CHAPTER TWO: DEVELOPMENTAL ETHICS
Introduction
• Regarding its origins, development ethics can be characterized
as a relatively new field of study.
• Development ethics comes to fill the gap in the ethical study
of development by a holistic, defined in a macro level,
normative and practical way.
• International development ethics is the ethical reflection on
the ends and means of local, national and global
development” (Dower, n.d).
• Development ethics as an ethical deliberation on the ends and
means of socioeconomic change in poor countries and regions
and mainly focuses on the element of poverty and
• the division between rich and poor countries – North and
South – under moral issues.
Meaning of Development Ethics
What is „development ethics?
• Development ethics (DE) is the examination of
ethical and value questions posed by
development theory, planning, and practice
(Goulet :1977).
DE also defined as „the normative or ethical
assessment of the ends and means of Third
World and global development‟ (Crocker ; 1991).
Meaning of Ethics in Development
• Ethics in development defined as a person’s or
group’s is their set of substantive beliefs about what
is good or bad and right or wrong in relations
between people (and between societies, and humans
and other life), i.e. their set of ethical beliefs, their
morality or morals.
• It a set of beliefs about morality in issues of
development;
• It is a theorized set of such beliefs;
• It is the study of sets of such beliefs and the issues
they concern.
The Nature of Development Ethics
1st, development ethics can be seen as
– a field of attention, and an agenda of questions
about major value choices involved in processes of
social and economic development.
– For example, what is good or authentic development?
How should the benefits and corresponding costs be
shared.
•
2nd development ethics is the body of work that
has tried to systematically address such questions,
and the sets of answers that are offered.
Cont.…
– This includes work from long before the label
“development ethics” existed; for example the 19th
century writers like Saint-Simon, John Stuart Mill, Pierre-
Joseph Proudhon, and Karl Marx.
•
Cont.…
• 3rd development ethics is the stream of work that
has in addition highlighted a development ethics
agenda and tried to institutionalize the field in
publications, in scholarly associations, networks
and in teaching and training courses.
• The first organization focused on the field, the
International Development Ethics Association (
https://developmentethics.org/ ), was initiated in
1984 and continues active.
Cont.…
Core issues in developmental ethics: Justice
1. Justice
• Justice is giving to each what he or she is due.
• Justice is the concept of fairness.
• Justice is a set of universal principles which guide
people in judging what is right and what is wrong, no
matter what culture and society they live in.
• Virtues or “good habits” help individuals to fully
develop their human potentials, thus enabling them to
serve their own self-interests, as well as work in
harmony with others for their common good.
Cont.…
2. Social Justice
• Social justice is fairness as it manifests in
society. That includes fairness in healthcare,
employment, housing, and more.
• In a socially-just society, human rights are
respected
and discrimination is not allowed to flourish.
Cont.…
– Social justice means everyone's human rights are
respected, protected, and promoted.
– Everyone has access to equal opportunities and the
resources necessary to thrive.
The principles of social justice
• For social justice to become a reality, four pillars
must be built: human rights, access, participation,
and equity.
• Human rights: The connection between social
justice and human rights has strengthened over the
years to the point where many use “social justice”
and “human rights” interchangeably.
• Access: A just society depends on access to
essentials like shelter, food, medical care, and
education. It isn‟t enough for a society to invest in
innovations or create new opportunities; society
must also prioritize access.
Participation
• Who gets to have a say in society? Social justice
isn't possible if only a few voices are respected.
• Unfortunately, the voices of the marginalized and
vulnerable are often silenced in favor of those with
more wealth, cultural influence, and political power.
Equity
• Many people believe “equality” is one of the
principles of social justice, but it's actually“equity.”
What's the difference?
• Equity takes into account the effects of
discrimination and aims for an equal outcome
Racial inequality
• Racial inequality is one of the most common
social justice issues in the world. Most nations
have a history of racial discrimination and
prejudice of some kind.
Gender inequality
• The way things stand, it will take 135 years for
global gender equality to become a reality.
