Thomas W. Pogge 
Politics as Usual 
What Lies Behind the Pro-Poor Rhetoric

Worldwide, human lives are rapidly improving. Education,
health-care, technology, and political participation are becoming
ever more universal, empowering human beings everywhere to enjoy
security, economic sufficiency, equal citizenship, and a life in
dignity. To be sure, there are some specially difficult areas
disfavoured by climate, geography, local diseases, unenlightened
cultures or political tyranny. Here progress is slow, and there may
be set-backs. But the affluent states and many international
organizations are working steadily to extend the blessings of
modernity through trade and generous development assistance, and it
won’t be long until the last pockets of severe oppression and
poverty are gone.

Heavily promoted by Western governments and media, this
comforting view of the world is widely shared, at least among the
affluent. Pogge’s new book presents an alternative view: Poverty
and oppression persist on a massive scale; political and economic
inequalities are rising dramatically both intra-nationally and
globally. The affluent states and the international organizations
they control knowingly contribute greatly to these evils –
selfishly promoting rules and policies harmful to the poor while
hypocritically pretending to set and promote ambitious development
goals. Pogge’s case studies include the $1/day poverty measurement
exercise, the cosmetic statistics behind the first Millennium
Development Goal, the War on Terror, and the proposed relaxation of
the constraints on humanitarian intervention. A powerful moral
analysis that shows what Western states would do if they really
cared about the values they profess.

Table of Content

General Introduction
1 What is global justice
1.0 Introduction
1.1 The extent of global poverty
1.2 The moral significance of global poverty
1.3 From international to global justice
1.4 Interactional and institutional moral analysis
1.5 Transnational institutional analysis
1.6 The global institutional order contributes to severe poverty
1.7 Global poverty is foreseeable and avoidable
1.8 Conclusion

2 Recognized and violated by international law: the human rights of the global poor
2.0 Introduction
2.1 Human rights and correlative duties
2.2 The purely domestic poverty thesis
2.3 The Panglossian view of the present global order
2.4 Is the present global order merely less beneficial than it might be?
2.5 The present global order massively violates human rights
2.6 The promise of global institutional reform

3 The first UN Millennium Development Goal: a cause for celebration?
3.0 Introduction
3.1 Reflection one on halving world poverty
3.2 Reflection two on tracking poverty by counting the poor
3.3 Reflection three on where the line is drawn
3.4 Reflection four on relating the IPL to the global product
3.5 Concluding thoughts

4 Developing morally plausible indices of poverty and gender equity: a research program
4.0 Introduction
4.1 The World Bank’s tracking poverty by counting people below some IPL
4.2 The problematic reliance on CPIs and PPPs
4.3 Tracking development with the HDI and gender equity with the GDI
4.4 Toward new indices of development, poverty and gender equity

5 Growth and inequality: understanding recent trends and political choices
5.0 Introduction
5.1 Who benefits from recent growth?
5.2 Intra-national inequality
5.3 Growth and poverty in China
5.4 Global inequality
5.5 What next

6 Dworkin, the abortion battle, and global poverty
6.0 Introduction
6.1 Dworkin’s problematic reconstruction of the pro-life perspective
6.2 Review of the alleged inconsistencies of the pro-life perspective
6.3 The search for common ground
6.4 Global poverty as a competing moral priority from the pro-life perspective
6.5 Comparing the responsibilities for abortion and global poverty
6.6 Objections to the comparative moral priority of hunger
6.7 Conclusions

7. Making war on terrorists: reflections on harming the innocent
7.0 Introduction
7.1 The uses of terrorism for politicians and the media
7.2 Public support for anti-terror policies
7.3 One failure in the moral justification for terrorism
7.4 Other problems for the moral justification of terrorism
7.5 Taking morality seriously
7.6 Acting under color of morality
7.7 The measures taken in our name
7.8 How do we justify our policies?

8 Moralizing humanitarian intervention: why jurying fails and how law can work
8.0 Introduction
8.1 The amazing appeal to the Rwandan genocide
8.2 Would an intervention to stop the Rwandan genocide really have been illegal?
8.3 Humanitarian heroes fettered by legal niceties?
8.4 The jurying model
8.5 How to think about improving the international legal order

9 Creating supranational institutions democratically: reflections on the European Union’s ‘democratic deficit’
9.0 Introduction
9.1 The Maastricht verdict of the German Constitutional Court
9.2 Why the people allegedly cannot play a role in shaping political institutions
9.3 The constitutive features of the Union
9.4 Concluding remarks

Bibliography

About the author

Thomas Pogge, Professor, Australian National University