Monde 174, PUF,Paris, pp. 269-95.

Nussbaum, M. (2000), Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach, CambridgeUniversity Press, Cambridge.

Perroux, F. (1965), L’economie des jeunes nations, PUF, Paris.

Sen, A. (1999), Development as Freedom, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Sen, A. (2000), “The ends and means of sustainability”, Keynote address at the InternationalConference on Transition to Sustainability, Tokyo, 15 May.

Sinclair, M. (2003), Planifier l’education en situation d’urgence et de reconstruction, UNESCO,IIPE, Paris.

SIPRI (2005), Statistical Yearbook, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Stockholm.

Stewart, F. and FitzGerald, V. et al. (2001), War and Underdevelopment, Vol.1: The Economic andSocial Consequences of Conflict, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

UN (2005), UNECE Strategy for Education for Sustainable Development, United Nations, NewYork, NY, CEP/AS. 13/2005/2/Rev.1.

UNDP (2005), The Human Development Report 1990-2004: 15 Years of Publication, StatisticalData Base, United Nations Development Program, New York, NY.

Via le Monde (2005), La crise des banlieues, Dossiers documentaires, Bobigny.

Further reading

Kant, E. (1795), Projet de paix perpetuelle, Vrin, Paris, translation 1999.

About the authorsJean-Luc Dubois is a Research Director at the Centre of Economics and Ethics for Environmentand Development (C3ED), Institute of Research for Development (IRD) and University ofVersailles St Quentin-en-Yvelines (UVSQ). Jean-Luc Dubois is the corresponding author and canbe contacted at: [email protected]

Milene Trabelsi is a PhD student at the Centre of Economics and Ethics for Environment andDevelopment (C3ED), Institute of Research for Development (IRD) and University of Versailles StQuentin-en-Yvelines (UVSQ). E-mail: [email protected]


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A deliberative ethicfor development

A Nepalese journey from Bourdieu throughKant to Dewey and Habermas

John Cameron and Hemant OjhaSchool of Development Studies, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the possibility of a procedural deliberativealternative to an atomistic conception of individuals and an economic logic of markets or a prioriuniversal lists, as ethical foundation for evaluating socio-economic change.

Design/methodology/approach – To develop this argument, the paper combines a modifiedKantian categorical imperative with deliberative ethics drawing on the writings of Habermas andDewey. The journey through the European Enlightenment thought of Kant to the contemporarythought of Habermas and Bourdieu aims at mapping continuity and change in key themes indevelopment ethics. These ideas are then given practical application in a case-study of thepeople-forestry interface in Nepal.

Findings – The paper shows how Kantian non-deception links to Habermas’ notion ofcommunicative action and Dewey’s notion of cooperative inquiry, and how Kantian non-coercionlinks to the inclusion of subaltern voices. While the paper proposes that more open deliberativeprocesses can potentially produce ethical gains, it also identifies an idealistic risk in this position.Bourdieu’s thinking is utilised to reveal limitations on improving deliberative processes where thereare powerful mechanisms reproducing inequalities.

Practical implications – The paper makes the case for greater attention being given to exploringdeliberative processes as a prerequisite for ethical developmental actions.

Originality/value – The paper brings together authors who rarely feature in the developmentstudies discourse and applies their ideas to a practical case study.

Keywords Ethics, Sustainable development, Forestry, Nepal

Paper type Research paper

IntroductionThis paper explores the possibility of centre-staging deliberative processes indevelopment ethics. We seek to show how this approach can throw light on thechallenges in both improving the lives of vulnerable people in the world andconserving the natural environment. We offer a framework for a procedural ethicswhich is culturally “thin” enough for all to own it and which excludes no positionwhere good reason is sustained in open deliberation. On this basis, we offer anassessment of deliberative processes (which qualitatively differ from, and go beyond,participatory processes) in a case study of the people/forestry interface in Nepal.

The paper combines our ongoing empirical research on forest/people interactions inNepal (Ojha and Timsina, 2006; Ojha et al., 2006; Ojha, 2006b), with ideas of Habermas(on deliberation and communicative action), Dewey (on cooperative inquiry) andBourdieu (on doxa and habitus) and our previous work on Kantian ethics (Cameron,1999). Figure 1 outlines how we draw on and link the theoretical sources. The paper



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then moves from the theoretical through to a case study of people/nature interactionsin Nepal.

Current ethical and political practice after the collapse of the USSR is largely withina neoliberal order, but the global order has found no ideological consensus, and thereare numerous claimants to truth about improving the human condition. While manypractical challenges are being organised against the neo-liberal ordering of the world(as reflected in street rallies concurrent with major policy events of the globalisationgiants such as World Trade Organisation (WTO)), there is a general problem ofconceptualising ends and means for improving human quality of life. Responses to thechallenge of thinking through improvement in the human condition have recentlydrifted into a culturally rich, ethically ambiguous relativism, though that is not withoutits critics (Bauhn, 1998; Bauman, 1998). Post-modernist relativists in the North arejostling for recognition with more absolutist claimants from various parts of the South,including from Islam, Hinduism, Confucianism, and various branches of Christianity.

Our argument is organised as follows. In the next section, we introduce the work ofPierre Bourdieu (1930-2002) to analyse a structural model that delimits the potential forfully open deliberative ethics. The main input from Bourdieu is that deliberation isitself a process of enacting more entrenched forms of violence which he calls symbolicviolence, enacted through the very process of language and communication, and thatgenuine deliberation is possible when crisis arises in the symbolic structure of society,forcing the habituated actions of people to be brought under discursive deliberation.From this relatively pessimistic position we move to Kant’s categorical imperative, as auniversalist, substantive ethical position, and then modify this Kantian position to takeaccount of a number of factors, notably an unequal distribution of power (Cameron,1999).

We use these ideas to move towards a design for a procedural ethics that appliesconscious human agency to development practice. We particularly draw on JohnDewey’s notions of transactional inquiry and democracy as a learning process, andJurgen Habermas’s discourse ethics and deliberative basis for arriving at moralrestraints for collective life. Dewey (1859-1952) provides a strong ontological basis forunderstanding communicative human co-existence. This is expanded by Habermas(1929-), searching for grounds for the democratic legitimacy of social norms or

Figure 1.A conceptual map linking

substantive anddeliberative ethical ideas

Procedural Ethics with Deliberation as Intersubjective Process

Dewey: transactional//communicative ontology of being human

Habermas : unconstrained discourse as the foundation of ethical decisions and norms

Substantive Ethics in the Face of Constrained and Structured Agency

Bourdieu : Doxa, differentiated deliberative competence, symbolic violence

Substantive Ethics with Idealistic Agency

Kant : Categorical Imperative –Non-deceptionNon-Coercion

M-Kantianmodification of Kant pointing to greater deliberation

A deliberativeethic for

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governance by recourse to both private and public autonomy as co-original, rather thanmutually exclusive. Figure 1 shows how we locate Dewey and Habermas between therationalist position of Kant and the structuralist approach of Bourdieu.

Our case study is based on Nepal’s community forestry (CF) policy and practice,which we see as a complex interaction among diverse groups of social agents, mainlylocal people, techno-bureaucrats, and development agencies. Throughout the modernhistory of Nepal, forests have been a highly contested space – both materially andsymbolically – for a broad range of actors. Whereas forest was traditionally a resourcefor subsistence livelihoods, subsequent intervention by state functionaries, businessgroups and Western conservationists and developmentalists have made the forest avery complex ground of conflict and deliberation. As forest was the hub ofconservation and local livelihoods in a highly fragile Himalayan environment wheresome of the world’s poorest groups (at least in material wealth) live, rapid ethical shiftsin development thinking have been found in the policy and practice of forestgovernance. In Nepal’s field of forest/people interface, one can find the world’s mostprogressive legislation recognising local people’s rights over forest, and at the sametime, a highly stratified society in which certain groups of elites control the resourceswithout facing much resistance and deliberative challenge from the ordinary people.

Using Bourdieu’s concepts as a foundation for a realistic procedural ethicsBourdieu’s ideas are introduced here to meet a concern that deliberation needs to bepurged of the utopian idealism of appealing solely to free moral agency supposedlypersuadable by well intentioned texts claiming to be universally rational. The case ofNepal CF practice suggests that despite intensive developmental efforts ininstitutionalising participatory processes, supported by very progressive legislation,non-deliberative decision processes continue both at local community level andnational policy levels. There is a recurrent problem of control of decision spheres bypeople who enjoy greater symbolic privileges in the deliberative setting, often drawingon specific social locations in terms of caste, class, formal political positions and gender(Malla, 2001; Ojha et al., 2006). The presupposition of completely free and equal moralagency prior to deliberation is unrealistic. Bourdieu warns us that deliberation as anethical practice should be seen in the context of these imperfections.

The reality of ethical conservatism in contexts of reproduced grave inequalities andsocio-ecological non-sustainability can be conceptualised using Bourdieu’s theoreticalframework. We use Bourdieu’s idea of social fields as relatively independent arenas ofsocial practice and negotiation. Human agents, according to Bourdieu, seek legitimacythrough accumulation of symbolic capitals. Study of how symbolic power is gainedand exercised can provide important insights into how certain ethical patternsreproduce, within restricted spaces for deliberation, and provide opportunities fordeception and violence, thus reproducing chronic social inequality (Hallett, 2003;Swartz, 2003). The symbolic basis of domination provides important guidelines tounderstand the dynamics of deliberative deficits and social inequality. Bourdieu’s chiefconcern is that neither “forced choice” nor “consent” can fully explain deliberativedeficits. Bourdieu (2001, p. 37) argues:

The effect of symbolic domination (whether ethnic, gender, cultural, or linguistic) is exerted . . .through the schemes of perception, appreciation and action that are constitutive of habitus, . . .below the level of the decisions of consciousness and the controls of the will.

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Therefore, habitus is patterned behaviour that delimits free choice – including ethicalchoices.

A pattern in which deliberative practices are frustrated or dominated does not meanthat people have chosen this situation willingly. The dominated contribute, oftenunwittingly, sometimes resignedly, to their own domination by non-deliberativedecision-making. This acceptance can take form as emotions:

. . . shame, humiliation, timidity, anxiety, guilt – or passions and sentiments – love,admiration, respect. . . . The passions of dominated habitus . . . are not of the kind that can besuspended by a simple effort of will, founded on a liberatory awakening of consciousness(Bourdieu, 2001, p. 39)

This is because “they are deeply embedded in the form of dispositions” (Bourdieu,2001, p. 39). The distribution of symbolic capital is crucial to understanding theacceptance of unequal access to decision-making (Crossley, 2004).

The other related challenge concerns the possibility for human agents withdiversity of capitals to engage in open deliberation. If human agents are situatedaccording to the structural logic of a social field, actualised by the relations betweenhabitus and field, then how can agents in different social locations engage indeliberation? The way one speaks and behaves varies systematically from one sociallocation to another, and people with different ethical beliefs do not normally meet in thesocial exchange processes, and therefore are less likely to engage in deliberation. Thisthreatens the normative ideal of deliberation that says state officials, politicians andthe marginalised citizens should engage together in political decisions (Hayward,2004). Aware of such challenges, deliberative theories are pushing out their conceptualboundaries to include deliberative activism (Young, 2003; Fung, 2005).

Bourdieu notes two types of constraint on high quality deliberation. First, thepractice of deliberation itself is impregnated with a strategic orientation, as seeminglydisinterested actions are in fact interested ones (centred on the protection andaccumulation of economic, cultural, symbolic and political capitals in their variousforms). Second, even the calculated interests of social agents are inscribed withincertain sets of deeply held assumptions and values, which he calls doxa, depositedhistorically in a pattern of habituses, working in particular fields of day to daypractices (Swartz, 1997; Crossley, 2004)). The concept of doxa is used to capture theworldview of ideas and rules that people bring to any field of action. In our usage theconcept of habitus includes the part of doxa that constitute ethical rules, but alsoincludes socially acceptable deviance from those ideal doxic rules.

Engagement with Bourdieu thus helps us to connect deeply held beliefs (doxa) andobservable practices (habitus) in particular social fields – in which some people aremore advantaged than others in terms of symbolic and cultural capitals as well as ofdeliberative dispositions. As a result of differences in these internal and externalcompetencies, some are systematically advantaged over others in the processes ofdeliberation and cooperative inquiry.

Bourdieu (1991, pp. 127-8) proposes substantive social conditions for the emergenceof deliberation. As the social order draws its permanence from the tacit acceptance ofthe agents:

. . . politics begins, strictly speaking, with the denunciation of this tacit contract of adherenceto the established order which defines doxa; in other words, political subversion presupposes


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cognitive subversion . . . But heretical break with the established order . . . presupposes aconjuncture of critical discourse and an objective crisis, capable of disrupting the closecorrespondence between the incorporated structures and the objective structures whichproduce them, and of instituting a practical epoche, [in other words] a suspension of the initialadherence to the established order.

Bourdieu himself sees some possibilities of opening up deliberation in circumstancesthat might be broadly characterised as crises. The concept of crisis is vital tointroducing active human agency to the more passive structures in Bourdieu and canpotentially throw light on the dynamics and changes in deliberative processes. Crisiscan originate, for example, when experiences of nature fail to match expectations ofstability in natural processes over a significant period of time. Such experiences caninclude both unforeseen volatility and perverse trends – that is issues of bothuncertainty and non-sustainability. Crises shift decision-making from structural habitto conscious agency. The existing predominant form of symbolic power may becomeunstable due to dissonance between the regularities of the field and on the other handthe schemes of perceptions and thought of the habitus groups. This may lead to anawareness of symbolic violence, on the part of both dominated and dominant, and theformer may start undergoing an active process of reflection, faster than the latter. Theprocess of recognition once triggered may move at accelerated pace, as an uncoveringof an element of doxa that has hitherto legitimated symbolic violence may lead tofurther and faster uncovering of the deeper level doxa. Critical self reflexivity thenbecomes a source of transformation which Bourdieu recognises (Wacquant, 2004).Thus, transformation can involve shifts in both procedural and substantive ethicalstances.

In another paper, we have explored the field of people/forest interactions in Nepal togive insights into continuity and change in deliberative processes (Ojha et al., 2006).That research explored the case of forestry development in Nepal in which habitus anddoxa of international actors, forest bureaucrats, local elites and members of poor andmarginalised groups interface in the nation’s widely acclaimed CF programme. Thedeficits in deliberative processes that we identify are explained by the interplay ofbureaucratic, elitist and marginalised worldviews (doxa), and the correspondinginequality in the distribution of cultural, symbolic and economic resources essential toexercise communicative agency in processes of more open deliberation.

We examine how this interplay is unlikely to produce substantive or proceduralethical gains in terms of diminished coercion and deception or higher qualitydeliberative processes because of the absence of crisis. We conceptualise an ensembleof political and cultural practices within the discursive territory of “sustainableforestry” as a Bourdieuian social field, in which a complex pattern of human agenciesand subcultures operate to generate observable practices (Ojha, 2006b). An ethicalassessment of deliberative processes in the field suggests that participatory processesin practice have ended up with conservative outcomes – in terms of further embeddingof violence, corruption and deception in increasingly less visible ways – such asprofessionalisation, extension of expert authority, and the proclamation of egalitarianlegal-ethical imperatives for all members of a community without addressing theextremely hierarchical relations between and within agencies in Nepalese society.

To conclude this section, we suggest three levels of decision-making practicesderived from Bourdieu, each involving doxa-habitus-deliberation tensions:

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(1) Practices that proceed largely within existing doxic rules and relations of power,which are largely mis-recognised. Deliberative processes here are confined toattempts to sort out minor operational cases by using widely accepted rules, e.g.fines for collecting grazing materials out of season.

(2) Practices that move from doxic rules to habitus pragmatics and bring powerrelations under rational critiques. Here intermediate deliberative processesattempt to sort out tensions between habitus positions by using practicallyoriented ethics, e.g. penalties for not providing household labour for forestmaintenance by richer households.

(3) Practices brought fully into the discursive domain, with fundamental relations ofpower brought under critique. A major rift or dissonance between practices andfield takes us beyond manageability through habitus pragmatics and challengesthe language and symbolic boundaries/structures of deliberation, e.g. whenevidence emerges of bribes being paid to forest department officials bycommercial loggers.

All three levels interact, with accumulations of tensions at one level overflowing intothe next, higher level, but in the absence of a generalised crisis the deficits indeliberative processes will be reproduced – albeit possibly involving increased use ofphysical violence.

Kantian categorical imperative as a thin substantive foundationfor development ethicsImmanuel Kant (1724-1804) lived through the heart of the European Enlightenmentand in globally tumultuous times. He proposed a universalist ethic: a categoricalimperative for all people, independent of their cultural orientation. From aninstrumentalist position, he can be seen as arguing that, if people wish to constitute anindefinitely sustainable society, then they rationally must accept a categorical ethicalimperative to create a social order in which nobody is coerced or deceived. Thiscategorical imperative of non-coercion and non-deception applies even to a society ofdevils, as no social order can survive the precariousness and uncertainties of livingwhere killing and lying are a continuing threat to life and contract (Cameron, 1999).

At a time when development debates are becoming increasingly concerned withviolence and corruption as key elements in damaging human well-being, the claim thatnon-coercion and non-deception are foundational principles of rights and obligationsfor all human beings in all societies provides a promising philosophical focus in thesearch for principles for normative development theory. In an earlier paper, Cameronapplied a modified view of Kant’s ethical imperative to suggest two mappings – onefrom the non-fulfillment of the principle of non-deception through to the socialexperience of corruption, and the other from non-fulfillment of the principle ofnon-coercion through to the social experience of violence (Cameron, 1999). Themodified Kantianism (m-Kantianism) proposed by Cameron (1999) argues that theKantian ethical categorical imperative to non-deception and non-coercion can play arole as a universalistic foundation for development evaluation, provided it is adjustedto meet the following major interconnected challenges:

. Moving to cover not only individual but also group interactions.

. Linking rights to obligations.


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. Dealing with action at a distance through institutions.

. Taking account of unequal economic, cultural and political resources/wealth.

. Recognising variations between societies and groups in thick values.

. Including time as an explicit factor, taking account of duration, non-reversibility,uncertainty, and sustainability.

These challenges make enactment of the Kantian ethical imperative in human socialpractice extremely complex and require exploration of the procedural and practicaldimensions in different social contexts. In rural Nepal, where people earn a livingpartly from the forests, we can see violence and corruption enacted by individualsworking on behalf of the state (techno-bureaucrats) or those who draw on traditionallylegitimate forms of power (such as local elites). The thick social institutions which helpin the coordination and collective action around forest governance are themselves sitesof domination and violence. Allocation of forest and land resources to local feudallords, and then coopting peasants in order to extract rents, has been a commonphenomenon in Nepal’s modern history (Regmi, 1977), and this system of relations ofproduction still dominates the current pattern of institutions and social relations. Also,cultural differentiation in terms of caste, gender and ethnicity further complicates thepossibility of non-deceptive practices. At least what is now clear by 2006 is that aneo-liberal marketisation of forest governance is not a feasible alternative to thesecollective institutions of coordination and control. But the problem of dominationremains. The problem becomes further entrenched when we move from smallcommunities to larger geographic scales – and it is increasingly appreciated that weneed an ethic of environmental governance at even global scale – as we have to dealwith diverse social values with regard to environment. While Kantian ethics help us tosee the problem of ethical practice in terms of a categorical imperative, it falls short ofshowing how non-deception and non-coercion can actually be enacted in the complexreality.

