Development Ethics and USAID

1. Management Systems International600 Water Street, NW, Washington, DC 20024 Development Ethics and USAID “Tuesday Group”, May 17, 2005 David A. Crocker & Chloe Schwenke

2. PRESENTATION SUMMARY • Part One ~ Development Ethics: Origins, Agreements, Controversies, Agenda • Part Two ~ Development Ethics and USAID • Democracy and Governance Assessment

3. Part OneDevelopment Ethics: Origins, Agreements, Controversies, Agenda

4. WHAT IS DEVELOPMENT ETHICS? • “Development ethicists morally reflect upon and assess the ends and means of local, national, regional, and global development.” • Colorado State University, 1978 - A course in development ethics?

5. SOURCES OF DEVELOPMENT ETHICS • Development Practice • Development Theory and Criticism • 40’s-50’s: Gandhi, Prebisch, Fanon • 60’s-70’s: Goulet and Berger • “Lifeboat Ethic” Debate: Singer vs. Hardin • 80’s → Analytic philosophers • 80’s → Streeten and Sen • Associations, Consultants, and Initiatives: IDEA, IDB, HDCA, “Friday Morning Group,” NORAD • Anthologies and textbooks

6. AREAS OF CONSENSUS ~ QUESTIONS • What moral or value issues emerge in practice and how might they be resolved? • Examples from USAID experience? • What is (good) development? • “Development” or “______”? • Development as rationalization of other goals? • National economic or political interests?

7. AREAS OF CONSENSUS ~ MORE QUESTIONS • What are best ends and values? • How should benefits and harms be conceived? • How should benefits, harms, and burdens be distributed? • Virtues/vices of development agents?

8. AREAS OF CONSENSUS ~ STILL MORE QUESTIONS • Duty to promote development? • Who has them? • What are they? • On what are they based? • Role of professional codes? • Practical impediments to development? • Theoretical obstacles to development ethics? • Who should decide these questions and how?

9. AREAS OF CONSENSUS ~ ANSWERS • Deprivations and prosperity co-exist, and the former are unnecessary, remediable, and often due to the latter • Development has ethical dimensions and can benefit from ethics • Put moral questions and answers on center stage • Explicit reflection and deliberation on “Doing the right thing” • Development as interdisciplinary theory and integrated theory-practice • Development as social change that reduces deprivation and misery and increases human well-being and freedom

10. AREAS OF CONSESNUS ~ MORE ANSWERS • Development (good ends) is more than economic growth (a means) • Development ethics on different levels of generality and specificity • Global in triple sense • Contextual sensitivity • Rejection of extremes • Discrimination • “Unaimed opulence” • Authoritarian egalitarianism

11. CONTROVERSIES Scope of development ethics • North and South? • Beyond ODA? Status of norms: universal or relative to culture? “Thickness” of norms • Thegood life or minimal decency? • Self-determination plus tolerance or specific content? • Threshold plus choice?

12. MORE CONTROVERSIES • Content of norms • Which moral notions? Ethics as lenses for looking: • Income/GNP? • Preference satisfaction • Agency/capability/functioning • Rights • Virtues • Which distributive principles, and what distributions are most just? • Human and nonhuman communities?

13. STILL MORE CONTROVERSIES • Responsibilities for change? • Local, national, or global • Who decides? • Experts vs. popular agency • Outsiders vs. insiders • Blame for failures? • Local, national, or global order • Navigating against a headwind

14. AGENDA • 1) Put ethics in the center of development • 2) Promote ethical capabilities in leaders, change agents, citizens • 3) Overcome gap between theory and practice, ethics and action

15. Part TwoDevelopment Ethics and USAID

16. HOW TO USE DEVELOPMENT ETHICS IN DG • Toolkit or Checklist? • A way of thinking, seeing, understanding? • Conceptualizing “development” • Differentiating between DG means and ends • Identifying rights-holders and duty-bearers • Voice ~ empowering stakeholders

17. WHAT TOOLS? • Applied Ethics • Normative analysis, ethically-sensitive program design, and assessment informed by moral theory, moral intuition, and moral discernment. • Moral theories commonly applied in development ethics include, but are not limited to: • Utilitarianism • The capability approach • Human rights approaches • Kantian approaches • Virtue ethics • Feminist ethics

18. BUT WHY BE ETHICAL? • Drivers of international development and foreign assistance • National self-interest • National security • National prosperity and well-being • National prestige • Altruism • Compassion and care • Reciprocity, mutuality

19. CONSIDERING DEMOCRACY • A system of open competition between candidates, interests, power factions, ideas? • What happens between elections? • “Good” governance? Accountability? Transparency? • The common good? • What happens to the “losers”? • A means to structure the application of power to achieve a working consensus? • Consensus through deliberation instead of competition? • in competitive processes to identify the common good, who always loses ?