Obstacles like the gender pay gap, weakening
reproductive rights, and unequal education
opportunities hold women back
3. Economic Justice
• Economic justice, which touches the
individual person, as well as the social
order, encompasses the moral principles
which guide us in designing our economic
institutions.
Cont.…
• The ultimate purpose of economic justice is to
free each person to engage creatively in the
unlimited work beyond earning a living, that of
the mind and the spirit.
• Like every system, economic justice involves
input, output, and feedback for restoring harmony
or balance between input and output.
Cont.…
• Participative Justice (the input principle),
• Distributive Justice (the out-take
principle), and
• Social Justice (the feedback principle).
• Like the legs of a three-legged stool, if any
of these principles is weakened or missing,
the system of economic justice will collapse
Participative Justice
• It requires equal opportunity in gaining access to
private property, as well as equality of opportunity
to engage in productive work.
• The principle of participation does not guarantee equal
results, but requires that every person be guaranteed by
society's institutions the equal human right to make a
productive contribution to the economy, both through
one's labor (as a worker) and through one's productive
capital (as an owner).
• Thus, this principle rejects monopolies, special
privileges, and other exclusionary social barriers to
economic self-reliance
Distributive Justice
Distributive Justice defines the “out-
take” rights of an economic system
matched to each person's labor and capital
inputs.
Social justice
Social justice is fairness as it manifests in society.
That includes fairness in healthcare,
employment, housing, and more.
• In a socially-just society, human rights are
respected and discrimination is not allowed to
flourish.
• Social justice also imposes on each of us a
personal responsibility to work with others to
design and continually perfect our institutions as
tools for personal and social development.
Institution
Whether formal or informal, public or private,
institutions are relatively stable social
arrangements (embodying rules, norms or
conventions) possessing a number of special
features
• They are based on shared expectations and
meanings, derived from custom and legal
provisions that establish trust;
Cont.…
• Given these features, many institutions are likely
to have the character of public goods, this
implies that the supply of institutions generated
by the market mechanism left to itself is unlikely
to correspond with social efficiency.
Institutions Supporting Economic Growth
• As we shall see, there is abundant evidence that
good institutions are helpful for economic
growth and development.
• Economic institutions are needed to perform
certain tasks (or meet certain needs), they can
possess varying levels of internal structure and
coherence, and links between institutions add a
further layer of complexity into the picture.
Public policy and social welfare
What is social welfare?
• Social welfare is a system of laws, programs,
benefits, and services which strengthen or
assure provisions for meeting social needs.
• Overall, social welfare policies constitute a form of
mutual aid for human society.
Fundamentally, social welfare policies exist:
In order to ensure socio-economic security,
In order to promote equality,
In order to provide essential services to those who need
them in order to ameliorate their desperate condition.
Different definition given by scholars
About Social Policy
• To Wagner, social policy means the measurements taken by
state to protect workers,
• To Kessler, it means the movements and struggles of social
class and state’s attitude against the struggle.
• To Lauber, social policy is a set of measurements taken at
national level in order to change and regulate the financial
and cultural life conditions in a definite period of time.
• Albrech defines social policy as all measures and institutions
that are taken to protect the part of society which is in need of
economic protection and to ensure social security and peace.
• Marshall defines social policy as a set of policies developed
by state to ensure welfare in society.
The subject of social policy
• Social policy is referred to as “social policy” in Europe,
but it is referred to as “social welfare policy” in the North
American literature.
• Some authors argue that these two concepts have the same
meaning but some others argue that social policy is a frame
concept which encompasses various policies, including
social welfare policy.
• In narrow sense, social policy is an attitude to address the
disputes, imbalances, and conflict of interests between
employers and employees and to ensure harmony between
classes in capitalist systems.
• In narrow sense, the aim of social policies is to find
solutions for the problems emerging in industrials societies.
Cont.…
• In a broad sense, the concept of social policy means comprehensive
practices which address not only the problems and needs of
working class but also those of the other segments of society.
• With a definition from this perspective, it is possible to say social
policy discipline addresses the problems of urbanization,
environment, health, and education and those of all segments of
society such as workers, the disabled, the elders, children, and
immigrants.
• In a board sense, social policy emerged together with the
concept of welfare state after World War.