The categorical imperative is intended to be universal and apply to all humanbeings at all points in time. The modified version here lacks Kant’s originaloptimism in that it admits issues of unequal power. Patterns of inequality inpower will vary between societies and thus ethical behaviour will be sensitive tocontext. A society with a highly unequal distribution of power and a relatedcapacity to use coercion and deception to reproduce that inequality will have adifferent ethic of resistance compared to a more equal society, in which coercionand deception can be more readily reduced through improved deliberativeprocesses. The challenge is that even the processes of ethical improvement ingovernance practices – such as CF in Nepal – are often driven by Westernassumptions, and tend to limit their practices of governance to establishment ofgroups and institutional structures, which in reality stand on the basis of existingstructures of inequality which sustain deception and coercion.

Given current awareness in development studies for the physical environment, acomplete ethical position must include a position on “nature.” Here, too Kantprovides insights. His approach to the people/nature relationship is summarised inThe Critique of Judgement, where he discusses nature in terms of its power overpeople:

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. . . threatening rock, thunderclouds piled up [to] the vault of heaven, borne along with flashesand peals, volcanoes in all their violence of destruction, hurricanes leaving desolation in theirtrack, the boundless ocean rising with rebellious force, the high waterfall of some mightyriver, and the like, make our power of resistance of trifling moment in comparison with theirmight. . . . [They] raise the forces of the soul above the height of the vulgar commonplace anddiscover within us a power of resistance of quite another kind, which gives us courage to beable to measure ourselves against the seeming omnipotence of nature (Kant, 1989, pp. 10-1).

Kant envisages insecure contexts in which fearful people are rendered passive bydread and compares them with securer contexts in which such natural forces areexperienced as sublime. In securer contexts, people can appreciate their capacity forreason as a distinct capability that exists in contrast to the emotional sensation of thesublime. Reason becomes more valued because of the natural. People can then turnreason back towards nature and attempt to reduce it to scientific laws. But the rawemotional essence of the natural does not disappear in this process. Kant’s ethicalcategorical imperative is based on reason, but nature is crucial to the valuation of thatreason and hence a lively natural world with its moments of the sublime is vital toKantian ethics. A person who is unaware of the eye of the tiger will not value calmreflection and deliberation as much as a person who has experienced the insecurity ofthat moment. If nature is totally tamed then human ethical consciousness becomes lessnot more. In the same way, consciousness for Hegel’s bondsman, who knows fear ofloss of life and associated interdependence, is likely to be more developed than for themaster. Even for the austere Kant, nature has significance for his ethics in inducing ahumility that makes ethical behaviour more likely and deliberative closure moredifficult.

In terms of both people/people and people/nature relationships, m-Kantian thinkingpushes the discourse on development ethics towards non-closure and procedural ratherthan substantive ethical conclusions. Our position seeks to move from a thinsubstantive starting point, through the implied procedural ethical concerns, towardsprocedural arrangements to improve deliberation in the direction of less deception andcoercion in specific social contexts.

Neo-liberals and m-Kantians can share doubts about the nature of the State,bureaucratic allocation of resources and bureaucratic accountability. The neo-liberalstructural adjustment approach seeks to marketise away these problems ofbureaucratic economics and politics, while the m-Kantian seeks to deliberate themaway. Which is the better approach to critical questions on conservation of a habitablephysical environment, widespread addictive narcotic production and use, andinadequate personal and public safety has become a crucial issue. The neo-liberalapproach to development which marginalises and individualises such issues is alreadyon the defensive and is likely to remain so. To face such issues, the m-Kantian positiondemands that the concepts of democracy, participation, access and accountability beproblematised and theorised as developmental keywords and rescued from formalisticuse in multi-party electoral and bureaucratic paradigms.

The Kantian categorical imperative to non-deception is crucial to understandingdeliberative deficits. The sense of having been deceived can be aroused by manyexperiences. The simplest situation involves direct misrepresentation of a piece ofinformation by one agent to another agent. More complex are situations in whichone agent has reason to expect one form of behaviour but receives another.


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Effective agency is undermined by both experiences and, when such experiences arecommon in a society, the viability and sustainability of the social order can bechronically, if not mortally, undermined.

Undermining of agency may involve a combination of deception and violence.German society between 1925 and 1945 provides a telling case-study suggesting suchan interaction. Owings (1993) uses ethnographic methodology, including recall from aslong as 60 years previously, to attempt to understand the range of women’s responsesin the Germany of that time. These women were not directly threatened by Nazideceptions regarding superiority and inferiority among social groups. Owingssuggests that women took a wide range of positions with respect to the rise of Nazism.The range included: willingness to accept authority (legitimated by emphasis onnationalism and motherhood, and enforced by self-and family-preservation); perceivedpowerlessness to oppose Nazism socially (despite examples of individual courage inassisting other individuals and following Communist Party or other discipline); andcrises of explicit moral choice when the price of following one option was probabledeath, so that women instead lived with guilt in a context of uncertainty over “reality.”

This uncertainty over the violent reality relied upon removal by the Nazis at anearly stage of agencies concerned with transparency and accountability, thusincreasing the potential for deception. The extension of violence was more gradual andsecretive right up to the final solution from 1942. Women from a variety of positionswho were asked about violence in Germany during 1933-1939 might well have arguedit had decreased, at a time when potential for carrying through unprecedented violencewas being developed. Some would even have claimed the level of economic deceptionhad decreased with the repression of “Jewish” businesses (Owings, 1993).

Societies possess multiple ethical codes for limiting coercive and deceptivebehaviour in political, civil society, and market relationships. But such codes not onlyinvolve ethical rules (analogous to Bourdieu’s doxa), they also include reasons/justifications for apparent breaches of each code (as one part of what Bourdieu callshabitus). Multiple codes of behaviour in a society with differing degrees of formalitygenerate multiple potential forms of coercion and deception and protestations thatcoercion and deception were not present. For instance, a common form of deception isto claim to be acting within one code when de facto operating with reference to another.Also each of the codes may have its own dynamics leading to redefinitions ofacceptable behaviour within each code and modifying the interaction between codes.Thus, mapping from the Kantian categorical imperative of non-coercion andnon-deception to actual required behaviour is a complex process. Nevertheless, inm-Kantian terms, this preliminary overview suggests there may be ways to assesswhether a society is moving towards less or more coercion and deception, utilisingBourdieu’s concepts.

The existence of corruption and violence at their present levels has implications forany intellectual project that is concerned with the possibilities of progress in thequality of human life. The m-Kantian position attempts to give that project conceptualdepth. It aspires towards a universal, global ethics, but leaves much room for sensitiveanalysis of local variations in the meanings and patterns of coercion and deception.The m-Kantian methodology is inevitably discursive, inclusive and critically aware ofpower relations, unequal power structures, and the power poverty of some people.Corruption and violence, both at the individual and, particularly, at the mass levels, are

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outcomes of unequal or uncertain power relationships. Varying mixtures of inequalityand uncertainty in a power relationship can induce different forms of violence anddifferent potentials for corruption.

To bring corruption and physical violence to the centre of development studies, asmajor causes of low quality of human life, requires explicit attention to the specificnature of deception and coercion at a societal level and the decision-making space forlimiting them. Policies to place people as ends and agents, rather than as means andvictims/clients/customers/human capital, require concern with the means andprocesses of policy formulation and implementation and explicit evaluation ofinteractions and relationships. With m-Kantian development objectives, the policyprocess from identification to evaluation should over time become more transparent,less opaque. Rights to information and public inquiry procedures become adevelopment issue, not an optional extra or a transaction cost to be minimised.

Many of the people in grass-roots organisations concerned with development willsuspect this m-Kantian approach of being politically utopian as much as economicallyunrealistic. They would argue that day-to-day exercise of power is based on structureswhere power is centralised and multi-form and any proposal to more equally distributepower will meet uncompromising resistance in depth across the whole range ofeconomic, cultural and political experience. If this analysis is accepted, whichconcludes that the agency of large groups of people is structurally hindered and theirclaims undermined and repressed, then the m-Kantian approach becomes a variant ona Hegel-Marx approach (Hegel, 1966) to society and consciousness. The process ofasserting claims to agency by those to whom it is denied is developmentallyprogressive and justifiable. m-Kantians must argue though that such a politicalrevolution should be carried out using means that respect the categorical imperativesof non-coercion and non-deception.

There is much work to be done in developing means of communication andindicators that allow patterns of whole lives, including coercion and deception, to beunderstood sensitively at all levels of aggregation and to omit no sub-group of people.Networks with the ability to communicate patterns of others’ lives to people remotefrom that experience are needed. Universal literacy in, and access to, the written andelectronic media is an important objective. Facilitating unstructured, non-commercial,mutually reflective, cultural contact has a vital role to play.

Numerous practical experiments on local scales in self-defence, democracy,participation, access and accountability and environmental conservation need to bemore widely communicated, and their impacts on corruption and violence, deceptionand coercion, and environmental degradation can be evaluated. We can then also movebeyond the defensive language of rights to be not deceived and coerced, into thelanguage of obligations to positively advance less deception and coercion.

Improved deliberation as an ethical process: Habermas and DeweyThe work of Onora O’Neill (1941-) helps us to bridge from Kant to Habermas. Herinterpretation of Kant’s thinking emphasises both interdependence andcommunication as key human characteristics (O’Neill, 1986, 1990, 1996). Habermas’s“discourse ethics” requires that all those affected by ethical norms to coordinate andguide collective action of social agents must deliberate together without coercion anddeception over the possibility and the content of the norms. As he argues “Only those


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norms can claim to be valid that meet (or could meet) with the approval of all affectedin their capacity as participants in a practical discourse” (Habermas, 1990). Since, forhim, private and public autonomy are co-original (Habermas, 1996, p. 129), one leadingto the other, social agents in an ethical community “have to” engage in communicativeinteractions to arrive at understanding so that both the individual and collective gainsare maximised (Haller, 1994, p. 111).

This suggests that resolving the practical problems of poor and marginalised peoplein a degrading natural environment involves creating conditions through which theycan engage in discursive deliberation free from coercion and deception. The optimisticbelief is that high quality deliberation will address structural constraints on deprivedpeople’s participation. Two dimensions need to be identified – one of ensuring free andnon-coerced communication of emotions, feelings and information; and secondly,recognition of uncertainty and complexity, and of the need for experiential learningover time, testing and exploring ideas in the real world setting. Seen from this ethicalperspective, even the well-recognised participatory process of Nepal CF suffers frommajor deliberative deficits. Let us take an example:

In a CFUG [Community Forest User Group] with a pole stage Sal forest, foresters advised thegroup to undertake thinning so that the Sal trees[1] grow faster. The group is close toKathmandu valley, and because of easy road access, many of the smallholder farmers in thearea have started to cultivate vegetables as cash crops, such as beans, cucumber and others,which need small supporting sticks. Before a CFUG was organised, the forest was de factoopen access and the farmers could collect sticks without any restrictions. But after theestablishment of [a] CFUG in mid-1990, technical forestry staff developed a forestmanagement plan which prescribed clearing of all bushes/inferior species in the Sal forest.When the bushes were cleared, the forest became clean monoculture of Sal trees as per thewishes of the forest officials. But [the] majority of the land-poor farmers who were trying toearn a living through the production of cash crops had no supply of small sticks from theforest. On an average, each household needs about 1,000 sticks per year. This means that theforest could have better remained as bushy and shrubby for them but they could not argueagainst official forestry knowledge during planning and decision-making. This illustrateshow government forestry knowledge is being imposed, without any deliberative interactionwith local citizens (Ojha, 2006b).

The case illustrates that deliberative ethics is distorted by unequal power betweentechnical experts and ordinary people. Still the concept of deliberation points todirections of more ethical practice – if farmers were allowed to participate in theprocess of identifying and designing the strategies of forest management, the outcomescould have been more ethical. Here, the Kantian notion of non-coercion and deceptionneeds to be enlarged, to recognise a Habermasian domain of communicative action.

Deliberative governance is inspired by Habermas’s notion of seekingcommunicative rationality in power relationships. This is a form of rationality,beyond a scientific or technical conception of reason employed by humans tounderstand the physical world (Habermas, 1971, 1987). When free and equal subjectsdeliberate, they transform each other and a new form of rationality emerges in thecommunicative interaction (Dryzek, 2000). Habermas’s main thesis is that only thosenorms are valid that meet with the approval of all affected in their capacity asparticipants in a practical discourse. This rationality redefines democratic legitimacy,ethics, and decision-making processes. From the perspective of communicativerationality, political agency (or citizenship) is an intersubjective enterprise, as people

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are connected to diverse networks of communication in society. In that sense, they arenot autonomous rational beings in themselves, as the ways through which theyunderstand, interpret and channel resources are mediated by intersubjective processes.This reasoning questions aggregative models of liberal governance, which merely addup individual preferences without regard to deliberative principles and collective ethics(Chambers, 1996; Dryzek, 2000).

Deliberation is a conscious exercise of communicative competence by social beingsto understand, negotiate and transform human relations and ethical norms. It is a“social process” involving communication of reasons, arguments, rhetoric, humour,emotion, testimony, story-telling, and gossip (Dryzek, 2000, p. 1). Such communicativepractices do not just make governance possible but changes in them can be constitutiveof improved governance. Both Habermas and Dewey claim that most problems ofgovernance are associated with distortions in communication among the social agentsengaged in ethical discourse (Bohman, 1999; Bohman, 2002). Difficulties exist independability of communication and mutual intelligibility (Dewey and Bentley, 1949,p. v), and there is always a possibility of communication getting distorted, especiallywhen humans have to engage in situations of differences and conflicts.

In Bourdieu’s terms, deliberation has doxic procedural ethical rules, differentiablefrom the substantive rules of habitus in a particular field. These procedural ethicalrules admit uncertainty, risk, and existence of power (otherwise there would be no needfor deliberation). As such they must have elements of being open-ended in outcomes,discursive in style, evidence-based in legitimacy, and also providing room for emotionsto flow.

While the Habermasian view is too exclusively preoccupied with normative framingof deliberation, ideas of Dewey highlight the ontological value of deliberation. Dewey’sontological stance, on a communicative basis for understanding being human,emphasises that human relationships are in a continuous process of creation (Dewey,1966, p. 3). Dewey distinguishes between “transactional” and “interactional” processes.Whereas the interactional processes assume that individuals have an autonomousexistence before interaction, transactional processes envisage the creation of bothindividuals and groups in society through the processes of transmission (Dewey andBentley, 1949). Dewey’s conclusion is that “when communicative processes areinvolved, we find in them something very different from physiological process; thetransactional inspection must be made to display what takes place, and neither theparticles of physics nor those of physiology will serve” (Dewey and Bentley, 1949, p.134). From Dewey, we argue that an atomistic conception of purely autonomousindividuals is not adequate to understand ethical actions. An alternative is to startanalysis from the complex social interactions surrounding practical problem situationsof ethics.

Another aspect in which Dewey complements Habermas is the dynamic notion oflearning through experience, rather than transcendental deliberation. Dewey considerssocial practices as central to collective learning, experimentation and democracy.Every social practice is based on a practical rational ethics that can give rise toindividual variations. This resonates with the Habermasian idea of deliberation as aprocess of transforming preferences through interaction, and Bourdieu’s fuzzypractical logic in social action (the knowledge of a coach is never applied exactly intopractice by a player, who has his or her own technique of playing). But nevertheless, in


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everyday language and means of communication, we can observe the primacy of thecollective in shaping the private.

One of the crucial questions which treatises on ethics should address is how powercan be an ethical action, as human collectivities are always coordinated through somerelations of power. The history of human society shows that there has been a recurringquestion as to how individuals and groups can constitute ethical relations of power.The question of legitimacy becomes even more critical when there is generalrecognition of a crisis and a need to transform existing relations of power from oneform to another (such as from a feudal society to a democratic society). Whereas Deweyargued for democracy as cooperative inquiry by concerned citizens, his ideas aresometimes criticised for being too instrumental (Festenstein, 1997). Habermas’sdiscursive conception of “radical democracy” does not designate a specific institutionalform but a social and epistemological ideal of a “self-controlled learning process,” withfreely participating subjects (Festenstein, 1997). Both Habermas and Dewey thusprovide a normative basis of organising power but both depend heavily on confidencein universal, open communicative processes, without reference to contextual, complexpatterns of inequality. To qualify that over-confidence we suggest utilising Bourdieu’smore structuralist ideas as a counterweight to Habermas’s and Dewey’s optimism.

Reflections on forestry policies and practices of Nepal from the 1970sto todayAs introduced in previous sections of this paper, Nepal’s CF does not consist ofharmonious village communities managing forest areas in isolation from the entiresociety. The forestry practice of local communities is a result of a complex web ofrelations within themselves, and between them and a range of non-local social agents,who take various positions in the field of CF and thus affect, and are affected by, thepractices of forest management and decision-making. Although it started as adonor-supported program by government in the late 1980s, CF has emerged as adistinct social field with numerous actors engaged in the reciprocal relations ofexchanging various forms of economic, cultural and symbolic resources, and at thesame time having differentiated social positions, enduring dispositions, cognitiveframes, and diverse motivations. Over the past 25 years, the range of actors engagedwithin the field of CF has consistently increased, especially after the enactment of amulti-party political system in 1990 and a devolutionary forest law in 1995. Actorsengage in different ways – producing policy ideas, disseminating technical ideas andinformation, mediating conflicts and the like. They together constitute a topography ofsocial space.

During the early 1980s, Nepal’s mountains were perceived widely as a site ofenvironmental and livelihoods crisis – deforestation and soil erosion were seen asaffecting water flows and the livelihood resources base locally and beyond (Eckholm,1976). Around the same time, a global environmental movement was gatheringmomentum, using the language of crisis to emphasise the environmental costs ofcontinuity and the need for change. The Nepal Himalaya then became a matter ofconcern internationally. Technical environmental experts emphasised a technicalscientific rationality, highlighting the rates, nature and dynamics of environmentaldegradation in “ultra-conservationist” fashion (Blaikie and Muldavin, 2004).

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The discourse on Nepal’s forests thus went beyond the political boundary of Nepal, andinternational agencies started to deliberate over how the field could be addressed.

Expatriate “experts” came to Nepal and the number of environmental scientistsworking in Nepal increased following the 1980s Stockholm conference on Environmentand Development. Richer countries now had a new mandate to intervene in thephysical environments of poorer countries, to replace their powers in the colonialperiod. Initially, both Nepalese foresters and foreign technical experts emphasisedgovernment controlled plantation/afforestation as the solution. These experts could notunderstand local people’s negative responses to their recommendations as they wereworking from a technocratic rationality. Local citizens were allowed very littledeliberative space to define problems and propose solutions. This is why many of theplantations undertaken as a quick-fix technical solution were not successful – theyintruded into the pre-existing systems of resource use decided in local deliberativeprocesses, leading to strong local resistance (such as defying fences, continued grazing,and even uprooting of seedlings). But this local resistance forced experts andbureaucrats to reflect (Table I). The experts then began to relocate priorities fromtechnical to socio-political dimensions, including to issues of local deliberativeprocesses (Gilmour and Fisher, 1991).