20. DEMOCRACY’S GOALS • Avoiding the “fragile state” ~ democracy as a means to preserve stability and the status quo? • Stability at what price, and at whose costs? • Short term stability = protecting the status quo • Equitable development, alleviation of poverty, social and economic mobility = creating long term stability • A mechanism (checks and balances) to constrain and direct – in a positive way – human greed and ambition? • Is there room for different motives: integrity, civic virtue, moral principals, concern for the welfare of others? • Where does inclusive “deliberative democracy” fit in to the mechanism?

21. IS THERE A ROLE FOR IDEALS IN DG (outside the USA)?

22. LENSES OF DG ANALYSIS AND DESIGN • Political science lens • “Who stands on the other side of democratic reform…” • The donor’s interests are important, indeed may be dispositive…” • Economics lens • “Competition is imbedded in the very structure of democratic governance.” • Sociological lens • “Is there a social compact that allows ordered disagreement about policies to take place?” • Moral lens • “Any analysis of the rule of law must begin with a review of the country’s human rights record…”

23. APPLYING THE MORAL LENS • The problem ofcorruption • Identifying and constraining bad behavior • Gift, petty corruption, tradition? • Sanctions • Institutional safeguards • Accountability and transparency • Codes of ethics, codes of conduct • Encouraging good behavior • Rejecting the notion that corruption is inevitable • Fostering integrity • Strengthening moral leadership • Teaching moral education (“civics”) • Codes of ethics, codes of conduct as dynamic tools

24. DGA FRAMEWORK ~ STAGE ONE • Characteristics of the political system • Consider full rights of public participation • Often constrained or frustrated by poverty, public apathy, elite’s tendency to limit participation • Right to participation linked to civic duty to participate • Participation can be a destabilizing threat to elite interests • Participation – an exercise of freedom: citizen voice and agency • Consider if barriers to participation exist • But what is the nature of those barriers? • Who is responsible for the barriers? For removing them?

25. DGA FRAMEWORK ~ STAGE ONE • Good Governance • “Democracy is a form of governance, not a philosophy club.” • “Deliver the goods.” • Who defines the “good”? • Are the goods really good? • How much good is enough (for those who really need it)? • How fairly is the good distributed? • “A few authoritarian regimes have also delivered good governance…”

26. DGA FRAMEWORK ~ STAGES TWO AND THREE • Key Actors: Individuals and Institutions • Players in the game of politics • Any political environment (game) operates under particular rules • How just is the balance of power established by the rules? • How fair are the rules that inform social choice? • What opportunities are offered to the losers of the game? • Do ideals shape the rules? • Does integrity matter in how the rules are conceived, reformed, applied? • Do the rules reflect the values of the stakeholders?

27. DGA FRAMEWORK ~ STAGE FOUR • Implementation ~ distilling the optimal strategy • “The primary problems are clear. The allies, opponents, and resources have been identified, as has the playing field and its rules.” • Who has defined the problems? (Whose problems take priority? Why? Do short term or long term results take precedence?) • Is the field “sloped”? • Who makes the compromises, and on what basis (need, power, donor status, other “strategic interests”)? • “The hope is that this framework can help those who are committed to enlarging freedom and democracy find a coherent way to do so.”

28. CONCLUSIONS • USAID’s model of democracy and good governance is ethically incomplete • The “right of rights”: citizen deliberation and agency • A need to make broad-based public participation effective and sustainable • Governance as stewardship, advocacy, and problem solving, not just delivering the goods • Allowing space for desire for integrity, care for others, and the power of ideals as motivating factors driving citizens to do good

29. RECOMMENDATIONS • Incorporate a moral lens in the DGA Framework • Two-stage workshop at USAID on development ethics • “Friday Morning Group” equivalent • Credit course or extended training for USAID staff on development ethics