Cont.…
• Therefore, social policy includes health services,
social security, city, environment, and struggling
against unemployment and poverty that affect
social welfare.
Factors of Social Policy
The factors which affect and determine social policy
are not only the needs of society and individuals but
also are ideological movements, crime rates,
unemployment, media, politics, industrial groups,
and violence, such economic factors as debt.
Cont.…
To achieve its goals, social policy needs to have
some principles regarding the policies it will
determine.
The subjects and basic principles related with
social policies are;
Social needs and social problems,
Equal rights and social justice,
Efficiency,
Equity and choice, and
Altruism, reciprocity(Mutual Exchange) and obligation,
Welfare state should provide some rights to the people.
These are elaborated below.
Welfare state should provide some rights to the people.
These are elaborated below.
Equality: Achieving equality underlies social policies.
Resources need to be distributed fairly in order to achieve
equality.
• Equality has different types: equal opportunity, or equal
treatment.
Equal opportunity: It means that equal groups should be
treated equally.
Equal opportunity needs to be given to people
regardless of their sex or group.
Moreover, all people must have the same opportunities
in educational system or in the labour market.
Cont.…
• Need: Basic needs are food, caring, and housing.
Needs are not limited, and it is not certain which
needs should be covered by states.
• Freedom and rights: There are different types of
rights.
1.Civil rights mean the absence of arbitrary arrest
and detention but having freedom to discuss any
opinion.
2.Social rights mean social welfare and social
security, right to education.
Cont.…
3. Political rights include voting and joining political
parties and freedom to explain opinion in a
democratic way.
• The main goal of social policies is to ensure that
everyone in society lives in harmony, far from
conflicts.
• Thus, the target is to ensure social justice, social
development, social balance, social integration,
and social peace.
Culture and Tradition in Development
Meaning of Culture
• Culture defined as a transmitted and created content
and patterns of values, ideas, and other
symbolic(Kroeber and Parsons 1958).
• It also defined as the collective programming of the
mind that distinguishes the members of one group or
category of people from another.
• Culture is the complex whole of knowledge, wisdom,
values, attitudes, customs and multiple resources
which a community has inherited, adopted or created
in order to flourish in the context of its social and
natural environment .
Differences in meaning
• Different authors have different opinions
about the term culture. Some of which, are ;
1.Culture consists of the ways of life that
people create as they participate in a group or
society. Coakley (2007),
2.Culture as the socially transmitted behavior
patterns, norms, beliefs and values of a given
community J.W. Salacuse (1998).
Cont.…
3. Culture is a patterned way of thinking, feeling,
and reacting that exists within a particular group,
organization, profession, sub-group of a society,
nation, or a group of nations.( Stephen Carroll and
Martin J. Gannon 1997).
4.Culture is the shared knowledge and schemes
created by a set of people for perceiving,
interpreting, expressing, and responding to the
social realities around them. Lederach (1995),
Traditions, values and practices
• Value is defined as the worth or importance of
something compared to other things.
• Value is assigned to concepts, ideas, people, and
objects and helps guide a person to make choices in
life.
• Value motivates people to make choices that act in
the best interest that reflect what is important to
them.
• Values guide how a person interacts with the world
around them by aiding the person in choosing
actions that reflect their perceptions.
Cultural Values
• The definition of cultural values is the core
principles or ideals that an entire community or
society is based around.
• The community revolves around these concepts
and forms a harmonious, interconnected
relationship around these shared values.
• The concepts embodied in a culture's values
include a society's traditions, rituals, and beliefs.
• Cultural values and norms get transmitted from one
generation to another, and the process ensures
continuity of traditions within a group.
Category of cultural values
• Cultural vales can be divided in to five group:
These are;
1.Aesthetic value is straightforward, being related to
beauty, harmony, visual appeal, etc.
2.Social value is linked to cultural identity and an
understanding of the role of culture in society; one
statement places this possible recognition in general
terms and one frames it specifically in terms of Australian
identity.
3.Educational value can be clearly identified in terms
of the work’s role in the education of children.