After a series of deliberative interactions, new rules were created to authorise localcommunities to take control over forests. But in the 1980s a political regime with veryconstrained deliberative processes was in place: the partyless panchayat[2] systemwith limited civic participation in political decision-making. The process ofdecentralisation of forest control was confined to local Panchayats, the local bodiesof the Panchayat political system that was directly controlled and dictated by the King.This allowed local elites to capture control over the forests (Panchayat forests),working closely with local bureaucrats and largely acting on their technical advice,though lubricated by regular corruption and occasional violence (for forceful exclusionof the forest-dependent poor). This, in modified Kantian terms, can be seen as adeceptive move by the Royalist government to coopt local elites around Panchayatipolitics, and thus to dissipate their possible resentment against community resourcemanagement.

A more genuinely decentralised form of governance emerged following a popularstruggle for multi-party democracy in 1990. Community Forest User Groups (CFUGs)were recognised as independent local groups to manage designated forest areas. In2005, there were about 15,000 CFUGs nationally, with more independence overresource control. But there remain persistent questions of equity and democraticpractice, mainly because of a thin notion of democratic accountability and a consequentdeliberative gap in the relations between people and political leaders. Under this liberalgovernance framework, forest bureaucrats have exercised tremendous symbolic powernot only as scientists but also as haakim or patrons (Ojha, 2006a). Malla (2001) reportsa compelling case of the persistence of “patron-client” relations between the forestbureaucrats and local elites, and the peasant forest users, despite the change in forestpolicies. Just providing greater independence to local groups proved ineffective as thereseems to be a lack of concurrent discursive politics to tackle issues of exclusion andinequality. The political field and the field of CF are not linked adequately, and thelatter has again been subjected to technocratic dispositions emphasising the formationof CFUGs and quantitative assessment of resource stocks, at the cost of deliberative


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79

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Table I.Overview of Nepalforestry case seen fromdifferent ethicalperspectives

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transformation of doxa. But there are better practical instances at local level that showthat when political forums are widened within and around CFUGs, the scope fordeliberative transformation of inequitable practices and rules is expanded (Timsinaet al., 2004; Banjade and Ojha, 2005).

Local Nepalese societies have dense networks of institutions and associatedsymbolic ethical doxa and patterns of habitus which provide challenges andopportunities for deliberation. Institutions of caste and gender are particularlychallenging for deliberative improvement as they differentiate citizens intostructurally very unequal groupings. Ethnic diversity can add to cultural richnessand social learning (Young, 1997) but when it crosscuts with inequality, thedeliberative challenge is suppressed. More open deliberative practices within localsocieties as well as between those societies and the wider world could produceboth procedural and substantive ethical gains. But CF still tends to be viewed inisolation from civil society socio-cultural systems, and their ethical doxa is insteadguided by a thin logic of modernist scientism and its claims to ethical neutrality(Scott, 1998; Nightingale, 2005).

In addition to the discourse on community management, the neo-liberal doxaemphasising the desirability (in terms of both efficiency and ethics) of moving controlof forests towards “autonomous individuals” and market forces (in a neo-liberal sense)is still present in Nepal (Shrestha, 1999). Politicians and technocrats tend to ally infavour of privatisation of commercial forest resources. Civil society has time and againvehemently questioned the application of such ideology in governing Nepal’s forests(Shrestha, 1999). Deliberation over the use of forest resources is thus ethicallythreatening for elite interests. This is consistent with a retreat from the language ofecological crisis.

Forestry at local level is related to non-local and global processes through theexchange of economic and symbolic capitals. WTO policies on trade affect the marketprices and markets for medicinal plants and other forest products which local CFUGsproduce (US $26 million was earned in 1995 from the trade in non-timber forestresources). This means CFUGs not only acquire resources to become local autonomouspractitioners, but also become participants in the global discourse on global tradingrules. Emergence of a nation-wide federation of CFUGs in the mid-1990s is anindication of the ability of Nepalese people to build institutions to play this role. TheFederation of Community Forest Users, Nepal (FECOFUN) has actively promoted localagendas of users at national and international levels.

Although CFUGs were declared independent entities in the Forest Act of 1993,several subsequent actions of government tended to undermine the power of CFUGs(Britt, 2001). FECOFUN sought to safeguard their rights by participating in thenational debate. Deliberative gains were still being challenged by doxa sceptical ofdeliberative rationality and its associated ethical challenges (Ojha and Timsina, 2006).For instance, more aggressive emphasis on conservation in the 1990s tended toemphasise a need for coercion to protect those resources. FECOFUN’s contribution inthe national debate was crucial in bringing the views of local forest users into nationaland international policy discourse. There will be continuing instances in which thedebate over control of forests is threatened with capture by bureaucrats and technicalexperts using deception and coercion, and marginalisation of deliberative processes. Inone instance, for example, a FECOFUN activist was offered a grant by a bilateral


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forestry project if he would stop publicly criticising the project approach (personalcommunication with national FECOFUN activist).

A law or rule is often not implementable in practice, as practices are not determinedby formal rules if these compete with powerful dispositions of habituses in the field.The Forest Act 1993 recognised the rights and authorities of CFUGs, but the behaviourof state forest officials has distorted the law markedly in practice (Dhital et al., 2002;Lachapelle et al., 2004; Timsina et al., 2004). FECOFUN’s public criticisms of thetechnocratic dispositions of foresters and its work to politicise forest governance issueshave provided much evidence of these distortions.

Such experiments in changing deliberative governance seek to engage a wide rangeof people with diverse interests, capacities and positions, communicating in the field offorestry practices, critiquing each other, challenging each others’ doxa, exchangingdifferent forms of capitals, formulating and refining their habitus patterning (Table II).Procedural ethical gains can be made from the resulting significant, mutuallyreinforcing, challenges to deceptive practices including:

. Increased sensitivity to corruption; Maoist threat to bribery (Seddon andHussain, 2002).

. Growing value of more scientific cultural capital (which gives scope forbecoming independent consultants rather than traditional bureaucrats).

Civil society institutions seekinggreater access to communicativedeliberation on forest resources

Foundational doxa beingchallenged and ethicalimplications

Symbolic capital aspects ofhabitus being questioned

National Forestry Organisation Neo-liberal marketisation.Technocratic closure in terms ofuniversal scientific knowledgeRegulatory authoritarianismQuestioning of ethical doxa thattolerate state corruption andviolence

Autonomous individualism“Expert” judgementsBureaucratic authority

Community Forestry UserGroups

Technocratic closure in terms oflocal environmental knowledgeCorruptionQuestioning of ethical doxa ofscientific ethical neutrality/superiority

“Expert” judgementsContempt for the “peasantry”

Local more excluded people Cultural closure and claimedright to exploit resourcesQuestioning of ethical doxa ofHindu caste superioritylegitimating deception andcoercion

Caste and gender legitimacy

Professional NGOs Liberal-constitutionalist andtechnocratic stateQuestioning of ethical doxa ofindividual liberty

“Hakim” culture of bureaucratsand respect of political agency ofcitizens

Table II.Civil society challengesfor more deliberativeprocesses over forestry inNepal

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. Mass media and local revelations of limits of “expert” technical knowledge andcompetence.

. Social and political science oriented research into use of techno-bureaucraticpower in relation to forests (of which this paper is part).

. Local people challenging the haakim – such as by not using the formal greetingNamaste.

. Ordinary citizens learning the language of the foresters in order to subvert it.

. Radical challenge to development failures of the past four decades (including theMaoist threat).

. Emergence of more politically engaged civil society both in forestry and thenational political field.

. Political limits of national developmentalist doxa being revealed by radicalNGOs (Ojha, 2006a).

In the conclusion section, we will reflect on the potential for continuing change.But overall, the history of recent forestry activities in Nepal reveals a continuing

ethical deficit in both substantive and procedural terms. Deception and coercion havecontinued despite claims of increased popular participation. Attempts to improvedeliberative processes have had limited local and national impact, less than the effectsof the Maoist rising with its own doxa and habitus practices and associated ethics onwho can deliberate. The degree of success of Nepal CF in reversing Himalayanenvironmental degradation must be weighed against deliberative failures resultingfrom the imposition of a doxa with its own ethical dimension legitimating atechnocratic, conservationist habitus. This demands reframing of public debate both inprocedural and substantive terms – procedurally to enhance the agency of the poorand marginalised groups to effectively participate, and substantively to exposedeceptive elements in the claims to ethical authority on the part of the dominanttechnocratic habitus, and the associated element of deception utilised to reproducesocial inequality.

ConclusionThe pessimistic tone of our conclusions to the case study raises the question of whetherthe framework we are offering here is doomed to find acute structural deliberativedeficits in any field where patterns of mutually reinforcing inequalities persist overtime. But we do see opportunities for conscious agency improving deliberativeprocesses and associated procedural ethics. Our framework allows both for continuing(and even deepening) deficits and for improvement. Elements of Kantian deception canbe found in any dominant doxa wherever gross inequalities are rationalised as beingnatural and inevitable. These deceptions seek to close deliberation on the reasons forinequalities. Where this closure is challenged, deceptions are exposed and demands formore open deliberation cannot be suppressed by symbolic violence alone. Then moreopen deliberation or increasing physical coercion may result. The key to shifting fromsymbolic to physical violence or more open deliberation lies in the concept of crisis.

Crisis can originate when nature dramatically challenges a psycho-social reality,when experiences fail to match doxic expectations of stability in natural processes. TheKantian contemplation of the sublime in nature is relevant here in terms of the capacity


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of nature to shock the rational into deeper reflection. In less elevated terms, the naturalenvironment still has the capacity for surprise and for forcing a fundamental review ofwhat it means to be human. Despite all the external proclamations of crisis in theHimalayan/Gangetic Plain eco-system this has not been the experiential reality of themass of households with average sized landholdings in Nepal (Blaikie et al., 2002).

Crisis can also emerge from exposure by intellectuals and activists of systematichypocrisy, between avowed doxic ethical rules and actual performance in a field, thatcannot be accepted as mere variations within habitus practices. The intellectualleadership of the Maoist rising can be seen as having revealed an unacceptable degreeof deception by the nationally powerful elite, deception in which external donors havebeen complicit.

Seen through the lens offered in this paper, there is a potential for a moredeliberatively open, and hence more procedurally ethical, direction of change in Nepal.But the challenge to the patterns of doxa and habitus that have reproduced deliberativedeficits is not being driven by a common cause in conserving a vulnerableenvironment; rather by the Maoist movement’s exposure of the dominant nationaldoxa, and of the elite’s claims to be developmental in the interest of the mass of theNepalese people, as essentially deceptive in modified Kantian terms.

We see this as a complex crisis with a strong ethical aspect, in which more openlocal deliberation would be a rational response, rather than a class war seeking toexclude those complicit in previous exclusions as the Maoists claim. The situation inNepal in 2006 is confused, and vulnerable at national and local levels to moves towardsincreasing physical coercion rather than to reducing deception. The modified Kantiancategorical imperative then predicts a vicious rather than virtuous spiral and thesituation may move beyond both Bourdieu’s reproductive structures and Dewey andHabermas’ free will, into bloody chaos. There is a window of opportunity for humanagency acting to reduce deliberative deficits at local level but it may be rapidly brickedup if those seeking office at the national level attempt to close down local deliberativeprocesses through electoral or dictatorial means. The most likely outcome then wouldbe that the technocratic doxa, possibly in military uniform, will eventually reassertitself and an opportunity for procedural ethical gain will be lost.

Notes

1. Sal is a high value timber species found in South Asia. Much of the Colonial Indiansilviculture was focused on Sal forest management, developing models of management thatmaximized timber.

2. The panchayat system was headed directly by the king. It had three tiers of elected body ofpanchayat politicians – village panchayat, district panchayat and national panchayat.Despite elections, the real power was derived from the monarchy.

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Bauman, Z. (1998), “On universal morality and the morality of universalism”, European Journalof Development Research, Vol. 10 No. 2, pp. 7-18.

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Bourdieu, P. (1991), Language and Symbolic Power, Polity, Cambridge, MA.

Bourdieu, P. (2001), Masculine Domination, Polity, Cambridge, MA.

Britt, C. (2001), “Mixed signals and government orders: the problem of on-again off-againcommunity forestry policy”, Forests, Trees and People Newsletter, No. 45, pp. 29-33.

Cameron, J. (1999), “Kant’s Categorical Imperative as a Foundation for Development Studies andAction”, European Journal of Development Research, Vol. 11 No. 2, pp. 23-43.

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Young, I.M. (1997), “Difference as a resource for democratic communication”, in Bohman, J. andRehg, W. (Eds), Deliberative Democracy: Essays on Reason and Politics, MIT Press,Cambridge, MA, pp. 383-406.

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Further reading

Bourdieu, P. (1998), Practical Reason: On The theory of Action, Polity, Cambridge, MA.

Habermas, J. (1990b), “Discourse ethics: notes on a program of philosophical justification”, inHabermas, J. (Ed.), Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, trans. Lenhardt, C.,Nicholsen, S.W, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp. 43-115.

Timsina, N., Ojha, H. and Paudel, K.P. (2004), “Deliberative governance and public sphere: areflection on Nepal’s community forestry 1997-2004”, paper presented at Fourth NationalWorkshop on Community Forestry, Department of Forestry, Kathmandu, Nepal.

Corresponding authorJohn Cameron can be contacted at: [email protected]


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Sustainable livelihoodapproaches and soil erosion risks

Who is to judge?

Tim ForsythLondon School of Economics and Political Science,

Development Studies Institute, London, UK

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to contribute to debates about environmental policy indeveloping countries by examining how far sustainable livelihoods approaches (SLAs) to developmentmay allow an alternative and less universalistic approach to environmental changes such as soilerosion.

Design/methodology/approach – The paper provides an overview of debates aboutenvironmental narratives and SLAs. There are tensions in both debates, about how far localinstitutions represent adaptations to predefined environmental risks, or instead enable a redefinition ofrisks according to the experience of poor people. In addition, there is a tension in how far SLAs shouldbe seen as a fixed institutional design, or as a framework for organizing ideas and concerns aboutdevelopment. The paper presents research on soil erosion in Thailand as a case study of how SLAs canredefine risks from erosion for poor people.

Findings – SLAs provide a more contextual analysis of how environmental changes such as soilerosion represent risk to different land users, and hence SLAs can make environmental interventionsmore relevant for reducing vulnerability. But this approach can only succeed if intervener agencies arewilling to consider challenging pre-existing environmental narratives in order to empower locallivelihoods.

Originality/value – The paper adds to existing research on SLAs by exploring the implications ofSLAs for redefining environmental assumptions. The paper forms part of work aiming to makedebates about the politics of environmental knowledge and science more practically relevant withindevelopment policy.

Keywords Environmental management, Soil erosion, Sustainable development, Developing countries,Thailand


IntroductionIn many upland areas of developing countries today, environmental policies are basedon universal assumptions about the nature and causes of environmental risk(Kasperson and Kasperson, 2001). For example, in the mountains of northern Thailand,environmental risk is defined in terms of soil erosion and its potential impact onwatershed properties. As a result, government policies seek to control erosion byrestricting upland agriculture, relocating villages from the uplands, or covering largeareas of land with teak and pine plantations.

This approach to environmental risk, however, is now increasingly challenged(Lash et al., 1996; Wisner et al., 2004). A growing number of researchers are insteadurging that environmental risk should be seen more contextually, and less on the basisof universal assumptions about biophysical causes of risk. Yet, despite muchdiscussion about the need for alternative approaches, researchers are still uncertain



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about how to implement policies that do not adopt universal approaches toenvironmental risk.

This paper considers the ways in which sustainable livelihoods approaches (SLAs)to development may be used for this purpose. SLAs have been adopted by developmentagencies since the 1990s as a way to reduce vulnerability and poverty through meanssuch as income diversification and agricultural intensification (Scoones, 1998; Carney,2003). Influenced by scholars such as Robert Chambers and Amartya Sen, SLAs aim tostrengthen local resilience by enhancing institutions governing access to livelihoodsand resources. Some analysts have claimed SLAs may allow poor people to adapt to, orreduce, environmental degradation by aligning environmental policy more with localenvironmental perceptions and vulnerability. But, some critics claim more work isrequired to make SLAs effective for governance (Arce, 2003), and their implications forgoverning environmental risks can be developed further.

The paper explores the potential use of SLAs in less universalistic environmentalpolicy by considering soil erosion in the uplands of northern Thailand.

Northern Thailand and approaches to soil erosionThe highlands of northern Thailand[1] commonly inspire images of teak forests,Buddhist temples, lush green rice fields and remote hillside villages inhabited bycolorful “hill tribes.” Although the region is by no means as high as the snow-cappedHimalayan ranges further west (northern Thailand’s highest peak, Doi Inthanon, is just2,565 m above sea level), the region is the most consistently mountainous region ofThailand. It is also the most remote region, with many valleys and hillsidesunconnected to transport routes, and was only politically integrated into the rest ofThailand in the twentieth century.

Classically, northern Thailand has contained two main ethnic groups: the lowlandThai (khonmuang), who traditionally inhabited irrigated intermontane basins; andupland minorities (so-called “hill tribes” or chao khao), who historically practiced formsof shifting cultivation in the uplands. Upland minorities have also been divided intoethnic groups who have either lived in Thailand for as long as the lowland Thai (suchas the Karen), and those who have migrated to Thailand from neighboring Burma,Laos and China during the twentieth century, and who typically cultivated opium.Some early studies of shifting cultivation in the region classified these groups intothose using so-called “pioneer” forms of shifting cultivation, such as the Hmong, Mienand Akha (who relocated villages every 10-20 years in search of more land); and“rotational” cultivators, such as the Karen (who rotated agricultural plots aroundsemi-permanent settlements) (Grandstaff, 1980). In recent decades, however, thesedistinctions have become blurred as both Thai and minorities inhabit the uplands, andforms of shifting cultivation have been replaced by more permanent andcommercialized agriculture.

Both historic and current forms of upland cultivation have been blamed for causingenvironmental degradation, and particularly erosion. These views have long pedigrees.The British colonial scientist Spate (1945), writing about comparable areas in Burma,commented: “naturally, these practices are attended with serious deforestation and soilerosion.” More recently, permanent agriculture has also been blamed for erosion as itreduces fallow periods and increases the intensity of land use. Some observers also fearthat historically “pioneer” shifting cultivators may not understand the potential

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long-term impacts of permanent agriculture. In 1987, the Bangkok think-tank,Thailand Development Research Institute (1987, p. 296) wrote:

Whereas slash and burn agriculture was once more closely attuned with the ecosystemsexploited, it now causes untold ecological damages . . . In the process, major watersheds arebeing denuded, with increasing silt loads washed down into the nation’s rivers [and] siltingup dams.

Deforestation is blamed for erosion for it reduces the canopy cover of soil, andfrequently removes trees from the ground and disturbs soil. Cultivation also takesplace on steep slopes, which encourages erosion. Sediment from the hills is blamedfor silting up lowland dams and rivers. Erosion of soil is also considered to reduceits water-holding properties, which is seen to exacerbate lowland water shortages.

