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Should They Honor the Promises of Their Parents' Leaders?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

Axel Gosseries
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Abstract

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Type
Part II: Identifying Responsibility for Sovereign Debt
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 21 , Issue S1: Dealing Fairly with Developing Country Debt , November 2007 , pp. 99 - 125
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 2007

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References

Notes

1 Thus, I limit the analysis to bilateral interstate relationships. I believe, though I cannot show it here, that the argument of this essay could be applied mutatis mutandis to cases involving private lenders as well. One significant difference, however, is that membership in a country is usually not a choice whereas being, for instance, a shareholder in a private lending firm, is much more voluntary. In addition, as I show later, the conclusions will apply to the more typical case of overlapping generations as well.

2 See Axel Gosseries, “Historical Emissions and Free-Riding, ” in Lukas Meyer, ed., Justice in Time: Responding to Historical Injustice (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2004), pp. 355–82.

3 See, e.g., Jean-Marie Monnier and Bruno Tinel, “Endettement public et redistribution en France de 1980 à 2004, ” in Rémy Pellet, Finances publiques et redistribution sociale (Paris: Economica, 2006), pp. 329–50.

4 Moreover, the uncertainties as to the legal status of Sack's doctrine do not need to worry me here since I am not asking what the state of international law is but what its content should be.

5 Alexander N. Sack, Les effets des transformations des Etats sur leurs dettes publiques et autres obligations financières (Paris: Sirey, 1927), p. 6. Sack explicitly specifies that whether this power is of a monarchic nature (absolute or limited), whether it is derived from the will of God or from the will of the people, and so on are irrelevant considerations here.

6 Ibid., p. 157 (translation by the author).

7 Ibid., p. 30 (translation by the author).

8 Ibid., p. 30 (translation by the author).

9 Ibid. (translation by the author).

10 See, e.g., ibid., pp. 27, 30, and 157.

11 Ibid., pp. 26–27.

12 Note that while a careful reading of Sack's evidentiary proposal indicates the theoretical centrality of the public-interest-use proviso, he downplays its practical importance, treating it as “too arbitrary and too vague” because whether a given use can be considered as being in the public interest is unlikely to give rise to a consensus at the time of signing the contract, the borrower is generally free to dispose of the money in the way it finds most appropriate, and it is budgetarily hard to trace an odious spending back to a given source of income (foreign debt being only part of it). See ibid., p. 157.

13 This is clear from Sack's own writing as well as from authors he refers to, such as Gaston Jèze. See ibid., p. 28.

14 This also means that the borrower's side will have to carry the full burden of its own inappropriate use if the lender did not know, a problem to which I return below.

15 Ibid., p. 157.

16 Ibid., pp. 162–63.

17 Recent accounts on this include Gustaf Arrhenius, “The Boundary Problem in Democratic Theory” (2004, unpublished), p. 12, available at people.su.se/~guarr/; Claudio López-Guerra, “Should Expatriates Vote?” Journal of Political Philosophy 13, no. 2 (2005), pp. 216–34; and Robert Goodin, “Enfranchising All Affected Interests, and Its Alternatives, ” Philosophy & Public Affairs 35, no. 1, pp. 40–68.

18 For a narrow interpretation, see López-Guerra, “Should Expatriates Vote?” Cf. Arrhenius, “The Boundary Problem in Democratic Theory.”

19 I have dealt with the mirror problem of taking the past generations’ wishes into account in Axel Gosseries, Penser la justice entre les générations: De l'affaire Perruche à la réforme des retraites (Paris: Aubier-Flammarion, 2004), ch. 2. The reasons not to do so here are different. The problem is not only that we do not always know what they wanted (actually this is a less serious problem than in the future generations case) but that they can less easily be said to be harmed if we do not care.

20 For the exclusion of expatriates, see López-Guerra, “Should Expatriates Vote?”

21 For a similar proposal, see Harry Brighouse and Marc Fleurbaey, “On the Fair Allocation of Power” (February 2006), p. 28; available at mora.rente.nhh.no/projects/EqualityExchange/Portals/0/articles/brighousefleurbaeymarch2006.pdf. Note that rather than relying on a principle of equality of influence (or of political weight) or equality of proportional influence, one may rely on the idea of protecting potentially vulnerable minorities, here understood as future generations. When minority members are granted a larger weight per capita than majority members—for example, through mechanisms of qualified majority—it may be because we believe minority members will, by definition, be more affected by the majority's decisions. This would remain in line with the idea of equality of proportional influence. However, a principle granting special weight to minorities may also be grounded on distinct intuitions, such as giving special importance to seriously taking into account the diversity of opinions and arguments in an electoral district. Moreover, granting the status of a minority to the potentially large and at least indefinite amount of future generations is problematic as well for this “numerical” reason.

22 For a detailed treatment of the complete life argument along these lines, see Axel Gosseries, “Are Seniority Privileges Unfair?” Economics & Philosophy 20, no. 2 (2004), pp. 279–305.

23 Thanks to one referee for pressing me on this point.

24 On existing institutions and proposals, see Jörg Tremmel, “Establishment of the Rights of Future Generations in National Constitutions, ” in Jörg Chet Tremmel, ed., Handbook of Intergenerational Justice (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2006), pp. 187–214; and Shlomo Shoham and Nira Lamay, “Commission for Future Generations in the Knesset: Lessons Learnt, ” in Tremmel, ed., Handbook of Intergenerational Justice, pp. 244–81. This Knesset commission has now ceased its activities.

25 See, e.g., on Rawls's contractarianism, Ronald Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously (London: Duckworth, 1977), pp. 168ff.

26 For some commutative theories, the very existence of consent should be seen as a sufficient sign of equivalence.

27 On carbon dioxide emissions, see Gosseries, “Historical Emissions and Free-Riding.”

28 Compare this to the historical emissions case where a priori the case is the reverse. Rich countries are also often larger polluters. To that extent, they can be said to “borrow” from poor countries an addition to their share of the environment's cleaning capacity. In the case of historical emissions of air pollutants, it is those who are generally poorer that are the “lenders” of cleaning capacity.

29 I will not attempt to provide here a detailed methodology as to how to assess such opportunity costs. However, assessing what could or would happen, or have happened, in the absence of a given action is an extremely common problem, including at the international level. To provide just one illustration from another field, see the methodologies used to assess additionality (of emission-reduction projects) in the context of the Kyoto Treaty's Clean Development Mechanism, at cdm.unfccc.int/methodologies/PAmethodologies/approved.html.

30 For an example of a broad distributive approach, see Lode Berlage et al., “Prospective Aid and Indebtedness Relief: A Proposal, ” Center for Operations Research and Economics Discussion Paper no. 2000/0032, University of Louvain, Belgium (2000), p. 42.

31 To take an analogy with employment policy, the broad distributive approach would amount, in the absence of other redistributive schemes than employment regulation, to expect that less fortunate workers be paid more than more fortunate workers, which would certainly discourage employers from hiring these less fortunate workers. To the contrary, the narrow distributive view on wages would disregard people's background level of fortune. I owe this analogy to Eric Schokkaert.

32 This is also true about the operation of the principle in domestic law. I am indebted to Jacques Drèze for pointing this to out me.