Cont.…
4. Symbolic value relates to the narrative or meaning
of a work or to the way in which the work is perceived
to convey some wider cultural or other sorts of
references; we assume these values to be summed up
in the phrase cultural significance.
5. Spiritual value is a difficult concept to pin down,
being related to transcendental or mystical/religious
sentiments generated by exposure to an art work; after
testing various ways of specifying this value we found
that the word spiritual was itself the most effective
means of conveying the required sense.
Cultural diversity and standardization
Cultural Diversity
• Cultural diversity reflects the unique sets of values,
beliefs, attitudes, and expectations, as well as
language, symbols, customs, and behaviors, that an
individual possess by virtue of sharing some common
characteristic(s) with others;
•Cultural diversity defined as identities such as race,
ethnicity, nationality, religion, gender, and other
dimensions of difference derived from membership in
groups that are socio culturally distinct, that is, they
collectively share certain norms, values or traditions
that are different from those of other groups.
Benefits of Cultural Diversity
The importance of cultural diversity can be
interpreted on the basis of these related actions:
• Recognizing that there is a large amount of cultures
that exist,
• Respecting each other’s differences,
• Acknowledging that all cultural expressions are valid,
• Valuing what cultures have to bring to the table,
• Empowering diverse groups to contribute, and
• Celebrating differences, not only just tolerating
them.
Cont.…
• The world is naturally multicultural. Approaching
cultural diversity with a mindset and actions that
embrace this fact leads to many benefits, like:
A. Compassion: Communication and understanding
of differences leads to increased compassion
instead of judgment.
B. Innovation: Varied perspectives and lens of
looking at the world lend to innovative thinking.
•with richness of opinions.
Cont.…
C. Productivity: People who come together and
bring their own style of working together tend to
support a more productive team.
D. New Opportunities: The diversity opens the
door to new opportunities and the blending of ideas
which would otherwise have been homogeneous.
E. Problem-Solving: Challenges are layered, so
having people with different backgrounds can lead
to better problem-solving with richness of opinions.
Ethnocentrism and Cultural Relativism
• Ethnocentrism defines that a group of people see
their own culture as the center of their universe,
viewing the other only from the perspective of
their own values and standards; rejecting people
who are different from their own group while
accepting people who are similar to them.
• Ethnocentrism favors members in group while
members of out groups are held in contempt.
Cont.…
• Ethnocentrism is sometimes related to racism,
stereotyping, discrimination, or xenophobia
• Ethnocentrism is the tendency to look at the
world primarily from the perspective of one’s
own culture.
• Part of ethnocentrism is the belief that one’s own
race, ethnic or cultural group is the most
important or that some or all aspects of its
culture are superior to those of other groups.
• Some people will simply call it cultural ignorance.
Cont.…
• Ethnocentrism often leads to incorrect
assumptions about others’ behavior based on your
own norms, values, and beliefs.
• In extreme cases, a group of individuals may see
another culture as wrong or immoral and because
of this may try to convert, sometimes forcibly, the
group to their own ways of living.
• War and genocide could be the devastating result
if a group is unwilling to change their ways of
living or cultural practices.
Cultural relativism
• The opposite of ethnocentrism is cultural
relativism,
Cultural relativism is the
• principle of regarding and valuing the practices
of a culture from the point of view of that culture
and to avoid making hasty judgments.
• Cultural relativism tries to counter ethnocentrism
by promoting the understanding of cultural
practices that are unfamiliar to other cultures
such as eating insects.
Cross-cultural relationship
• The concept of cross-cultural relationship is the idea that
people from different cultures can have relationships that
acknowledge, respect and begin to understand each other’s
diverse lives.
• People with different backgrounds can help each other see
possibilities that they never thought were there because of
limitations, or cultural proscriptions, posed by their own
traditions.
• Becoming aware of these new possibilities will ultimately
change the people who are exposed to the new ideas.
• This cross-cultural relationship provides hope that new
opportunities will be discovered, but at the same time it is
threatening
Cosmopolitanism
• It means Global citizenship or World-mindedness.
„I am a citizen of the world’
• The word cosmopolitan, which derives from the
Greek word kosmopolitēs (citizen of the world),
has been used to describe a wide variety of
important views in moral and socio-political
philosophy.