Critics have, in addition, claimed that opium-substitution policies causeenvironmental degradation. During the 1980s, various development agencies soughtto replace opium cultivation with alternative, cash-based export crops such ascabbages, soya beans and strawberries. These crops have been criticized for eitherexposing too much upland land to rainfall and for providing too little binding of uplandsoils. Moreover, some NGO workers have also considered that attempts to integrateupland minorities within wider commercial networks may destabilize historic balancesbetween farmers and the fragile upland environment. One upland-NGO worker wrote:

Traditionally, the hill tribes used slash and burn tactics in a limited way – just to producefood for their families. But in trying to produce cash crops and satisfy the demands of themarket, the tribes surpassed the natural capacities of the land, degraded by deforestation anderosion (Tuenjai Deetes, 2000, p. 1).

And some environmental NGOs have been even more explicit about the threat oferosion that may result from upland agriculture:

Heavy rains wash away the soil, which quickly silts up dams, reservoirs and rivers . . . Everyrainy season now, lowland paddies are buried under 2-3 m of sand . . . The evergreenheadwater forest should be areas of strict conservation as their removal brings aboutenvironmental disaster (Svasti, 1998).

Consequently, various government and NGO initiatives have sought to enforceenvironmental policies that reduce agricultural pressure on upland soils. Policiesinclude relocating villages from locations considered especially fragile for soil erosion;placing restrictions on cultivation on steep slopes; and reforesting large areas of landwith teak and pine plantations. Plantations are claimed to help reduce erosion byprotecting soil surfaces, and by reducing the need for upland agriculture by offeringlivelihoods in maintaining plantations instead. Grass strips on steep slopes have alsobeen used, which aim to prevent erosion by reducing the length of the slope and hencethe ability for water on slopes to gather speed. Most significantly, large areas ofnorthern Thailand are now placed in various categories of protected land such asnational parks and wildlife sanctuaries, which restrict agriculture. Currently, about50 percent of the total northern region is classified as conservation forest. In somehighly forested provinces such as Nan, conservation forest covers 80 percent of theprovincial area (Ewers, 2003).

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Questioning these concernsYet, these worries about soil erosion in northern Thailand may also be criticized forvarious reasons.

First, much research has questioned the assumptions made about causes and effectsof erosion in Thailand. For example, research in the similar topography of the MiddleHills of Nepal has indicated that popular debates overlook the immense variation inenvironmental processes across time and space, and the role of non-anthropogeniccauses of erosion such as monsoon rainfall and tectonic uplift (Ives and Messerli, 1989;Ives, 2004). In particular, many deep gullies that dissect upland areas may be naturallyoccurring (Smadja, 1992, p. 7). Other hydrological research elsewhere has questionedhow far land-cover changes such as deforestation are necessarily linked to watershortages. Indeed, planting large-scale tree plantations may even decrease lowlandsupplies of water (Calder, 1999; Bruijnzeel, 2004).

A related finding is that estimates of soil erosion coming from the universal soil lossequation (USLE) (adopted as a guide in the USA after the so-called “Dust Bowl” crisisof the 1930s) may be overstatements in tropical regions (Hallsworth, 1987). Researchhas suggested that the USLE may simplify factors such as rainfall intensity(particularly the influence of storms) or the length of slopes, where farming practicesprovide breaks in slopes. Moreover, the USLE may focus too exclusively on erosionrather than on declining soil fertility caused by exhaustion of nutrients. In northernThailand, slopes are frequently divided into complex household plots, and rainfall fallsmainly between June and October, often in storms. In one study, Thitirojanawat andChareonsuk (2000) found that the USLE predicted rates of soil loss in Nan province 104times greater than those actually observed in run-off plots!

Second, research has also suggested that many farmers may mitigateenvironmental change by careful practices of adaptation. For example, classicresearch on shifting cultivation has argued that farmers are more skilled in managingspecies diversity and soil fertility than commonly thought (Conklin, 1954). Researchhas also questioned the relationship of upland cultivation and erosion. In Nepal’sMiddle Hills, anthropologists found that some hill farmers actually use landslidesopportunistically to assist in the creation of terraced land, and that landslides mayrenew soil fertility by turning over soil (Kienholz et al., 1984; Ives and Messerli, 1989, p.90). Perhaps, most famously, Tiffen et al.’s (1994) study in Machakos, Kenya,demonstrated that “more people” could mean “less erosion” if farmers were able tobuild terraces, instigate soil conservation, and identify opportunities for trade andincome diversification.

And thirdly, some analysts have argued controversially that fixed visions ofenvironmental risk, such as those concerning soil erosion in northern Thailand, shouldbe understood politically as attempts to legitimize state interventions and systems ofcontrol (Blaikie and Brookfield, 1987). Sociologists of scientific knowledge have giventhe name “environmental narratives” to some fixed notions concerning environmentalrisks, to indicate how very simple cause-and-effect stories have become accepted asincontestable, when in fact they are less certain than assumed. “Crisis narratives,” Roe(1995, p. 1066) argued, “are the primary means whereby development experts and theinstitutions for which they work claim rights to stewardship over land and resourcesthey do not own.” And Hajer (1995, pp. 64-5) wrote: “Storylines [or narratives] are


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devices through which actors are positioned, and through which specific ideas of‘blame’ and ‘responsibility’ and ‘urgency’ and ‘responsible behaviour’ are attributed.”

Consequently, analysts have argued that many fixed beliefs about the cause andeffect of environmental problems serve political purposes in enforcing notions of socialorder or political authority that may not be as easy to achieve without these visionsof risk.

How do these fixed visions of risk, or environmental narratives, occur? Scholarshave argued that narratives “stabilize” conceptions of complex and uncertainbiophysical events or change processes, in order to offer a managerially convenientsummary of cause and effect. For example, in Guinea in West Africa, Fairhead andLeach (1996) argued that the state has blamed smallholder agriculturalists fordeforestation because it believes population growth and inappropriate agriculture havecontributed to the decline in forest areas. However, research that Fairhead and Leachsummarize has shown that villagers have actually contributed to the conservation offorest areas, and that divisions between closed and savanna forest are complex andvariable. Yet, as a result of the narrative, the government of Guinea has been able todefend a centralized approach to environmental policymaking, and instigate variousrestrictions on agriculture in rural areas.

One important concept in creating environmental narratives is “problem closure,”which is when one specific definition of a problem is used to frame subsequentgeneration of knowledge about environmental causes and effects (Hajer, 1995, p. 22).Problem closure also reflects dominant patterns in society and politics, as well as thedefinition of technical expertise and who is allowed to participate in scientificdiscussion. Listening to alternative social needs, or diversifying the definition ofexpertise might therefore produce alternative forms of knowledge. In northernThailand, the historic divisions between “uplanders” and “lowlanders,” or ethnicminorities and Thais, as well as the desire of the state to bring this region under greaterpolitical control, seem prime ground for environmental narratives to emerge.

These various concerns have led analysts to argue that approaches to environmentalrisk should not be based on universal and predefined notions of cause and effect, butinstead should be defined more flexibly, case by case. It is important to ask how farenvironmental changes present problems for different people; how far people are able toadapt to changes; and how far the definition of risk itself may affect their own politicaland socio-economic status. But at the same time, there is still uncertainty about how tointegrate these concerns into an alternative form of environmental policy that can avoidthe problems of oversimple standardized narratives.

In particular, it is not clear if more flexible approaches to environmental risk implythe need for greater adaptations to known risks, or the need to redefine the nature of riskin a more fundamental way. For example, Tiffen and Mortimore’s work assumes thaterosion is still a problem, even if people can adapt to, or avoid, it. In contrast, research inthe Himalayas has suggested that erosion is not necessarily the chief cause ofdegradation, and that declining soil fertility, or overall lack of productive land, is a moreaccurate indication of what restricts livelihoods (Ives, 2004). Consequently, shouldalternative approaches to environmental policy still mean building institutions againstpredefined risks, or instead allow local people to reformulate the perception of risks?

One possible route for more flexible approaches to environmental risk liesthrough SLAs.

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Sustainable livelihoods and environmental riskSLAs within development studies are generally traced to the work of Chambers andConway (1992), who argued that one can reduce poverty and vulnerability byincreasing livelihood options, especially during times of economic or environmentalstress. They wrote:

[. . . a sustainable livelihood] can cope with and recover from stress and shocks, maintain andenhance its capabilities and assets and provide sustainable livelihood opportunities for thenext generation; [it] contributes net benefits to other livelihoods at the local and global leveland in the short and long term (Chambers and Conway, 1992, p. 1).

This and later discussions of SLAs have also been influenced by Amartya Sen’sconcepts of endowments, entitlements and capabilities, which discuss how poor peoplecan access resources and livelihood options (Scoones, 1998; Carney, 2003).Endowments (and the related term of assets) cover a variety of types of resources(tangible and intangible, notably including institutional arrangements) that may allowindividuals to achieve livelihoods and their chosen potential. Capabilities are the rangeof valued life-options (including life-paths over time) that people can attain (Alkire,2002). SLAs seek to make institutional arrangements that guarantee a range oflivelihood options, which can reduce the vulnerability and poverty of individuals. Theterm “sustainable” refers to different aspects of longevity: economic, institutional,social and environmental (Carney, 2003, p. 27).

SLAs may be described in various forms, but some authors have argued that theessence of SLAs should be to be flexible, and avoid having specific institutionaldesigns that may restrict local determination of assets and capabilities (Ellis, 2000;Hinshelwood, 2003). Figure 1 shows one diagrammatic representation of SLA, whichavoids having predefined lines of activity between local development problems (thevulnerability context), state-based policy contexts, and the middle-level developmentinterventions that affect assets, activities and outcomes.

Self-determination of livelihoods and risks is a further key feature of SLA.Proponents hold that:

Poor people themselves must be key actors in identifying and addressing livelihood priorities.Outsiders need processes that enable them to listen and respond to the poor (Ashley andCarney, 1999, p. 7).

Figure 1.The basic sustainablelivelihoods framework

VULNERABILITY CONTEXTtrendsseasonalityshocks

ASSETS ACTIVITIES OUTCOMES

POLICY AND INSTITUTIONAL CONTEXTlaws & rightsgovernment democracy

Source: Adapted from Scoones (1998) and Ellis (2000)


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Sustainable livelihood approaches call for constant questioning of common assumptions andrepeated reference to the effects of policy and actions on the livelihoods of the poor (Carney,2003, p. 32).

Consequently, SLAs may be compatible with non-universal notions of environmentalrisk because they allow poor people to define risks as they perceive them. In effect, thismeans the problem closure of environmental interventions is derived from theperceptions of local vulnerability by poor people, rather than on the basis of externallypredefined narratives about cause and effect.

This specific use of SLAs for local determination of risks has not always been madeexplicit in adaptations of SLAs by development agencies and research institutes sincethe late 1990s (such as, for example the UK’s Department for InternationalDevelopment (DFID)). These uses of SLAs have instead developed three themes thatmay assist in social and economic access to livelihoods. SLAs have now generallyfocused upon furnishing different types of “capital” as resources for livelihoods.Usually five types of capital are identified: natural (natural resources), physical(infrastructure, technology); financial (including loans); human (personnel andtraining); and social (social cohesiveness). Second, livelihood strategies have beendefined as agricultural intensification or extensification, livelihood diversification, andlimited forms of migration. And thirdly, the ability to achieve or access theselivelihoods have been seen as determined by a range of formal and informalorganizational and institutional factors that influence sustainable livelihood outcomes(Scoones, 1998; Bebbington, 1999). Indeed, these three themes have been used as part ofa tentative institutional design of the SLA that is transferable between contexts.

Despite these advances, some critics have argued that SLAs are insufficientlydeveloped in political terms, or as tools of local governance. Some have suggested thatSLAs should be reformulated as rights-based approaches in development, whereparticipation is defined as the right to assert needs, rather than a “sham participation”in policymaking by poor people (Baumann, 2000, p. 34; Carney, 2003). At another level,others have claimed that an emphasis on institutional design and diverse “capitals”(such as natural, social, etc.) has made SLA “merely a confused diagram and a wordymanual” and that we should instead realize “community work is not easily captured ina diagram” (Hinshelwood, 2003, pp. 254, 243). This kind of argument underlies thedesire to have flexibility in how SLAs are designed and described (Figure 1). Moreover,Arce (2003, p. 204) has argued that using words such as “capitals” in uncritical, easilytransferred, ways may reduce the ability for local people to assert their own values inframing development policy.

In environmental terms too, there are questions about how SLA is applied. On onehand, some analysts have agreed that SLA implies a more livelihoods-focusedapproach for defining risk and resources. According to Scoones (1998, pp. 6-7):

Natural resource base sustainability refers to the ability of a system to maintain productivitywhen subject to disturbing forces . . . This implies avoiding depleting stocks of naturalresources to a level which results in an effectively permanent decline in the rate at which thenatural resource base yields useful products or services for livelihoods.

In addition, DFID (2002) has argued that SLA can challenge some key environmentalnarratives that poor people cause or cannot adapt to environmental degradation. Thisapproach fully adopts the new problem closure offered under SLAs because it allows

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poor people to define both environmental problems and sustainable developmentbecause they are linked to activities that may reduce their vulnerability and securesustainable livelihoods. This approach therefore gives precedence to poor people’sdefinitions and uses of natural resources as a way to reduce vulnerability, rather thannecessarily allow resources or environmental problems to be defined by other means.

In contrast, some environmental applications of SLAs have still adopted predefineddefinitions of risk, and have seen SLAs as ways to encourage local institutionaladaptations to these risks. For example, writing about SLA and environmental science,Ashby (2003, p. 2) commented: “A reversal of environmental degradation requires newlivelihood options that change people’s incentives, in particular, the benefits and costsof resource use.” This approach suggests that livelihood activities should be seen asoperating in response to known risks and known potential damage to resources, ratherthan as redefining these risks or valuations of resources from the perspective ofreducing local poverty and vulnerability. Similarly, a report from the United Nations’Food and Agriculture Organization has discussed SLA as a form of local institutionthat exists alongside methods of environmental protection, rather than as also a formof environmental protection itself. The report wrote:

An environmentally protected area, such as a park or game reserve, represents a particulartype of local institution that could link with the livelihoods of people living in the area inseveral ways . . . Successful conservation of wild animals within the area might increase thevulnerability of people living outside by having their crops destroyed or their livesthreatened. On the other hand, in the longer term it may reduce people’s vulnerability tonatural disasters like drought or flooding by protecting watersheds, wetlands and localmicroclimates . . . (Messer and Townsley, 2003, pp. 16-7).

Such statements overlook the epistemological potential of SLAs by defining both therisks and the institutions in terms from outsiders, rather than acknowledging how thedefinition of livelihood strategies and risks are linked by poor people. Moreover, thisstatement adopts cause and effect statements about watershed and climate protectionthat may reflect simplistic environmental narratives. In this case, it seems thatdiscussion of SLAs has been added on top of pre-existing notions of environmentalrisk, rather than being a way to specify this risk using the perspectives of vulnerablepeople.

SLAs therefore have been proposed as ways to build institutions around poorpeople’s perceptions of resources and vulnerability, but critics have suggested thatSLAs may still be dominated by outsiders’ priorities for policy. Moreover, the link withenvironmental risks may still be developed further. The following example fromThailand tries to indicate how far SLAs can enable a more locally determined approachto defining environmental risk.

Example: soil erosion and livelihoods in northern ThailandThe topic of sustainable livelihoods has been researched to a limited extent in Thailand(Parnwell, 2005), but these studies have not focused on SLAs’ role in environmentalanalysis. Various other development interventions have adopted insights from SLAs,even if they have not formally claimed this. The following examples of research onerosion and livelihoods indicate possibilities for integrating SLAs withnon-universalistic approaches to environmental risk.


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The first study is based on research by the author (Forsyth, 1996, updated byfieldwork, 2004-2005) on land cultivated by the Mien ethnic group[2]. The Mien weretraditional “pioneer” shifting cultivators, who have learned to adopt permanent andcommercialized agriculture since their arrival at this site in 1947. The population hasgrown from 110 in 1947 to about 1,200 in 2005. Historically, the staple crops of the Mienwere rice, maize and opium. Since, the 1980s, opium cultivation has been abandoned,and farmers have also cultivated soybeans, ginger and peanuts, with limited amountsof coffee, oranges and lychee.

This study asked how farmers responded to soil degradation, including its impacton livelihoods. Historic aerial photographs, land surveys and a GeographicalInformation System (GIS) were used to identify how far land use had been concentratedon steep slopes[3]. These categories were then physically measured for erosion in orderto to indicate the range of historic soil erosion that had occurred in this region[4].Farmers were then interviewed about their perceptions of soil degradation and itsimpacts on decisions about livelihoods.

The study yielded various findings. First, the GIS map and interviews withvillagers indicated that farmers were aware that steeper slopes generated more erosion,and that this was considered responsible for declining soil fertility in these regions.Yet, consequently, farmers had used less steep land more frequently, which generatedless erosion, but which was more likely to experience exhaustion of soil nutrients.Consequently, erosion was indeed considered a risk, but farmers tried to avoid it, andthis was shown by the “most eroded” category of land being just 5 percent of the totalstudy area. The physical measurements of erosion indicated rates of 24 and 64 tons perhectare per year 1963-1991 for the “least” and “most” eroded categories of land,respectively. The higher of these rates is indeed considered high in Thailand andelsewhere (Nipon, 1991), but the role of agriculture in generating these levels may berelatively low because farmers avoid these slopes.

Second, gullies in this area of Thailand may result from naturally occurringweathering of granite, rather than from agricultural practices. The GIS data indicated amarked absence of relatively gentle slopes of between 10 and 20 percent, which wasapparent in the landscape which consisted of hummocky, rounded land and gullies ofsome 1-2 m depth in-between. This has been described as an “all-slopes-topography,”which is found on granite land in other locations (such as Brazil; Twidale, 1982, p. 177).Furthermore, villagers explained that these gullies existed before the establishment ofthe village; that they occurred on both forested and agricultural land; and that villagerspreferred to keep them vegetated in order to harvest plants. These gullies maytherefore be non-agricultural contributors to upland erosion and lowlandsedimentation.

And thirdly, farmers explained that – despite their attempts to avoid erosion – soilfertility was declining, and that inorganic fertilizer was now considered necessary.Indeed, surveys indicate that fertilizer use has growth from just 5 percent ofhouseholds to 100 percent between 1991 and 2005. Detailed discussions also revealedthat farmers had adopted a new system of local land tenure during the early 1970s(after some 25 years of settlement), which allocated land to specific households andfamilies (earlier there had been an open-access system). This new system of land tenureencouraged farmers to cultivate land continuously in order to demonstrate that theyintended to keep the land, an innovation that they hoped would enhance their formal

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tenure security. Moreover, the proportion of household members working in cities, orengaging in circular migration to earn remittances was increasing.

The second study was conducted by Turkelboom (1999) among the Akha people,some 15 km from the Mien site, at Pakha in Chiang Rai province[5]. The Akha are alsohistorically “pioneer” cultivators, although this village was established in 1976.Farmers cultivate irrigated and rain-fed rice, as well as cabbage, beans and tree crops.The study used a combination of experimental plots, erosion surveys and participatorydiscussions with farmers. It asked how farmers were responding to erosion and landshortage, and how these impacted on livelihoods.

