Picking apart Pogge

Indira talked a bit about the seemingly top-down approach Pogge has to achieving democracy. I can see where this perception comes from, but at the same time feel that Pogge’s conception of requirements for and characteristics of a democracy call for the people to be engaged at all levels. Like Dagger, he speaks of the responsibility of the persons represented by the democracy, once again the vigilant citizenry as it were. By his definition, an achieved democracy centers around the will of the people who have not only the information to make educated decisions but the independence to be freed of coercive influences.

I can appreciate the theory of and rhetoric behind the Democracy Panel and Democracy Fund, but even if I presuppose that Pogge’s conception of sovereignty from Chapter 7 has been realized, I’m skeptical of its practical application and effectiveness. Pogge argues that by having even one country implement this type of amendments that the rest of the world will be swayed by the “moral momentum” this action will accumulate.

Based on the limited success of other global organizations like the U.N. and its predecessor the League of Nations, I see the current tangle of international politics as too snarled to simplify into the kind of ideal Pogge projects. Even were the different countries to internalize Pogge’s views on sovereignty, I still don’t see many of them authorizing military intervention or calmly allowing their fate to be adjudicated by this international power. As much as democracy is supposed to be about freedom, governing is essentially about control.

As others have noted, I’m skeptical that the Democracy Fund will remain funded or that the proposal to undermine the lending capabilities of nations will gain much traction. The cynic in me agrees that to decrease the incentives of a hostile takeover it makes sense to start with the money. Admittedly, I know next to nothing about international finance, so my next few comments might sound startlingly naïve or even flat out ignorant, but here goes.

When thinking of hostile takeovers and the individuals who launch these coup d’etats, I never got the impression that a low credit limit or high interest rate would really deter them. If one is going to use military force to promote authoritarian rule, what are the odds that you are that concerned about raising capital, either instead of the loans or to pay them, according to the legal guidelines. Would this not just encourage the leaders of these takeovers to see more nefarious sources of revenue? Also, we in the United States have basically ignored our national debt for years without too much issue. What is to keep these newly authoritarian countries from accumulating the debt and then ignoring it, as we have?

I do confess that I found chapter 6 to be much more interesting and much more accessible. I am still not quite clear of the connection he is trying to make between cosmopolitanism and sovereignty, a dialogue I feel is at the core of understanding this text in general. I have an idea of the pairing, but am looking to the class to help clarify the specific outline of the structure for Pogge’s connection.