• The nebulous core shared by all cosmopolitan
views is the idea that all human beings, regardless
of their political affiliation, are (or can and should
be) citizens in a single community.
Cont.…
• The origins of cosmopolitanism can be traced to the
18th century, where
• It defined individuals who saw themselves as
citizens of the world and wanted to distinguish
themselves by their willingness to borrow from
other cultures.
• In the 1950s, sociologists such as Merton (1957),
described cosmopolitans as people who oriented
themselves outside their community rather than
being influenced by local traditions and values
(Riefler, Diamantopoulos, and Siguaw 2012).
Multilateral Organizations and Global Economic
Historical Development of Multilateral Organizations
• Though the evolution of multilateral
organizations is said to be a nineteenth century
phenomenon it has been averred that:
international organizations have existed from the
primitive age, that is before the golden age of
ancient Greece.
• At this, inter- state relations exist in China, India,
Mesopotamia and Egypt.
Cont.…
• However, in the modern history, the formation of
multilateral organization is traceable to the
congress of Vienna (1814-1815) which
crystallized in the formation of the Concert of
Europe.
•The Treaty of Paris (1814-1815) and the congress
of Vienna (1814-1815) established the Concert of
Europe to restore the European balance of power
after the Napoleonic wars.
Cont.…
• The League of Nations which was formed in 1920
through the Treaty of Versailles is a historical
multilateral organization that emerged as a
consequence of the First World War (1914- 1918).
• The League of Nations being concerned with
global security was confronted with some
problems.
• The United States of America did not ratify the
Charter of the League.
Cont.…
• This smacked of weakness to the multilateral
organization in the exercise of the goal of
providing global security.
• Its original members – Japan and Italy quit in
1933 and 1937 respectively.
• Also Germany withdrew its membership in 1933.
Consequently the League of Nations died a
natural death and was unable to prevent the
eruption of a second world war (1939 – 1945).
Cont.…
• In 1945, a new multilateral organization came into being
known as the United Nations with its headquarters in New
York.
• The Charter of the organization was signed by 51 founding
members.
• The purpose of the UN is to maintain global peace and
security.
• It is imperative to point out that the United Nations has six
organs. These are General Assembly, the Security Council,
the Economic and Social Council, the Trusteeship
Council, the International Court of Justice and the
Secretariat.
Cont.…
• The 20th Century witnessed the emergence of many
multilateral organizations which include the
1.The International Monetary Fund (IMF),
2.The World Bank (International Bank for
Reconstruction and Development) and
3. The General Agreement on Tariff and Trade (GATT)
which transformed to World Trade Organization (WTO)
in 1995.
The IMF and World Bank were created at a conference
held at Bretton Woods in 1944 with headquarters in
Washington DC, USA
Cont.…
• The GATT which was signed by 23 nations in Geneva
on October 30, 1947 took effect on 1st January, 1948.
• Multilateral organizations are usually created to serve
a purpose or some purposes which member nations
consider to be of mutual interest.
• The Bretton Woods institute, IMF and World Bank as
well as WTO have objectives/ functions which are the
reasons for establishing them.
• All three were established as the embodiment of
economic liberalism based on the notion that
economic stability and development are best achieved.
Objective of IMF, World Bank
• The IMF and World Bank are the twin Bretton
Woods institutions that were created as a
consequence of the economic depression of the
1930,s as well as the debilitating effects of the
Second World War which intensified the shocks
already created by the economic depression.
Foreign Aid, Trade and Global Economic
• Foreign aid is defined as the voluntary transfer of
resources from one country to another country.
• This transfer includes any flow of capital to
developing countries.
• Foreign aid can be in the form of a loan or a
grant. It may be in either a soft or hard loan.
• This distinction means that if repayment of the aid
requires foreign currency, then it is a hard loan. If
it is in the home currency, then it’s a soft loan.
Types of Foreign Aid
• Aid may be bilateral: given from one country
directly to another; or it may be multilateral:
given by the donor country to an international
organization such as the World Bank or the
United Nations Agencies (UNDP, UNICEF,
UNAIDS, etc.) which then distributes it among
the developing countries.