First, the study found that agriculture was indeed increasing erosion. Tillageerosion was apparent because farmers experienced declining soil fertility at the top ofsteep slopes, in locations where water erosion was less likely to occur because of thecomparative lack of slope length. Gully erosion was also evident. This village also haddeep, naturally occurring gullies between convex slopes. But there were also smallergullies on agricultural land that did not occur under forest cover, of some 10-15 cm indepth. These gullies apparently resulted from overland flow generated during rainfallon steep slopes, or when water ran onto slopes from other sources, such as from roads.Sometimes landslips occurred when streams or paths undercut slopes. The erosion onslopes, however, was also found to increase soil fertility when soil was deposited onlower slopes, around lines of crops, or on leveled land. Yet, despite this erosion, itseemed clear that erosion on slopes did not lead to lowland sedimentation because onlya third of agricultural slopes fed stream networks and thus deposited soil wouldremain in place. Moreover, soil was deposited on slopes as steep as 60 percent, andhence steep slopes need not always generate net outflows of sediment.

Second, however, farmers were aware of these problems and adopted variousmethods of soil conservation. Mulching reduced the impacts of erosion during the earlyweeks of cultivation of some crops such as ginger. Diversion channels – or smalltrenches 10-20 cm deep – were drawn across fields to reduce water flow, and todemarcate field ownership. Tree crops on slopes were also increasing, partly becausesome farmers saw them as a more reliable source of income. Yet, farmers agreed soilfertility was declining. Some elders liked to tell the mythological story of a giant,underground snake or pig-like monster (“pjengcha”) that caused landslips and politicalhavoc every 13 years. Others reported “you can see the bones through the soil now” orthat “the land is becoming like old people – they are not strong enough to holdanything anymore” (Turkelboom, 1999, pp. 172, 190).

Thirdly, erosion arising from new commercial crops was not as bad as suggested.Rain-fed rice (the most “traditional” Akha crop) had the highest rates of erosion: 60 tonsper hectare per crop cycle. Maize and beans were least erosive with median soil lossesof, respectively, 19 and 10 tons per hectare per crop cycle. Erosion in cabbage fields layin between these two extremes. Importantly, this study measured erosion undercropping systems (with reference to the timing and manner of cultivation) rather thanaccording to crops or slopes alone. Consequently, the months when cabbage had only asmall surface area were generally during the dry season, when rainfall erosion wasleast. Moreover, if the price of cabbage fell, farmers would abandon fields, allowingthem to be invaded by grass and hence be further protected against erosion.

Yet, perhaps most importantly, this study also showed it is important not togeneralize about farmers. Turkelboom (1999, pp. 208-11) identified five levels of


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entrepreneurialism or concern for soil conservation: secure investors (who ownedpaddy fields and fruit plantations); profit maximizers (adopting high-risk crops such ascabbage); diversifiers (farmers who mix rice cultivation with limited cash crops);survivors (those who cultivated only rice on a short-term basis); and dropouts (whorelied solely on wage labour and petty business). The survivors accounted for some30 percent of the village. The point of this classification is to acknowledge soil and cropmanagement does not take place uniformly across single ethnic groups, but that thereis great diversity between and within households.

Implications for sustainable livelihood approachesThese two studies are relevant to SLAs because they concern the nature and responseto environmental risks by poor people. They add to the debate about SLAs becausethey do not just demonstrate how villagers are adopting strategies such as agriculturalintensification, economic diversification and limited migration. Instead, they also showthat the very definition of SLAs, as responses to periods of environmental or economicstress, cannot be separated from the definitions of those risks. Three factors appearsignificant.

First, despite the common beliefs that upland agriculture is a cause of erosion, andthat environmental policies should control erosion directly, the studies demonstrateclearly that the assumptions about erosion are simplistic. Erosion and sedimentationare not only caused by agricultural practices, but also by various non-anthropogeniccauses such as gullies; the topography of stream networks is important; and otherfactors such as the location and influence of roads on water and soil flows have to beacknowledged. Crop cycles, or the timing and management of different crops may alsomitigate their impacts on erosion. Moreover, erosion need not represent the mostimportant cause of soil degradation for upland farmers themselves, as declining soilfertility through repeated cultivation may be more significant. Indeed, localperceptions and responses to soil problems partly ensure that erosion is not asdamaging as it might be. Consequently, the organizing vision for SLAs – orunderlying problem closure – should clearly not be the belief that upland agriculture iscausing erosion, and that stopping this erosion will prevent lowland sedimentation orupland declining soil fertility.

Second, soil erosion is clearly only part of the causes of risks to individualhouseholds. Households have different vulnerabilities, according to access to land,availability of labor to diversify into different economic activities, and in levels ofentrepreneurialism. Erosion, or soil degradation in general, clearly affects mostfarmers in both studies, but the impact on overall household vulnerability is highlyvariable. Consequently, we should perhaps not ask whether “erosion” is theappropriately predefined risk, but the extent to which erosion is potentially a riskbecause of the overall exposure of people to erosion. If the contribution of uplandagriculture to erosion is not as high as thought, then perhaps it may be acceptable forfarmers to achieve livelihoods through repeated cultivation if this is also conductedwith the use of fertilizers and with achieving income through supplementarysources[6]. In this sense, therefore, we should not ask whether erosion is a predefinedrisk, but we should consider how far it might be a risk if resources of adaptation are notavailable. However, we can conclude that land shortage and declining agricultural

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productivity (if it occurs) are more certain risks for upland farmers, to which erosionmay or may not contribute.

And thirdly, it is clear that some of the interventions proposed by environmentalpolicies may actually significantly work against SLAs. Most directly, this may becaused by the removal of agricultural land through tree plantations. These studiestherefore indicate that SLAs need to have local fora in which these dominantdefinitions of risk (or problem closures) can be challenged. To date, most discussions ofSLAs have not really defined the settings in which livelihoods and environmentalproblems are defined, and some discussions of SLAs (such as those undertaken byAshley and Messer and Townsley above) aim to place livelihood strategies withinpredefined environmental objectives. If SLAs are to emphasize the needs andperceptions of vulnerable poor people, then there needs to be more attention to whodefines environmental risks and how. In effect, this means ensuring that the assets andcapabilities implied in a Sen-ian SLA also imply rights over defining the objectives ofsustainable livelihoods, and not allowing others to define these to the detriment of localpeople’s livelihood opportunities.

Conclusion: deepening the impacts of sustainable livelihoods approachesThis paper has summarized debates about SLAs as a potential way to avoid fixed anduniversalistic attitudes to environmental risk. It illustrated this challenge withexamples of research in the uplands of northern Thailand, and the disputed belief thatenvironmental policy should focus on mitigating soil erosion. The paper showed twostudies that demonstrated various perceptions of and adaptations to erosion by uplandfarmers, which challenged government assumptions and policies addressing uplanddegradation.

In conclusion, I have argued that SLAs may allow environmental policy to avoiduniversalistic assumptions by organizing environmental interventions around moremeaningful, locally governed notions of risk. This point needs to be given moreattention within debates about SLAs because definitions of risk are fundamental toorganizing interventions. Yet, many assumptions (or “narratives”) of risk are notnecessarily appropriate, nor defined by the people targeted by SLAs.

Some critics have voiced these views already. According to Arce (2003, p. 200),“neither community development nor sustainable livelihood approaches are consistentidioms with a clear set of interrelated propositions”. Consequently, Arce agrees that“the starting point of a SLA should be the actors’ reality” (p. 204). But is thishappening? This paper argues that the means to achieve such local sensitivity is tomove away from universalistic approaches to environmental risks, and insteadacknowledge the local contexts in which risks exist, and how far adaptive capacity canmake some environmental changes alone (such as erosion) less important indicatorsof risk.

Accordingly, SLAs should be seen in terms of a combination of local institutionaldesign, plus a wider, less structured, basis for ideas (Hinshelwood, 2003). For SLAs tobe effective, they must critique the organizing visions and discourses that defineenvironmental risks in ways that exclude local consultation. This, of course, is a morecomplex and controversial undertaking, as it may challenge political objectives ofgovernment agencies, or social visions of how certain regions or peoples should bemanaged. Working locally within vulnerable people to define risks, and working


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elsewhere to challenge assumptions about risks, may both build sustainablelivelihoods, as well as implement a less universalistic approach to environmentalpolicy.

Notes

1. Usually the term, northern Thailand refers to the the upland areas in the provinces of ChiangRai, Phayao, Chiang Mai, Lamphun, Mae Hong Son, Lampang, Nan, Phrae and Uttaradit,although administratively, the region also includes provinces further south.

2. On underlying granite with sandy-clay soils at an average altitude of about 700 m.

3. The photographs and land survey allowed maps of dry-season land use to be made for theyears, 1954, 1969, 1977, 1983 and 1991. The GIS then calculated susceptibility to erosionusing the simple indicator of slop steepness. Each map was divided into categories toindicate “most” and “least” used or steep. The final map of predicted erosion was achievedby multiplying the two indices of slope steepness and historic land use together, anddividing this index into four quartiles, of which the highest and lowest quartiles indicated“most” and “least” eroded land.

4. The study used the Cesium-137 method to measure soil erosion, which is based on theassumption that Cesium-137 isotopes were deposited evenly on soil after thermonuclearbomb tests of the 1950-1960s. Soil erosion or sedimentation since this era can be measured bycomparing isotopes between eroded and uneroded sites. Conventionally, this approachprovides estimates of annual erosion since 1963 (the peak of isotope deposition), and soilmeasured to a depth of 25 cm (Ritchie and McHenry, 1990).

5. Underlain by granite, phyllite and shale, with sandy-clay soils, at an altitude of 7-900 m.

6. This point leaves undiscussed the question of the impact of fertilizers on soil and waterquality, which this paper cannot do for reasons of space.

References

Alkire, S. (2002), Valuing Freedoms: Sen’s Capability Approach and Poverty Reduction, OxfordUniversity Press, Oxford.

Arce, A. (2003), “Value contestations in development interventions: community development andsustainable livelihoods approaches”, Community Development Journal, Vol. 38 No. 3,pp. 199-212.

Ashby, J. (2003), “Introduction: uniting science and participation in the process of innovationresearch for development”, in Pound, B., Snapp, S., McDougall, C. and Braun, A. (Eds),Managing Natural Resources for Sustainable Livelihoods: Uniting Science andParticipation, Earthscan, London, pp. 1-9.

Ashley, C. and Carney, D. (1999), Sustainable Livelihoods: Lessons from Early Experience, DFID,London.

Baumann, P. (2000), “Sustainable livelihoods and political capital: arguments and evidence fromdecentralization and natural resource management in India”, Working Paper 136,Overseas Development Institute, London.

Bebbington, A. (1999), “Capitals and capabilities: a framework for analyzing peasant viability,rural livelihoods and poverty”, World Development, Vol. 27 No. 12, pp. 2021-44.

Blaikie, P. and Brookfield, H. (1987), Land Degradation and Society, Methuen, London.

Bruijnzeel, S. (2004), “Hydrological functions of tropical forests: not seeing the soil for the trees?”,Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment, Vol. 104 No. 1, pp. 185-228.

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Calder, I. (1999), The Blue Revolution: Land Use and Integrated Resource Management,Earthscan, London.

Carney, D. (2003), Sustainable Livelihoods Approaches: Progress and Possibilities for Change,DFID, London.

Chambers, R. and Conway, G. (1992), Sustainable Rural Livelihoods: Practical Concepts for the21st Century, IDS Discussion Paper 296, Institute for Development Studies, Brighton.

Conklin, H. (1954), “An ethnoecological approach to shifting agriculture”, Transactions of theNew York Academy of Sciences, Vol. 77, pp. 133-42.

DFID (2002), Poverty and Environment, information booklet, Department for InternationalDevelopment, London.

Ellis, F. (2000), Rural Livelihoods and Diversity in Developing Countries, Oxford University Press,Oxford.

Ewers, K. (2003), “Governance framework for local land use strategies”, paper presented atMeeting on Local Land Use Strategies in a Globalizing World: Shaping Sustainable Socialand Natural Environments, Institute of Geography, Geocenter, University of Copenhagen,Copenhagen, August 21-23.

Fairhead, J. and Leach, M. (1996), Misreading the African Landscape: Society and Ecology in aForest-Savanna Mosaic, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Forsyth, T. (1996), “Science, myth and knowledge: testing Himalayan environmental degradationin northern Thailand”, Geoforum, Vol. 27 No. 3, pp. 375-92.

Grandstaff, T.B. (1980), “Shifting cultivation in northern Thailand: possibilities fordevelopment”, UNU Resource Systems Theory and Methodology Series No.3, UnitedNations University, Tokyo.

Hajer, M. (1995), The Politics of Environmental Discourse, Clarendon, Oxford.

Hallsworth, E. (1987), Anatomy, Physiology and Psychology of Erosion, Wiley, Chichester.

Hinshelwood, E. (2003), “Making friends with the sustainable livelihoods framework”,Community Development Journal, Vol. 38 No. 3, pp. 243-54.

Ives, J. (2004), Himalayan Perceptions: Environmental Change and the Well-Being of MountainPeoples, Routledge, London.

Ives, J.D. and Messerli, B. (1989), The Himalayan Dilemma. Reconciling Development andConservation, Routledge, London.

Kasperson, J. and Kasperson, R. (2001), Global Environmental Risk, Earthscan, London.

Kienholz, H., Schneider, G., Bichsel, M., Grunder, M. and Mool, P. (1984), “Mapping of mountainhazards and slope stability”, Mountain Research and Development, Vol. 4 No. 3, pp. 247-66.

Lash, S., Szerszynski, B. and Wynne, B. (Eds) (1996), Risk, Environment and Modernity: Towardsa New Ecology, Sage, London.

Messer, N. and Townsley, P. (2003), Local Institutions and Livelihoods: Guidelines for Analysis,FAO, Rome.

Nipon, T. (1991), “Erosion study and control in Thailand”, Proceedings of Workshop on SoilErosion and Debris Flow Control Organised by the Indonesian Institute of Science underUNEP-UNESCO-IRTICES-LIPI Regional Training Programme on Erosion, Jakarta,October.

Parnwell, M. (2005), “Crowding out and clawing back: local institution and sustainablelivelihoods in north-east Thailand”, International Development Planning Review, Vol. 27No. 2, pp. 143-68.


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Ritchie, J. and McHenry, J. (1990), “Application of radioactive 137Cs for measuring soil erosionand sediment accumulation rates and patterns: a review”, Journal of EnvironmentalQuality, Vol. 19 No. 2, pp. 215-33.

Roe, E. (1995), “Except Africa: postscript to a special section on development narratives”, WorldDevelopment, Vol. 23 No. 6, pp. 1065-9.

Scoones, I. (1998), “Sustainable rural livelihoods: a framework for analysis”, IDS Working Paper72, IDS, Brighton.

Smadja, J. (1992), “Studies of climatic and human impacts and their relationship on a mountainslope above Salme in the Himalayan Middle Mountains, Nepal”, Mountain Research andDevelopment, Vol. 12 No. 1, pp. 1-28.

Spate, O. (1945), “The Burmese village”, Geographical Review, Vol. 35 No. 4, pp. 523-43.

Svasti, M.R.S. (1998), “A response from Thailand to the world rainforest movement article:‘Thailand: the struggle of forest people to remain in the forest’”, World RainforestMovement Special Bulletin, available at: www.wrm.org.uy/bulletin/Special.html (accessedApril 12, 2005).

Thailand Development Research Institute (1987), Thailand Natural Resource Profile, TDRI,Bangkok.

Thitirojanawat, P. and Chareonsuk, S. (2000), “Verification of the universal soil loss equationapplication (USLE) on forest area”, Royal Forest Department, Bangkok, available at: www.forest.go.th/Research/English/abstracts_water/wse64.html (accessed June 12, 2004).

Tiffen, M., Mortimore, M. and Gichuki, F. (1994), More People, Less Erosion? EnvironmentalRecovery in Kenya, Wiley, Chichester.

Tuenjai Deetes (2000), “A bridge to the hill tribes”, UNESCO Courier, available at: www.unesco.org/courier/2000_10/uk/dires.htm (accessed March 23, 2005).

Turkelboom, F. (1999), “On-farm diagnosis of steepland erosion in northern Thailand:integrating spatial scales with household strategies”, PhD thesis, Katholieke UniversiteitLeuven, Belgium.

Twidale, C. (1982), Granite Landforms, Elsevier, Amsterdam.

Wisner, B., Blaikie, P., Cannon, T. and Davis, I. (2004), At Risk: Natural Hazards, People’sVulnerability and Disasters, 2nd ed., Routledge, London.

Further reading

Jones, S. and Carswell, G. (Eds) (2004), The Earthscan Reader in Environment, Development andRural Livelihoods, Earthscan, London.

About the authorTim Forsyth is a senior Lecturer in environment and development at the London School ofEconomics and Political Science. He has conducted research on environmental institutions andgovernance in Southeast Asia, and has written on the politics of environmental science andknowledge. Tim Forsyth can be contacted at: [email protected]

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Allocating responsibilities inmulti-level governance forsustainable development

Sylvia I. KarlssonFinland Futures Research Centre, Turku School of Economics,

Tampere, Finland

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore and compare three different principles – theculpability, capacity and concern principles – for allocating responsibility for governance in amulti-level context of addressing sustainable development.

Design/methodology/approach – The principles are first analysed from a theoretical andnormative standpoint, linking to earlier literature on for example, the contribution principle,subsidiarity and global citizenship. Then the three principles are analysed in an empirical setting. Theselected case is the issue complex around the health and environmental concerns from pesticide use indeveloping countries. Document analysis and semi-structured interviews were carried out withrelevant stakeholders from local, national and global governance levels on themes which enabledanalysis of the workability and justness of the principles and whether they were already applied tosome degree.

Findings – Analysis of the case shows the mutual complementarity of the three principles forallocating responsibility for governance, especially when culpability and capacity are dispersed acrossdifferent agents and levels. However, the concern and capacity principles emerged as more importantand promising. The results indicated the need for moving the value basis of agents towards moreselfless global concern in order to create an effective multi-level governance system.

Practical implications – The results may help policymakers at different levels to analyse moresystematically who should assume responsibility for sustainable development governance and why.

Originality/value – Extends the analysis of principles for allocating responsibility for global issues.

Keywords Governance, Social responsibility, Sustainable development, Pesticides


A multi-level and multi-layered context for allocating responsibilityComplexity is a key issue that the world must deal with in its responses toenvironmental degradation, unsustainable development paths and resulting humaninsecurity. Complexity in this sense emerges as a result both of identified and as yetundiscovered interdependencies among various elements of the Earth system, of whichhumanity is an integral part and indeed has become the dominant force. In governancethis complexity has a horizontal component, across sectors and different groups ofstakeholders, and a vertical component across multiple governance levels – local,national, regional and global.



The empirical work underlying this paper was carried out through support from a grant by theSwedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), which is gratefullyacknowledged. Most of the theoretical work was undertaken within the framework of projectsnr 107310 and 118473 of the Academy of Finland. The author is indebted to Des Gasper and P.B.Anand for valuable comments on earlier versions of the paper.

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Vol. 34 No. 1/2, 2007pp. 103-126


DOI 10.1108/03068290710723390

A challenge both for moral analysis and governance is to find the most appropriateprinciples for allocating governance responsibilities to specific levels, and to specificagents at each level, in such a multi-level reality. Governance is in this context the “sumof the many ways individuals and institutions, public and private, manage theircommon affairs” (Commission on Global Governance, 1995, p. 2). The challenge isparticularly relevant for discussions on the role of international organizations andinstitutions in providing Global Public Goods (GPGs). The protection of the globalcommons such as the climate system or marine areas from degeneration, or morewidely protecting the ability of the Earth System to provide the ecosystem serviceswhich humanity depends on, fall within the domain of GPGs and related issues. Yet ina world of sovereign states the allocation of responsibilities to the global level requiresextraordinary political will and effort on the part of many countries and is seldom thefirst choice, rather a last resort.

The designation of an issue as global or as a GPG is in large part a normativeand political exercise, not a matter purely of semantics. In many arguments it followsby implication that a global issue has to be addressed through some form ofglobal governance, although not necessarily through hard law such as a multilateralenvironmental agreement (MEA). This is perhaps more explicitly so for environmentalissues where the physical span of the issue is often used as a functional argument for atwhat level governance is needed;, e.g. in the literature advocating the concept ofecosystem “fit” (Folke et al., 1998; Young, 2002), or the literature on environmentalfederalism (Esty, 1999) and subsidiarity (Jordan, 2000). It is a common argument that ifa resource or system is physically global, then global governance is needed. Thephysical character of the issue could be considered as one principle of allocatingresponsibility to a certain level of governance. I will not examine this as a separatecriterion as I find it is too narrow to be used as a general principle across issue areas.Instead I integrate relevant aspects of this to the other allocative principles that I willdiscuss.

A second challenge for moral analysis and governance is closely related to the firstone. It concerns how to allocate responsibilities for governance simultaneously toseveral levels of governance. For most issues no one level is sufficient for governance.The global level cannot provide any goods or protection without engagement ofsub-global governance levels (Princen, 1998). For global commons, Feeny et al. (1990,p. 14) claim that “[t]he solution of such problems will necessarily involveco-management on a large-scale”. McGinnis and Ostrom (1996, p. 476) stress thatsustainable global regimes “must make sense at all levels of aggregation: local,regional, national, transnational and global” and Princen et al. (1994, p. 221) argue that“degradative forces occur at all levels and thus must be addressed simultaneously.”The need to address the collective action problem at multiple levels makes governancea complex multi-level and cross-level issue.

“Multi-level governance” is a concept that has been extensively used in, for example,analysis of the European Union governance system and discussion of how it shouldchange (Scharpf, 2001; Hooghe and Marks, 2003). In recent years the concept andframework of multi-level governance is also slowly being applied in some globalcontexts (Hirst and Thompson, 1996; Bache and Flinders, 2005). The rationale for thisis often taken as a recognition of the implications of processes currently in progress,

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whether they are called globalisation (Held et al., 1999), distanciation (Giddens, 1990) orfragmegration (Rosenau, 2000)[1].

The allocation of responsibility to actors at the global level is thus insufficient formany of today’s sustainable development challenges. Agents with responsibility to acthave to be identified across governance levels:

The distancing of the site of degradation from its original cause confuses the allocation ofresponsibility. In the post-Rio context, this poses enormous public policy problems regardingthe level of legislation – local, national, international or transnational (Saurin, 1994, p. 46).

Allocation of responsibility also needs to go beyond governmental agents and includemultiple stakeholder groups especially when the degradation is caused by mundaneindividual and collective everyday activities linked to livelihood and/or lifestyles.Effective governance needs to take the shape of a multilayered system composed ofco-ordinated and mutually supportive governance across levels, sectors and agents(Karlsson, 2000).

This paper seeks to compare three principles for the allocation of responsibility in amulti-level governance context: culpability, capacity and concern. Each of these hasbeen suggested in the literature, albeit sometimes referred to by different terms. Thesethree are selected because together they cover much of the argumentation that has beenmade in relation to global justice and sustainability. Perhaps, the only additionalprinciples to consider are linked to the functional argument about “fit” as discussedabove and associated arguments focused strongly on efficiency rather thaneffectiveness. The paper first explores earlier use of the three principles in theliterature and compares them in a theoretical setting. Secondly, it compares them in anempirical setting through the analysis of one issue complex, the governance response tolocal and global health and environmental problems arising from the use of agriculturalpesticides in developing countries. The paper briefly describes the background ofthe pesticide case and the case study methodology. It then applies and tests thealternative principles for allocating responsibility to address the problem throughvarious forms of directed actions, using the broad criteria of how workable and just theprinciples are to implement. The final section summarizes the analysis and exploressome possible conclusions and policy implications.

The culpability principleAllocating responsibility for governance based on the principle of culpability meansthat agents who contribute to the problem in question, agents who are to some degree“culpable” in a causal and moral sense, should take responsibility for the effects of theiraction on others and seek to rectify the situation. In the literature a variation of this hasbeen referred to as the contribution principle, formulated by Brian Barry (2005) for theproblem of abject world poverty. It declares that “agents are responsible for addressingacute deprivations when they have contributed, or are contributing, to bringing themabout” (Barry, 2005, p. 103). From a moral perspective, it seems an intuitively soundprinciple that those who are culpable for a problem explicitly assume a large share ofresponsibility to address it. In global justice theory, there is an argument that it iswrong to argue for responsibility based on benevolence or moral duty, as this blinds usfrom realizing our culpability (Forst, 2005). This argument implies that culpability for,e.g. abject poverty in the world is shared by a multitude of agents and structures and


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thus for many agents there would be reason to take responsibility for reducing povertybecause they are part of causing the situation. However, while Barry in his definition ofthe contribution principle limits it to consideration of what I will for simplicity call“physical” causation or culpability, I add also the criterion of “moral” culpability.Agents who are physically culpable, having acted in a way that had negative impacts,might perhaps be considered not morally culpable if they either were not aware of theconsequences of their actions (and they could not reasonably have been aware) orlacked the capacity to act differently without very high costs to themselves or others.(Pogge’s approach as outlined in Follesdal and Pogge, 2005).

This formulation of the culpability principle relies on the ability to:. identify the causal links for a problem along the chain of causality including both

agents and institutions (rules, social practices, etc.); and. identify which agents can be also considered morally culpable in view of their

own (reasonably required) awareness of their contributing role and their capacityto act differently.

Neither of these components is a straightforward objective exercise and they are alsoclosely interrelated. Who or what is seen as culpable depends on who is making thejudgement and on what criteria they use. The ability of an “outside” analyst to identifyculpable agents may not be very relevant unless there are reasonable opportunities forthe agents themselves to become aware of the impacts of their actions. For example,there are “sharp disagreements” about which agents are responsible for the abjectdeprivation in the world (Barry, 2005, p. 105) and a similar statement can be made formany social, economic and environmental issues. The identification of causal links canbe difficult enough in a “simple” localised problem in a more or less closed system withfew external influences. In a context of globalisation with its increasing stretching, ordistanciation, between decision and impact, action and consequences, it means that weface severe obstacles in overseeing, as well as in controlling, the consequences of ourdecisions and actions. Environmental problems illustrate this better than most:

The effect of time-space distanciation is to render opaque – through the mediation of action –the relationship between intention, action and outcome, thereby confusing our comprehensionof causality (Saurin, 1994, p. 48).

It has been argued that in such “complex social contexts” the culpability principlewould put an unreasonably high demand on information (Barry, 2005, p. 112). One wayto address this concern is by looking at the three types of contribution-based reason forassigning responsibility: interactional, organizational and institutional (Barry, 2005,p. 120). Interactional analysis focuses on the culpability of individuals as agents andthe objection of impracticability is often then raised, for it is difficult for individuals toknow the impact of their actions. While this may often be the case, Barry argues that itshould be much easier for them to recognise the impact of the patterns of theirbehaviour, i.e. their practices. Analysing the culpability of organizations has otherchallenges. It is often easier to trace the impact of the actions of organizationscompared to individuals, but on the other hand “participation in organizations canerode the sense of connection that individuals feel with the effects of their actions”(Barry, 2005, p. 120). This latter challenge is further exacerbated when analysing the

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culpability of institutions. Here, there are large risks that individuals do not recognizethe impact of shared rules (Barry, 2005).

A question that runs through the consideration of culpability is how much effort onecan reasonably expect from agents to identify the impacts of their action on others. Insome cases, for some agents, such information is readily at hand if sought after (suchas health impacts of secondary smoking or pesticide intoxications); in other cases or forother agents reliable information is hard to come by (such as the impact of ourconsumer choices on global poverty).

We see the limitation of the culpability principle even if we only look at the difficultiesfor agents to recognize their own “physical” culpability. Turning to the secondcomponent of the analysis, the assigning of moral culpability, there are even morechallenging aspects to consider. How do we make judgements of whether particularagents had the options and capacity to take other courses of action than those which areconsidered to contribute to the problem? This also relates to how we assign culpabilitybetween individuals, collective agents like governments, or the institutions andstructures which influence their behaviour. How constrained are individuals andorganizations by the structures in which they are embedded and the various institutionswhich prescribe directions and provide incentives for their behaviour? The drivingforces for a problem are often found in long chains of interlinked direct and indirectdriving forces occurring at different governance levels[2]. The global institutional orderis causally linked to “morally significant harms” through its rules that affect peopledirectly or indirectly (Follesdal and Pogge, 2005, p. 7). If responsibility is only assignedto those who are contributing to the problem in the last step in the chain, then the focus islikely to be on individual responsibility, for example, of those who drive cars and thuscontribute to climate change, rather than on the collective agents like the planners ofroad and public transportation networks. This excludes the contributing role of theinstitutions and structures that create the situations where individual agents have littlechance or incentive to act other than in ways that contribute to the problem.Furthermore, institutions (as rules) and structures are not agents who can be heldmorally accountable and one then has to go one step further and look at the agents whocreated them or who could change them. Barry (2005) argues that adhering tothe culpability principle would require agents to both rectify those harms that theinstitutional order creates as well as contribute to designing a more just order and thenadhere to the institutions in such an order, but this raises another level of questions onhow much capacity agents – individuals and organizations – have to changethe institutions that constrain their behaviour in a direction which contributes to theproblem.

There are certainly cases where individual and collective agents are completelydevoid of options to act differently, due to being institutionally “locked in” or to lack of,for example, scientific, technical and financial capacity. However, in many situations itis likely to be a much more open question, where there is some awareness ofculpability, and there is some capacity to behave differently but it is uncertain howmuch. There is also a question of the cost of that alternative course of action. Howmuch sacrifice can be morally expected? This raises many questions for the applicationof the culpability principle, questions which lead us on to the capacity principle.


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The capacity principleAllocating responsibility in governance based on the capacity principle means thatagents who have the capacity to address a problem more effectively or efficientlyshould assume the responsibility to do so even if they are not culpable for the problem(Barry, 2005). In my consideration of this principle I focus primarily on theeffectiveness (rather than efficiency) of agents, reflecting the priority to achievesubstantial changes in desired sustainability directions even if it will be costly. Incontrast to the culpability principle it is thus insensitive to the past and only focuses onwhat is the most effective course of action in the current situation. The application ofthe capacity principle would imply that it is possible to determine what measures areneeded to address the problem and which agents possess the necessary resources tocarry these out. Such judgements, on for example the relative capacity of agents or onwhich institutional arrangements would be required, are often surrounded byconsiderable disagreement (Barry, 2005).

The capacity principle has close affinity with the subsidiarity principle which hasbeen institutionalised in the EU as a guide for allocating responsibility betweengovernance levels, incorporated in four places in the Treaty of the Union adopted atMaastricht in 1992 (Schilling, 1995). Subsidiarity is based on the assumption that “nosingle level of organization is appropriate for all social functions” (Trachtman, 1992,p. 468) and implies that “many policy responsibilities are shared between different tiersof government and that each tier is responsible for those functions which it is best ableto discharge” (Scott et al., 1994, p. 64). It thus relates to comparative efficiency whichmeans, for example, that action should be taken at the level where it is most effective,the effectiveness condition, and that action at higher levels should be taken when lowerlevels cannot achieve the set goals in isolation, the necessity condition (Føllesdal, 1998).These two conditions can, of course, conflict; for example, lower levels may bepotentially the most effective yet lack the capacity or be unwilling to take actionbecause of different priorities.

Such functional arguments for allocating responsibility in governance based on thecapacity principle face severe constraints at the global level from the reluctance on thepart of countries to give up part of national sovereignty to global bodies. Nevertheless,some argue this is precisely what is required for the redistributive arrangementsneeded to address global injustice (Mertens, 2005).

The concern principleAs mentioned above, various authors (such as Forst, 2005) would like to see agentsrecognizing their culpability for the deprivation in the world and basing their action onthis rather than some general feeling of “benevolence”. The concern principle startsfrom the other end. Allocating responsibility in governance based on the concernprinciple means that the primary motivation for action is concern for those who sufferthe impacts of, for example, poverty or environmental degradation[3]. This concern caneither focus on the individual agent him/herself and his/her family, being thusprimarily based on self-interest, or the concern can focus on others who suffer, howeverfar away they live, being thus based more on altruism[4]. In both cases this presumesthat the agent is aware of the causal links and has some capacity to do something.

In the first case agents would need to realize that their actions (or lack of actions)affect their own well-being and it has been argued that this is typically a necessary

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condition for agents to address, for example, environmental problems: “For manypeople, the limits of environmental degradation are reached only when they themselvesexperience environmental harm” (Wapner, 1997, p. 217). However, with many globalisedissues, the causal links between their own action and their own suffering – assumingthey exist – may be too weak and invisible for agents to be aware of them, or to be able tobecome aware of them without undue effort, and act on them. Thus, relying on this partof the concern principle would require some form of enlightened self-interest. Theargument to protect the environment for people’s or states’ own interest is acommonplace one: “... our ecological interdependence establishes a prudential basis forour obligation to help ourselves by helping them” (Shrader-Frechette, 1991, p. 164); andBrown Weiss (1992, p. 14) asserts that the traditional view that one nation’s interest isalways in conflict with other nations’ is losing relevance and that “environmentalprotection is not a zero-sum game”. This is the foundation for the realisation thatco-operation pays off in relation to resources held as commons:

. . .individuals, private organizations and individual nation-state governments findthemselves increasingly in the position where the actions from which they themselvesbenefit are also those which serve the greater global good (Brenton, 1994, p. 269).

In a situation where self-interest is a predominant factor guiding people’s sense ofresponsibility to act, creating an effective governance system would necessitatemaking each person (and organization) at every level whose action relates to the issuesee it as in his/her/its interest to be involved in action.

If concern for one’s own interest is not sufficient to motivate action, relying on moreself-less concern as a motivation for assuming responsibility requires that stakeholdersexpand their community of concern to encompass larger spheres of people, andultimately humanity at large. A major step in such expansion of the community ofconcern is to extend it to citizens of other countries (it can also include non-humans andthe planet itself). Although many consider this an immense leap, others take it as thenatural starting point, arguing that “[t]o assume that the construction of our moralworld has suddenly to cease at our national borders seems arbitrary at best” (Tan,2005, p. 58). At the collective level this would imply that states have the same concernfor the plight of other states as they have for their own citizens, something thatKeohane argues would facilitate governance: “if governments’ definitions of selfinterest incorporate empathy, they will be more able than otherwise to constructinternational regimes, since shared interests will be greater” (Keohane, 1990, p. 236).Those based in the tradition of “realism” where the principle of national sovereignty isstill seen as the foundation for the interaction among states, will discard this principleas utopian. Nevertheless, there are many developments in normative theory andpractice which indicate that this is a desirable and even possible path.

One promising direction is the development of the concept of global or worldcitizenship. Falk (2002, p. 27) describes the spirit of a global citizen as one which is“committed to transformation that is spiritual as well as material, that is premised onthe wholeness and equality of the human family”. Dower and Williams (2002, p. xxiii)describe the concept as involving an “attitude of loyalty towards the world as a wholeor towards all of humanity”. Adopting the concept involves an acceptance that whathappens to human beings anywhere in the world does matter (Dower, 2002b). In otherwords:


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. . . it is difficult for anyone who says he is a world citizen not to accept at least that certainthings matter in other parts of the world, and in mattering matter to him, and that this is thebasis for being committed to action for the sake of what matters (Dower, 2002b, p. 152).

The question is then how much they matter. On the one hand, it has been argued thatthe kind of moral universalism that underlies global citizenship “does not deny thatpeople care more about their relatives and less about foreigners” (Mertens, 2005, p. 100).Rather it emphasises that local preference should take place within a just globalframework. On the other hand the underlying moral, or even spiritual, principle is oneof the inherent equality of all human beings. If these foundations were increasinglyadopted by agents, if agents expanded their spheres of concern, out of enlightenedself-interest or alternatively because they expand their concern to encompass largergroups, then it would make the concern principle more relevant. The concept of globalcitizenship also has institutional implications in that it implies that we have globalmoral obligations which cannot be met without the development of appropriateinstitutions (Dower, 2002a).

The case study: pesticide use in developing countriesAfter having explored these three possible principles for allocating responsibility forgovernance to specific levels and agents/stakeholders, it is time to test them on a realcase where we can see more concretely how workable and just the different principlesmay be and if in fact they are already applied. Pesticide use in developing countriesand its associated problems may not be as obvious a choice as poverty, biodiversityloss or climate change. However, it is another appropriate choice both because of itsgravity in terms of human suffering and environmental consequences and because ofthe local-global linkages and complexity it manifests in similar manner to many otherglobalised sustainable development issues.

Pesticides – background and impactsA pesticide is defined as a chemical substance that kills pests. Pests can be anyorganisms that are considered harmful to agricultural crops, like insects, fungi, orplants. During the second half of the twentieth century pesticides have been seen as thesolution to the problem of harvest loss due to pests. Half of the global agrochemicalmarket goes to five major crops: cereals, maize, rice, soybeans, and cotton(Anonymous, 1999). It is often claimed that pest problems are more severe intropical climates than in temperate climates. The figures for crop loss attributed topests in the (sub)-tropics are still very uncertain – they vary up to 75 percent (WHO,1990) – but in all cases high. Pesticides were a vital part of the Green Revolution, sincethe new higher-yielding varieties were more sensitive to pests and required the use ofboth pesticides and fertilisers. Developing countries comprise about 32 percent of theworld pesticide market and this proportion of the market has expanded over the years(Anonymous, 1999). Agriculture in developing countries can generally be divided intothree categories: export crop plantations, export crop farms, and subsistence farms.The level of pesticide use is usually highest in the first category and lowest in the last,and the export agricultural sector consumes most pesticides in developing countries(Dinham, 1993).

Pesticides can, after their intentional release on farmland, be transported in variousenvironmental media, such as soil, rivers, ground water, air and oceans. Humans can

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be exposed to pesticides during direct handling of the substances in production,transportation and application as well as (at lower intensities) through residues in foodproducts, drinking water, air, etc. There is very poor data on the number of acutepoisonings from pesticides globally. The most widely circulated numbers give anestimation of annually 1 million unintentional (mainly occupational) and 2 millionintentional (suicide attempts) intoxications, with 220,000 deaths, and most of thesewould be in developing countries (WHO, 1990, p. 85). However, the data that theseestimations are based on is old, sparse and contested. The data concerning possiblelong-term health effects is even more sparse and lack of data precludes any estimationof numbers (WHO, 1990, p. 87). The few studies on chronic effects from pesticides indeveloping countries demonstrate neurotoxic, reproductive, and dermatological effects(Wesseling et al., 1997). Data on the exposure of domestic consumers in developingcountries is also very sparse. Owing to lack of research the impact of pesticides on theenvironment in the developing countries is largely unknown. There are references to awide range of environmental effects on water, soil, non-target organisms andecosystems, primarily based on the experiences in the North and assuming that similarpatterns of effects will emerge in the South with increasing pesticide use[5].