Bilateral Aid
• This is the most common form of state-run
assistance.
• Bilateral aid describes the situation when one
government directly allocates help (in the form of
money or other assets) to a receiving nation
(usually a developing economy).
• Bilateral help is determined by strategic, political,
and humanitarian considerations.
• Some of the goals that donors wish to achieve are
to promote democracy, economy, and peace in
specific regions.
Multilateral Aid
• This type of foreign aid represents the financial
help that one or several developed nations offers
to foreign institutions such as the United Nations
or the World Bank that, in turn, can use the
funding to tackle hunger in poor countries, for
example
Tied Aid
• This type of international aid is to be spent by
the beneficiary in the nation offering assistance
(the donor) or a group of specific nations.
• When the donor offers a bilateral loan or grant, it
expects that the receiving nation will spend the
money on products and services offered by the
donor country.
• For instance, all food aid, as well as all vehicles
needed to administer help, must be imported
from the country giving the aid.
Use of Foreign Aid:
Foreign aid may be given as a signal of diplomatic
approval, or to strengthen a military ally.
Other reasons to give foreign aid include
• to reward a government for behavior desired by
the donor,
• to extend the donor’s cultural influence,
• for resource extraction from the recipient
country,
• to gain other kinds of commercial access.
Cont.…
The economic reasons for giving foreign aid:
The economic reasons for giving foreign aid :
• For humanitarian reasons
• To improve the country’s international image
• Continue to build positive working relationships
with other governments
• To promote the conditions for peace and
stability.
The economic arguments for not giving foreign aid
• According to critics, foreign aid does not promote faster
growth but may hold it back by substituting for
domestic savings and investment.
• It increases the gap in living standards between the rich
and the poor in Third World countries.
• It will have the effect of increasing inflation in the
country If the aid given is concerned with unproductive
fields or old technology
• The most prominent objection is that donor countries
interfere with the economic and political activities of
the recipient country.
Aid for trade
• Aid for trade, always an important component of
development assistance, has risen substantially
since the WTO ministerial in Hong Kong in
December 2005.
• Aid-for-trade commitments increased from USD
19 billion in 1995 to USD 23 billion in 2005 and
stood at USD 41.7 billion in 2011.
• The acceleration evident in the period 2006-10
seems to have tailed off somewhat from a peak
of USD 44.9 billion in 2010 under the pressure of
the global economic crisis.
What is success in aid for trade?
• reducing poverty through its effects on economic
growth
• As described by the OECD (2011b), three
generalized propositions link the transmission of
aid for trade to growth and poverty reduction:
aid for trade leads to more rapid growth of exports
and imports;
more rapid growth of trade raises productivity and
income growth; and
incomes rising with growth lift people out of
poverty.
Effective Aid for Trade
Effective Aid for Trade will :-
• enhance growth prospects and reduce poverty in
developing countries, as well as complement
multilateral trade reforms and distribute the global
benefits more equitably across and within developing
countries.
• Reducing trade costs.
• It will lower trade costs through enhancing the
efficiency of modern infrastructure use and adopting
new technologies to achieve productivity gains and
improvements in trade-related institutions,
regulations and policies.
Cont.…
• For example, many factors affect the link between
trade growth and income growth:
conflict, indebtedness, governance, or the absence of
complementary policies in finance, education, and/or
investment.
• Similarly, in the last link of the chain, from growth to
poverty reduction, the basic structure of the economy –
initial distribution of income, land or natural resource
ownership, the skill of the labour force, or the labour-
intensity of production – strongly affects the pace of
poverty reduction and the distribution of the benefits
from income growth.
Cont.…
• Effective government interventions in general, the
economic rationale for government intervention is to
improve equity and efficiency.
• The rationale for aid for trade assistance is based on
equity concerns at the global level.
• The Hong Kong Ministerial Declaration agreed that
Aid for Trade should aim to help developing countries,
particularly LDCs, to build the supply-side capacity
and trade-related infrastructure that they need to assist
them to implement and benefit from WTO agreements
and more broadly to expand their trade.