The use of one particular type of pesticides in developing countries, the typebelonging to the group Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs), has increasingly beenseen as a global problem since a proportion of the persistent pesticides is believed to betransported in the atmosphere and in the oceans to the northern- and southern-mostlatitudes where they accumulate in the biota (Loganathan and Kannan, 1994; Waniaand Mackay, 1993). Many of the persistent pesticides have now been banned indeveloping countries – a few are still produced but most of the remaining problem is inthe stockpiles of unused products (IFCS, 1996) – and have been replaced with othercompounds such as organophosphates, carbamates, and pyrethroids and many others,but many of these replacements have turned out to be much more toxic for the peoplewho apply them.

Pesticide complexitiesPesticide use is characterised by a high degree of complexity in drivers, effects, andresponses in governance, each of which stretches over the South and the North in boththe geographic and socio-economic sense of the words. It is a good example of a humanactivity which has multiple linkages between different spatial (and temporal) scales andgovernance levels. It affects society and the environment on different scales: from theindividual human health effects for an agricultural worker in the banana plantation inCosta Rica, to the biota in the lakes of Canada and Northern Europe. The societal drivingforces encouraging the use of pesticides are embedded in the global economic and tradesystem. For example, multinational corporations (MNCs) market pesticides, andimporting countries’ consumers and retailers desire a certain quality of agriculturalproducts. Responses from individuals and organizations aimed at reducing the negativeeffects, or reducing the risk for such effects, include policies of MNCs who promote thesafe use of pesticides, of governments who engage in negotiation of a global conventionto phase out certain persistent pesticides and who attempt to gain control of whichpesticides are used in their countries, and of farmers who switch to alternative pestmanagement methods to avoid damage to their crops from pesticides.


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MethodologyMy case study was conducted through document analysis and semi-structuredinterviews with relevant stakeholders – governmental authorities, non-governmentalorganizations (NGOs), pesticide companies, farmers and agricultural workers – firstlyat national level in two countries, Kenya and Costa Rica, secondly at local level in onecoffee growing district – Meru and Naranjo, respectively, – in each of these countries,and thirdly at the global level in key United Nation agencies in Rome and Geneva,during the years 1997-1999[6]. The selection of interviewees was made by purposiverather than random sampling. Themes for the interviews included if and howpesticides were understood as problems, perceptions of the drivers for the problems,available risk reduction strategies, and aspects influencing decision-making andaction, including particularly the role of knowledge, values and institutions. Together,this enabled an analysis of the different allocation principles. Relevant documents werecollected and analysed primarily from global and national levels – such as pesticidelegislation and regulation, MEAs, codes of conduct, project descriptions, promotionalmaterial – together with participant observation in some national and internationalworkshops addressing pesticides. Details on the methodology and empirical data canbe found in Karlsson (2000).

What is the pesticide problem?Among the stakeholders included in the study there are at least five dimensions, orcategories, of how pesticide use is structured as a “problem”: economic access,production, human health, environment, and trade. Some of these are exclusive tostakeholders at one level only, others are in common at several levels. The problemcategories can be divided into two major groups. The first consists of economic accessand production problems that relate to the intended purpose of pesticides, to controlpests in agricultural crops. The second group consists of those three problemcategories that concern non-intended side-effects of pesticide applications. Theseproblem categories are closely linked. The environment serves as a medium fortransport of pesticides and their metabolites, which may expose humans to thesesubstances via air, water, etc. and potentially affect human health. Pesticides, as atrade issue, emerge in the regulations established to address the concern of long-termlow level exposure to pesticide residues in food. Pesticides exerting effects on otherthan the target organisms – organisms on the farm and surrounding environment –can cause disruption in the population of natural enemies of the original pest leading toincreased and different pest attacks and thus production problems. Although the onlyproblem explicitly put in economic terms is that of farmers’ inability to purchasepesticides, all the other problems could have economic implications. Health problemsfrom pesticide spraying can lead to reduced income for families, reduced soil fertilitycan reduce future harvests, and trade problems put millions of dollars of exportedproducts at risk.

The type and magnitude of the perceived environmental and health effects ofpesticide use varied significantly among stakeholders within and between levels. Atthe local level, government extension staff saw pests as a significant productionproblem and promoted pesticides to address this. This was the case among therespondents in Meru (Kenya) as well as in Naranjo (Costa Rica) except that in the lattercase there was also an awareness of negative production effects from some types of

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pesticides. Farmers struggled to afford to buy pesticides in Meru, while in Naranjo theycould afford them. Economic access and production problems were of the highestpriority for farmers, but were not mentioned to any significant degree at the higherlevels of governance. The issue of residues as a problem for trade was high on theagenda at the national and global levels in governments and IGOs (inter-governmentalorganisations), but it was largely referred to as a problem of the past, before preventivemeasures had been taken. That there were negative health and environmental effectsfrom the use of pesticides in the South in general, and in the two countries in question,was raised in most stakeholder groups, although never unanimously. The exceptionwas for environmental effects, which went completely without mention at the locallevel in Meru. Across all levels, the perceived or expressed pesticide-environmentconnection was weak. It was the health related problems that dominated the problemstructuring at national and global levels.

This variation in problem structuring means that various stakeholder groups atdifferent levels are likely to reach very different conclusions on whether the benefits ofpesticide use outweigh the negative impacts on human health and on the health of theenvironment. The different conclusions are based on different values and interests, ondifferent access to information on the costs and benefits, and on different institutionalsettings.

Who takes responsibility and why?There were many stakeholders in my study, particularly at global and national levels,who had to some degree taken responsibility and engaged in efforts to reduce theproblems with pesticide use in developing countries, but the type of problem theyaddressed, and their primary motivation, varied.

“Northern” environment and health concerns dominated as motivation for globalaction in the form of “hard law” measures such as standards for trade and internationallegislation. Producer health in developing countries and industrialized country traderequirements were primary criteria for many of the globally initiated aid activities suchas capacity building, while Southern trade interests were neglected. Neither diddeveloping country consumers get much attention in the development of standards andmonitoring activities. The international trade regime allows food importing countriesto consider the health of only their own in-habitants; they are not permitted todifferentiate between products based on how they are produced[7]. Rarely was theissue of the environment in the South – of soil, of water, and of ecosystems – explicitlymentioned on the agenda of IGOs or as a rationale for their actions. This means thatglobal responsibility in governance was expressed through different types of globalaction for North- and South-related issues and the latter issues were often notaddressed at all.

The motivation for taking responsibility at the national level was reflected in, forexample, the criteria for allowing and banning pesticides in Kenya and Costa Rica,which all included concern for health and environment within the country. Thesecriteria were set out in law and the officials working in registration of approvedpesticides also referred to them. While the empirical material in this study cannotdemonstrate fully what considerations actually did influence the decisions to ban somesubstances and permit others, it seems that the overriding priority was to secure theposition in international trade of agricultural products, plus farmers’ need of effective


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pest control products. Concern for worker and farmer health, however, emerged in theattention from government and industry to safe use training. Among the people whofavoured other risk reduction approaches, such as integrated pest management (IPM)or organic farming, the economy and health of the farmers were the primary motives.Consideration for the local environment was also mentioned, especially in Costa Rica.

At the local level some farmers in Kenya felt uncomfortable or sick from pesticidesand therefore hired workers to spray the coffee trees. They did not concern themselveswith the health of those workers by providing protective clothes and training for them.These farmers did not include employees’ health as part of their concern andresponsibility; neither did some individual and plantation farmers in Costa Rica.

Culpability – blaming farmers or multinationals?Who or what is seen as culpable for the problems associated with pesticide use issubject to varying opinions not only concerning objective cause-effect links, but alsoregarding who is morally culpable. When asking stakeholders about their views on thewhy questions – why are there problems with pesticide use – I often did not receive aresponse. Moreover, when a respondent did not refer to the existence of a problem, suchas health or environmental effects, the why questions were not relevant.

Officials from government agencies and pesticide companies at local and nationallevels in both Costa Rica and Kenya made claims about whether knowledge about howto use the products properly was or was not available for farmers and workers:

The problem is not to produce them, the problem is not to use them, the problem is usingthem in the wrong way due to ignorance (Ministry of Agriculture official, Costa Rica)[8].

Our people are not very prepared to handle these chemicals, as a result there is poisoning, etc.They are not aware of the composition of the chemicals nor the dangers they pose. . .(Rhone-Poulenc Kenya official).

These respondents argued that if there is information, if there is knowledge, if there isawareness, then there should be no problem, but those Kenyan farmers who knewabout the risks said they had no resources to obtain the protective clothes that wererecommended for the application of pesticides. This would thus be a legitimate reasonto exonerate them from moral, if not “physical” culpability. The Costa Rican farmersand agronomists in the study always blamed intoxication on carelessness. Theybelieved that the afflicted person handling the pesticides on the farm, the person whosuffered intoxication, had not followed the safety procedures. At the global level, IGOsconsidered the absence of information on pesticide characteristics among nationaldecision makers in developing countries as obstructing proper decision-making onbanning undesired pesticides.

Stakeholders’ views on what factors contributed to the problem and who wereculpable can be interpreted as being based on either of two opposing assumptions:

(1) all pesticides pose a risk, versus; and

(2) all pesticides are safe, if used as prescribed.

The first assumption makes any pesticide use contribute significantly to risk. Thesecond assumption attributes risks primarily to how pesticides are used. If the secondassumption is adhered to, that all pesticides are safe if used as prescribed, then pesticide

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technology is constructed as posing no threat in itself. It is only the circumstances thatcreate the risks: users of the technology may fail to use the pesticides properly. “Safe” inthis case could refer to both health and environmental risks, but the concept “safe use”mostly stressed the health risks[9]. At one end, national governments, adhering to thepesticide industry viewpoint and supporting modern pest technology, affirmed that useper se was no risk, as long as the mode of use was appropriate:

All pesticides registered are safe, it is only to follow the application instructions. We findsome misuse (Ministry of Agriculture official, Kenya).

At the other end, the organic movement and others stressed that all pesticides perdefinition constitute harm and they will all eventually end up in the environment:

For us all pesticides are toxic. There can be no safe use of pesticides. Even if they are usedwith [the prescribed] measures, then there is disposal and environmental pollution is theresult (Environmental NGO official, Kenya).

Assumption (1) implicitly assigns culpability to the industry that is developingpesticides and governments that allow their use. NGOs considered the MNCs,governments, and aid agencies to be responsible for encouraging the use of pesticidesand they pushed them to adhere to the FAO Code of Conduct on the Distribution andUse of Pesticides (FAO, 2003) and to switch to IPM which involves a reduction inpesticide use. Assumption (2) instead assigns blame to the ultimate users themselves,the farmers and workers who apply the pesticides:

The person that is going to apply it does not like to use coats, gloves, masks although we knowthat a large percentage of the farms have these for them to use. But there are a lot of people thatdo not like it and who prefer to apply them in the open air. This is the irresponsibility of everyperson and not of the employers (Coffee cooperative official, Costa Rica).

Allocating responsibility for governance of pesticide risks according to the culpabilityprinciple illustrates some of the challenges of the principle. Assigning culpability toMNCs is for many people logical because it is MNCs who develop, manufacture and/orpromote the substances and make profits from them. Not only are they culpable, butthey also have the resources (capacity) to act. However, if pesticides are viewed asessential components of the efforts to increase food production in the world, thecompanies provide a priority good and so where should the liability then lie? Assigningculpability to individual pesticide users is complex as the “degree” of physicalculpability differs significantly depending on lifestyles and behaviour. Pesticideapplication patterns vary enormously between different categories of farmers withincountries as well as between countries and continents.

In order for an agent to be considered morally culpable the first requirement, in theeyes of some analysts, is that agents are (or should have been) aware of the impacts oftheir actions. In this case the requirement will put high and probably unrealisticrequirements on available information. It is difficult for a farmer in the rural South toget access to the information that his/her application of pesticides may have effects onhis/her own health after many years or even decades. He may not feel any immediatehealth symptoms either. It is even more difficult for him to become aware that residuesof the pesticides in the crops could add to the general exposure of toxins to consumersin Europe or North America or that some of the substances he has used can betransported by the atmosphere to polar areas. Nonetheless, even if the local


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stakeholders were exonerated from moral culpability, any governance measures thatare put in place at higher levels that do not influence farmers’ and workers’ behaviourand options for risk reduction, will not have an influence on either the health offarmers, workers, and consumers of sprayed products in national and internationalmarkets, or the local and global environment.

Capacity to know and doIf there is no capacity to act at the local or other levels where culpability originates,then there is not much that can be done in governance. Princenties responsibility, inthis sense, to capacity: “Socially, one cannot be responsible for something if one cannotrespond to the relevant problems” (Princen, 1998, p. 401). The capacity of agents toassume responsibility for governance and take action for risks with pesticide use indeveloping countries depends on which types of risk reduction strategies are adopted.These strategies can be divided into three clusters: focusing on reducing the use volumeper se, reducing the use of the most toxic pesticides, and reducing exposure throughimproved mode of use[10]. Each of these strategies are associated with one underlyingquestion in decision-making: whether pesticides should be used or not; whichpesticides should be used; and how should they be used. Based on the case study, it ispossible to schematically illustrate (Figure 1) how far stakeholders at different levelsare occupied with these three questions and how that affects their actions. The amountof decision-making on each of the questions at each level is closely linked tostakeholders’ capacity to assume responsibility and act.

Starting with the if/whether question, much debate on the costs and benefits ofpesticide use in developing countries has engaged stakeholders at the global level. Thepressure from public opinion and NGOs contributed to the switch in IGO(inter-governmental organisation) policies from direct support of pesticide use to afocus on IPM and thus on use reduction. It is also from cumulative consumer decisions

Figure 1.Decisions made onpesticides at differentgovernance levels

Notes: The widths of the columns schematically depict a judgement made on the relative amount of attention given to each question in decision-making at each level and theinfluence that such decision-making has on action. The grey shading highlights whichlevels predominate in which decisions. Market structures and institutions at the globallevel collectively create the incentives for or against farmers’ use of pesticides;national agencies have the ultimate authority to determine which pesticide should beavailable for use in the country; while farmers in the end maintain their power todecide how the pesticides are used

IF? WHICH? HOW?

GLOBAL

NATIONAL

LOCAL

Source: Karlsson (2000)

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that demands for organic products are created in a range of importing countries,opening the opportunity for farmers to cultivate without pesticides if the institutionsfor certification, marketing, and export are in place. At the same time it is the MNCs inEurope, the USA, and Japan which develop pesticide products and market themworld-wide. Somewhere between the companies, the agronomists and the governmentsat the national level, norms have been created and reproduced that make firm the beliefthat pesticides are essential to the modernisation of agriculture and higher productionlevels. Those setting the standards for pest management at country level largely takethe central role of pesticides for granted and do not devote much attention to thewhether question. In Meru and Naranjo, the coffee farmers at the local level all wantedto use pesticides. Co-operative institutions and the local culture pressured them to usepesticides, and they knew of no alternatives. In Costa Rica a few coffee farmers hadcontemplated switching to organic farming, because they had heard of this alternativefarming system. However, few on farms in conventional production saw organicfarming as a viable alternative. Farmers at the local level had overall little leeway indeciding for or against using pesticides on their coffee trees.

National governments have no power to decide on which products agrochemicalcompanies choose to submit for registration in their country, at the national level, as inKenya and Costa Rica’s government agencies for the registration of pesticides, decisionsare made on which pesticides are allowed and which are banned[10]. At the local level,the agronomists of the co-operatives and the extension officers recommended to farmerswhich products they should use, but the recommendations they gave came fromnational research institutes. Farmers generally followed these recommendations andthus there was not much local decision-making on which pesticides to use[11].

The information on toxic and ecotoxic risks collected and disseminated from theIGOs could be used by national governments, together with the data submitted byindustry, in their decisions on which safety precautions should accompany the pesticideson their labels, that is how they should be used. The WHO hazard classification ofpesticides, for example, determines the colour coding and safety measures on the labelsof the products in Costa Rica. In Kenya and Costa Rica, the pesticide laws emphasisedthat every pesticide product should have a label with information including instructionsfor how the pesticides should be used by those who apply them. These instructions werethen included in the safe use training among farmers. The ultimate decisions, however,on how the pesticides were handled and used in the field were made by the farmers andworkers themselves. They decided where the pesticides were stored, the timing and doseof application, what clothes to wear during application, etc.[12]. My study along withothers indicates that the adoption rate of safe use messages was low.

In a number of cases responsibility was assumed and action taken at levels that had aspecial capacity, and was thus implicitly based on the capacity principle. IGOs consideredit beyond the capacity of developing countries to collect all the information and make riskassessments on pesticides. Therefore, they assisted them in that respect by collecting anddisseminating to them information on the toxicity of substances and by establishingglobal “soft institutions” such as maximum residue limits (MRLs) and acceptable dailyintake levels (ADIs), for use at the national level. As it was considered to be beyond thecapacity of farmers to have the knowledge to evaluate the toxicity of pesticides, agencieswere established at the national level to make those decisions. At the national level, wherethe formal institutions were established to decide which pesticides to allow,


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decision-makers relied heavily on the regulatory actions made in other countries, howIGOs have evaluated them, etc. This reflects their acknowledgement of the limitedcapacity of their countries and the better capacity of IGOs and the countries in the North tomake such decisions. The Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedurefor Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade further illustratesthis (www.pic.int). The benefit was for developing countries to be aware of the regulativeactions of other countries with a better capacity in this field. Another example of this is thenegotiations towards the Basel Convention, which relate to trade in hazardous waste,which can include obsolete pesticides. The Basel Convention was probably the first majorinternational environmental negotiation where developing countries demanded toughertext than did developed countries (Brenton, 1994). In this case, developing countriesexplicitly wanted a formal multilateral agreement to make up for their lack of capacity toestablish and implement institutions at national level. This is unusual because deciding onthe level of acceptable risk is usually considered to be the prerogative of nationalgovernments.

The analysis illustrates some of the implications of the principle of capacity for theallocation of responsibility for governance. Firstly, identifying who has capacity tohandle a problem depends on views on the relative effectiveness of different strategiesand actions. This in turn depends on judgements of what levels of risks are acceptable,and of who and what – such as individual agents or institutions and structures – arethe key elements that can be influenced in the system of linked direct and indirectdriving forces ranging from the global economic and trade system to individualfarmers’ pesticide handling practices. This assigning of culpability for pesticide risksvaried widely among stakeholders, as described above, and was influenced bydiverging views on, e.g. the inherent nature of pesticides and the possibility thatpesticides could be used safely by farmers and workers in developing countries.

Secondly, a multi-level governance context constrains the capacity of agents andmakes them dependent on supportive governance across levels. On the one hand, thereare constraints inherent in the structure of the international system, where thenation-state has been and is the primary legislative power. The global level can onlylegislate for those countries that choose to enter a specific institutional arrangement.On the other hand, there are constraints for the institutions closer to the specific problem.In the pesticide case, the capacity to form codes of acceptable conduct of farm ownerstowards their casual workers, concerning what they should do to protect their health, isrooted in socio-cultural institutions formed at the local level. Capacity to change theselocal institutions would have to be built up at this level. It is essential in multi-levelgovernance that responsibility is taken at those levels where the major decisions aremade that influence key driving forces and where stakeholders have the capacity toestablish and enforce institutions whose operation could reduce the problem. Thiscapacity may stem from institutional legitimacy. National governments have thelegislative power. They may, however, not be able to incorporate the global context intheir institutional design. On the other hand in many cases, but certainly not always,agents at local level have better capacity to design institutions for the local context.

Thirdly, stakeholders who have the capacity to act may not have contributed to theproblems, and thus need some other motivation for taking responsibility forgovernance than liability based on culpability. Such motivation could be based oneither a sense of self-interest or – to be discussed in the next section – moral obligation.

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Concern for yourself and sometimes othersRelying on concern for individual well-being is difficult in the pesticide case because,as in most environmental problems and particularly those with a global dimension:“The social and spatial distribution of benefits differs considerably from the social andspatial distribution of costs” (Saurin, 1996, p. 92). The harms produced are often notborne by the people who cause them. Even if it could be said for global environmentalissues that “all people and all states are polluters and victims simultaneously” (Iwama,1992, p. 111), the effects are not evenly distributed. However, separation of benefits andcosts is not invariably the case. If the focus is on the health effects, then localstakeholders in some cases, such as farmers who spray their own fields, receive boththe benefits and costs. The problem is that they are typically not sufficiently aware ofthe effect their own actions have on their own health.

Motivated by enlightened self-interestBasing the allocation of responsibility for pesticide risks on enlightened self-interest inthis type of situation has to build on a deeper understanding of the underlying drivingforces behind the risk with pesticides and of who are exposed to the risk. It has to buildon knowledge of the complexities around the negative effects of pesticide use andunveil possible interdependencies and feedbacks within both the natural and socialsystems. It needs to include the understanding that the person who handles thepesticides – or others close around, whom the person cares about: family members orneighbours – can suffer effects over the short or long-term. Awareness of the linkagesbetween the use of pesticides and negative effects suffered is essential for anystakeholder if he/she is to be able to consider any aspects of self-interest and expressresponsibility through action. Enlightened self-interest encompasses the concern forlong-term health effects. Comments by a Costa Rican and Kenyan government official,respectively, illustrate how such self-interest can change the policy of local agents:

Why do you think that the organic [coffee] producer in our countries responded so readily tothis market? Because it offers better price, because it offers priorities in the process, becauseall that they produce is bought and the farmer is sought out where he is. . . But it is a commoninterest. There is an interest from the European that he wishes to eat a berry which is tastybut that does not kill him (Ministry of Agriculture official, Costa Rica).

Many have two farms, one for their own food and one for the market. They used to use verydangerous chemicals on the market crops but we got them to stop that by explaining that itwill be consumed by your son or daughter in town some day. When we showed how they getaffected they started using the right chemicals. Some chemicals in coffee are not suitable forvegetables (Meru government official).

This illustrates how the self-interest of a farmer and his family simultaneously can bepart of a common interest for stakeholders far away and can motivate takingresponsibility. In the North, the increasing number of consumers who wish to purchaseorganically grown products may be based on self-interest, to avoid their own exposure topesticide residues. However, this may have the indirect result that the farmers in theSouth receive incentives to reduce their own exposure to pesticides. Even the concern forthe pesticides being released into the environment can be related to pure self-interest,because water can act as a medium that results in human exposure. Governance basedon enlightened self-interest can make people include even a global perspective in their


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actions: “The world is only one. If someone does something somewhere it will affect you”(Kenya government official).

Concern for the environment on such grounds requires the awareness that suchlinkages between the environment and human health are possible and probable. Theresponse to such awareness depends on the level of risk that stakeholders are willing toaccept. The need for more data and knowledge on the effects, not only in governmentsbut also among all stakeholders, would be substantial, but ultimately, the linkages mayconsist of subtle interdependencies that are difficult to prove conclusively. Therefore,to rely on the concern principle for allocation of responsibility requires that decisionmakers apply the precautionary principle to some degree and accept that there may beeffects from pesticide use on their own close environment and the health of theirfamilies and themselves.

To motivate the allocation of responsibility in governance solely in terms ofenlightened self-interest is not easy to achieve for the issue of pesticide use indeveloping countries and its negative side-effects. Not every stakeholder has as muchself-interest to gain from taking responsibility and action to reduce the risks. Even ifthe consequences of POPs pesticides have been called global due to their transportationacross the oceans and atmosphere, this does not make every farmer, consumer, orcitizen in every country suffer the negative effects to the same degree. Furthermore, inmany cases, mere awareness of a risk is not enough to act: “There is no guarantee thatpeople who have a good understanding of their system of interest within the context ofa larger whole will act on that understanding, or if they do, how they will act”(Blackmore and Smyth, 2002, p. 204). Informing farmers of the toxicity of pesticidesoften does not make them change old habits of how they are handled. There are othercompeting values for farmers: the use of pesticides is part of a farmer’s normal dailybread-winning activity which aims to increase the security of the family income.

Motivated by altruismThe concern principle for allocating responsibility for governance can also be based onaltruism, on concern that is expanded beyond both narrow and enlightenedself-interest. This refers to those cases where stakeholders internalise an interest inboth the health of the environment and of people in other countries who are afflictedwith the effects of pesticide use. It means that they internalise the consideration for theplight of others, whether they are workers and consumers in their own community orpeople who live in distant places. An example of broader values than just the interest ofthe family as the basis for taking action comes from those farmers in Costa Rica whohave switched to organic farming:

There are really not many incentives. The incentives are more internal, that people feel goodwith what they are doing (Costa Rican cooperative official).

Similar broader values also apply to those European and American consumers whohave expanded their concern to encompass the health of those farmers, and theirworkers and families, who produce the food products that they buy. Likewise, thegovernments of the North expanded their concern beyond only their own farmlands,farmers and consumers to include those of the South, by taking part in the RotterdamConvention’s prior informed consent procedure for export of those pesticides that areknown to produce severe effects under the conditions of use in developing countries.

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There are significant differences in the interests surrounding pesticide use in theSouth: the farmers’ interests in a maximum harvest, pesticide companies’ interest inmaximum profit, NGOs’ interest in health and environment, etc. It is hard to imaginehow these differences could be reconciled based on self-interest only, irrespective ofhow enlightened such an interest is. An expanded community of concern including thewhole of humanity is the only way that stakeholders in one part of the world would beinclined to consider, and take the responsibility for, the acute health effects ofpesticides on people in another part of the world. It is the only way that governancemeasures could be established that influence significant commercial interests thatstand to lose from the governance of pesticide risks. However, the case study showedmany examples where the concerns and priorities of stakeholders at one level were notconsidered at other levels. The values that underpinned decision-making were oftenlimited to stakeholders’ personal interest, to short time spans, and/or limitedgeographical scope. At the global level, the MNCs had their economic interests andmultilateral negotiations had an agenda dominated by transborder pollution.Long-term health effects for the rural population and consumers in developingcountries did not appear as a strong concern at any of the decision-making levels. Theenvironment in developing countries was largely absent as an object of concern in riskreduction policy except on the agendas of a few international and national NGOs, and alimited number of farmers in Costa Rica. In summary, the concern principle has untilnow been a weak motivation for assuming responsibility in the pesticide case.

Policy implications – concern and capacity before culpability?What lessons can be drawn from the pesticide case, on how workable and just are thedifferent principles for allocating responsibility to different levels and stakeholders?Allocating responsibility to specific agents at specific governance levels according totheir culpability for the problem requires an analysis of who (individual and collectiveagents) and what (structures and institutions) are the direct and indirect drivers of theproblems and, linked to this, which agents are “physically” and morally culpable. Thisprinciple is naturally morally appealing from the perspective of justice but emerges asboth extremely challenging and facing numerous normative choices if applied on sucha globalised issue-complex as the pesticide case. The veil of ignorance between actorsand their impacts can be very thick; they are largely not aware of the negativeconsequences of their actions. Awareness of the consequences is also not enough toassign responsibility based on culpability if actors have no options and no capacity toact differently. This is particularly challenging when the “negative” action in questionis deeply rooted in a wider socio-technical regime – like modern food production – andviewed by most stakeholders as a “positive” and necessary action.

Allocating responsibility based on agents’ capacity may seem more straightforwardboth to analyse and apply. However, it is still closely connected to judgements of whatare the drivers for the problems and the most effective risk reduction strategies, forexample, whether institutions, technology and/or individual behaviour need to change.Agents must have the appropriate capacity – such as the power, resources andknowledge – to address the problems effectively whether they are culpable or not.Many agents at one level lack one or more of these elements, when power, resourcesand knowledge are concentrated with agents at other governance levels. In addition,agents need to have a motivation to act – such as out of guilt for having contributed to


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the problem or out of concern for oneself or others – unless one envisions a verytop-down type of governance with strong enforcement mechanisms whereeffectiveness can be the guiding principle.

Allocating responsibility based on concern for those suffering from the problemscan be approached through two pathways. It can either be based on increasedknowledge of the impact of one’s own actions on personal and family health – thussome form of enlightened self-interest – or it can be based on “expanded valuespheres” with concern for the welfare of people and ecosystems far away, in effectadherence to some notion of global solidarity and accepting the implications of theconcept of global citizenship. The pesticide case illustrates the limitations ofenlightened self-interest, due partly to the complexity of cause-effect linkages and itssignificant information requirements – unless there is a pervasive application of theprecautionary principle together with expectation of strong negative effects as a rulerather than exception. It suggests also, however, the promise of the global solidarityroute if linked to a systems perspective of the global commons. This positive appraisalof the concern principle, however, needs to build on the assumption that motivationbased on self-less concern is either already widespread or that it can be activelynurtured through, for example, education (Dubois and Trabelsi, 2007), processes ofcooperative interaction (Tasioulas, 2005) or the design of institutions which strengthencosmopolitan aspirations and commitments (Tan, 2005).

Taken together, the three principles are more complementary than mutuallyexclusive, particularly when culpability and capacity are dispersed across agents andgovernance levels. However, the principle of allocating responsibility based on self-lessconcern seems to be particularly important, although concern alone is not enough toaffect change. Allocating responsibility for governance of a particular societal concernto agents who may be culpable (in a physical sense) but without capacity to act (andthus not fully morally culpable) and getting agents with capacity (and who may or maynot also be culpable) but who have no motivation to act from concern for the victimsare both bound to fail, particularly in multi-level governance contexts where the globallevel only has at its disposal primarily soft institutions and certainly no mechanisms toassign and enforce liability.

Even if only one principle were selected, we can see the rationale of allocatingresponsibility for governance through creating effective institutions at all governancelevels that take a multi-level integrated perspective. When there are local driving forcesfor global problems, global governance must reach down to influence the local actions.The national and global institutions have little effect in reducing risks if they do notinfluence the choices and actions of local stakeholders. For issues with local-globallinkages in both their effects and driving forces, the conclusion is that institutions andgovernance at the local and global level need to be mutually supportive. The challengein achieving this should not be underestimated. Even the case discussed in this paper –which by many would be considered as dealing with an issue on the lower end ofglobal priorities – illustrated the need for changing the value basis for agents, in orderto achieve effective multilayered governance. Furthermore, an issue-specific regimefocused on specific negative effects of some human activity will not go very far whenthat activity is deeply rooted in the prevailing structures for livelihoods at local leveland economic development at larger scales, whether it concerns systems of food

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production, transport or consumption. Then the analysis has to reach beyond minortinkering with institutions towards societal transformations at a deeper level.

I conclude that we need to further develop the methodological tools and theories todiscuss aspects of ethics and justice for globalised issues that involve the allocation ofresponsibility for governance at several levels from the local to the global, and to thusmove beyond the national/international dichotomy which has outlived its empiricaland moral relevance.

Notes

1. Distanciation for Giddens is the “stretching” aspect of globalisation processes, where “[i]nthe modern era, the level of time-space distanciation is much higher than in any previousperiod, and the relations between local and distant social forms and events becomecorrespondingly stretched” (Giddens, 1990, p. 64). Fragmegration is the term Rosenau (2000,p. 170) uses to capture the “interactive causal links between fragmentation and integration”in a globalising world.

2. Driving forces or pressures is a term for expressing the causality links between differentparts of a system. It is primarily used in natural science dominated research on globalbiogeochemical cycles and global environmental change.

3. Barry (2005, p. 106) refers to this as the association principle, as it is based on agents’“associative connections with those suffering”.

4. For a discussion on the possibility for other motivations for human action than mereself-interest, see for example Mansbridge (1990).

5. For more specific information on environmental effects observed in the (sub)-tropics, see forexample, (Dinham, 1995; Everts et al., 1997; Everts et al., 1998).

6. The countries were chosen partly due to their, on paper at least, rather advanced pesticidelegislation compared to many other developing countries (Karlsson, 2000). Both Kenya andCosta Rica are economically heavily dependent on agricultural exports, and havetraditionally been dominated by very few cash crops (coffee and tea, and bananas and coffee,respectively). However, in recent years non-traditional crops such as pineapples, vegetables,and ornamentals have expanded fast. The large number of export crops, the involvement oflarge businesses in their production, and other factors have made the countries substantialusers of agricultural pesticides.

7. The applicable WTO agreement is the WTO Agreement on Sanitary and PhytosanitaryMeasures (SPS Agreement). The SPS Agreement rules that the standards for the levels ofpesticide residues in traded agricultural products (so called Maximum Residue Limits)should be accepted by all signing parties of the Uruguay Agreements. Indirectly thesestandards have therefore become legally binding on the member countries of the WTO(WTO, 1998).

8. For a comprehensive list of the list of respondents and interviews see Karlsson (2000).

9. In principle, a sprayer dressed as an astronaut could avoid being exposed to pesticides. Eventhen the environment would still be exposed.

10. In developing countries with no legislation on the registration of pesticides, this situationwould be entirely different and little decision-making on which pesticides to use will takeplace at national level.

11. This is not to say that local situations had no significant influence on which products weresprayed. The types of crops grown and the types of pest problems largely deter-mined whichproducts the farmers were recommended to use.


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12. The farm owner could of course, depending on his degree of supervision, ensure that theworkers he employed used protective clothes and other safety measures.

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Further reading

Karlsson, S.I. (2006), “Strategies for reducing risks with agricultural pesticides in developingcountries”, in Pimentel, D. (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Pest Management, Marcel DekkerPublishers, available at: www.dekker.com/sdek/linking , db ¼ enc , content ¼a713623746.

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Note from the publisher

Emerald at 40This year Emerald Group Publishing Limited celebrates its 40th Anniversary.As anyone with more than two score years under their belt (or approaching it) willknow, forty represents a milestone. It marks a point at which we have, or we aresupposed to have, come to terms with the world and reached a good understanding ofwhat we want from life. And for those of a more contemplative persuasion, it promptsus to reflect upon our earlier years and how we got to where we are.

It is perhaps not so different for a company. In many ways, to reach the age of fortyfor an organisation is quite an achievement. Emerald’s own history began in 1967 withthe acquisition of one journal, Management Decision. The company was begun as apart-time enterprise by a group of senior management academics from BradfordManagement Centre. The decision to found the company, known as MCB UniversityPress until 2001 was made due to a general dissatisfaction with the opportunities topublish in management and the limited international publishing distribution outlets atthis time. Through the creation and development of the journals, not only was thisparticular goal achieved, but the foundations of a successful business were laid.By 1970 the first full-time employee was appointed and by 1975 there were fivemembers of staff on the pay roll. In 1981, there were twenty members of staff and threeyears later the company had grown to a size which meant we had to move to largerpremises – one half of the current site at 62 Toller Lane.

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So, how does Emerald look in 2007? Emerald has grown into an important journalpublisher on the world stage. The company now publishes over 150 journals and wehave more than 160 members of staff. Emerald has always stressed the importance ofinternationality and relevance to practice in its publishing philosophy. These twoprinciples remain the cornerstones of our editorial objective. The link between theorganisation and academe that was so crucial in the foundation of the companycontinues to influence corporate thinking; we uphold the principle of theoryinto practice.

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to set us apart from other publishers. For this reason, we feel confident in stating thatwe are the world’s leading publisher of management journals and databases. It isimportant to us that we continue to strengthen the links with our readers and authorsand to encourage research that is relevant across the globe. In more recent history wehave, for example, awarded research grants in Africa, China and India. We also openedoffices in China and India in 2006, adding to our existing offices in Australia, Malaysia,Japan and the United States.

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International Journal of Social Economics

Special issue on India

About the journalIncreasing economic interaction, allied to the social and politicalchanges evident in many parts of the world, has created a needfor more sophisticated understanding of the social, political andcultural influences which govern our societies. The InternationalJournal of Social Economics provides its readers with a uniqueforum for the exchange and sharing of information in thiscomplex area. Philosophical discussions of research findingscombine with commentary on international developments insocial economics to make a genuinely valuable contribution tocurrent understanding of the subject and the growth of newideas. The journal is being brought out under the banner ofEmerald Group, which is a leading English language publisher ofacademic and professional literature in the fields ofmanagement; and library and information management.

The special issue

Despite numerous critiques of globalization, however, someobservers believe that greater equity and justice can beachieved through global operations for a developing nation likeIndia. Could global business be a possible source of equitablesocial justice and, if so, what are the roles that businesses isand can be expected to play in helping to secure equity andjustice or can foster ecological sustainability on the one handand ensure morality and maintain transparency in the open-market conditions? These issues are pertinent as it is beingobserved that, of late, there has been an erosion of values atevery level, against a backdrop of traditional Indian culture anda rich legacy of spirituality inherited from the past down the lineto the significant contributions made by Gandhi, Vivekanandaand Tagore. Where is the way-out? What are the alternatives

towards achieving a sacro-civic society in the face of anaggressive and cut-throat competitive milieu?

With these points in the backdrop, we wish to encourageempirical work as well as big-picture thinking on issues relatedto the roles that business can play in fostering a moral,equitable and ecologically sustainable India.

Papers are invited which address the theme of this issue.Possible aspects include:

. ethics and corporate behaviour;

. human rights and corporate activity;

. Gandhian Economics;

. injustice and gender issues;

. Hinduism and Economics;

. sustainability and Environmental issues; and

. impact of ICT in social and economic development.

Guest Editor of this special issue on India is Ananda Das Gupta(Indian Institute of Plantation Management Bangalore, India).

Please submit your paper not exceeding 6,000 words by 20February 2007 (or preferably earlier) to Ananda Das Gupta([email protected]) with a copy to Simon Linacre, ManagingEditor ([email protected])

Contribution Guidelines can be obtained from: Simon Linacre,Managing Editor (Accounting, Finance & Economics), EmeraldGroup Publishing Limited, 60/62 Toller Lane, Bradford BD8 9BY,West Yorkshire, UK, Tel: 44 (0)1274 777700, Fax: 44 (0)1274785200, E-mail: [email protected], web site:www.emeraldinsight.com

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international journal of social economics, volume 34, number 1, 2007: living in common and...

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