This chapter
covers the relationship between human rights and the UN Sustainable Development
Goals (SDGs). It starts with the history and development of the SDGs, which
included the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The concept of sustainable
development is based on the pillars of economic, environmental, and social
development, which allowed the integration of human rights, climate change, and
many other issues. The key challenges of SGDs revolve around the lack of
ensuring accountability and addressing inequality, which made its significant
potential to contribute to the realization of human rights. Finally, the chapter
provides a case study of SDG's commitment to reducing
inequalities.
12
Chapter
Human Rights and the UN Sustainable Development Goals
Inga T. Winkler and Matheus de Carvalho Hernandez
Chapter
9. Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Peter Hallward
This chapter evaluates some of the central tensions that characterize Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s egalitarian account of sovereignty. He formulates this account as the basis for a participatory ‘social contract’, meaning a voluntary form of association that aims to be both general enough to include the people as a whole, yet concentrated enough to command their government and to over-power the divisive influence of a wealthy elite. As he argued in his main political works, if it is sufficiently forceful, such a collective will can counteract the forms of inequality and servitude that have accompanied the historical rise of propertied and exploitative classes. Rousseau’s radical conception of mass power would soon inspire the most uncompromising sequences of the French Revolution. However, its emancipatory promise was also limited by its author’s sexism, his anachronism, and his failure to engage with some emerging forms of inequality and power, notably those associated with the rise of commerce, capitalism, and the transatlantic slave trade.
Book
Edited by Nicola Phillips
Global Political Economy explores the breadth and diversity of this topic and looks at the big questions that matter today. It addresses essential topics and themes, such as poverty, labour, migration, and the environment. With a strong emphasis on ‘globalising’ the study of this subject, the text introduces the idea that it matters who is talking and writing. It explains that there are different ways of seeing the world, and that bringing together different theoretical and methodological perspectives adds to the depth and richness of understanding. In addition, chapters look at globalism and neoliberalism, finance, trade, production, health, climate change, inequality, crime, migration, and global governance.
Chapter
12. The Big Question: World Order or World Chaos?
This final chapter addresses a really big question: are international relations heading towards order or chaos? To answer this question, it interrogates the different IR theories presented in previous chapters. An initial section provides a conceptual map, based on a review of different understandings of the concept of world order. The chapter proceeds by discussing the effect of the rise of authoritarian power such as China, new challenges in established democracies, fragile states in the Global South, and the governance provided by international institutions. The chapter ends by arguing that the glass is at the same time half-full and half-empty: the world faces new and formidable challenges and we are very far from meeting current aspirations for world order; at the same time, global relations are much more ordered than they used to be just a few generations ago—and things are far better than many pessimists claim.
Chapter
16. The Political Economy of the Environment
Kate Ervine
The global community is confronted with an unprecedented array of overlapping environmental crises, threatening humanity and non-human species, though the impacts remain highly uneven, with nations and communities least responsible for contemporary ecological problems paying the highest cost. With widespread climate disruption projected to intensify in the coming years and decades, this work illustrates the critical need for effective and democratic governance. It unpacks the prevailing relations of power connected to the global political economy of advanced capitalism, dominant debates and disagreement about how environmental crises are understood, and how governments and various actors respond to climate crises based on these understandings and power structures. It pays particular attention to how uneven development and colonialism have shaped inequality and ecological decline, showing that effective and meaningful responses to planetary crises will also need to respond to the deep injustices and inequalities that mark the contemporary GPE.
Chapter
5. Global Trade
Silke Trommer
Across history, all successful human civilisations have engaged in one form of cross-cultural trade or another. Following decades of contested but successful trade multilateralism under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) established in 1947 and the World Trade Organization (WTO) established in 1995, hybrid governance structures characterize the global trade system of the 21st century. In this system, multilateral, regional and bilateral institutions provide overlapping and separate rules and regulations for the conduct of global trade. Meanwhile, global trade is widely perceived as a key arena within which we need to address key challenges, from climate change and big data, to economic and social inequalities within and between countries. This work reviews the history, politics, and recent trends and challenges of the global trade system.
Chapter
4. Globalization and neoliberalism
Jacqueline Best
This chapter evaluates the contested concepts of globalization and neoliberalism, and looks at their role in Global Political Economy (GPE). There are significant debates about the political salience of globalization, with hyperglobalists, sceptics, and transformationalists disagreeing on its implications for the power of the state. Scholars also disagree about when the era of globalization began. Meanwhile, neoliberalism is a set of economic ideas and policies built upon a belief in the ‘free market’ as an unquestionable value in political and economic life. Neoliberal globalization has increased living standards in many parts of the world while also intensifying inequality along the lines of class, race, and gender. At the heart of debates about neoliberalism and globalization are three core puzzles: whether they are primarily depoliticizing or repoliticizing strategies; whether they are best understood by looking at global-level processes or at changes in everyday life; and whether their power is primarily material or ideational.
Chapter
14. The Global Political Economy of Development
Ali Bhagat
Some major advances in the betterment of human life have been made in recent years but at the cost of accelerated climatic change and through uneven means of development. A reduction in child mortality, a rise in literacy and education, and by some measures the fewest people live in extreme poverty than they ever have before. Nevertheless, inequality on the multiple axes of health, income, environment, gender, education, technology, finance, shelter, food, water, and various other issues concerning access persist. This work examines efforts by various actors to deal with these problems with mixed and contested results. The analysis is centered around a key question: who benefits and why from globalised development? In so doing, it examines various development theories, traces the history of globalisation-led development post-WWII, and scrutinises contemporary challenges like the Great Recession and the Global Refugee Crisis, in order to understand the crisis prone tendencies of globalisation and its linkages to everyday practices in global political economy.
Chapter
15. The Global Political Economy of North–South Relations: A View from the South
J. P. Singh
Some major advances in the betterment of human life have been made in recent years but at the cost of accelerated climatic change and through uneven means of development. A reduction in child mortality, a rise in literacy and education, and by some measures the fewest people live in extreme poverty than they ever have before. Nevertheless, inequality on the multiple axes of health, income, environment, gender, education, technology, finance, shelter, food, water, and various other issues concerning access persist. This work examines efforts by various actors to deal with these problems with mixed and contested results. The analysis is centered around a key question: who benefits and why from globalised development? In so doing, it examines various development theories, traces the history of globalisation-led development post-WWII, and scrutinises contemporary challenges like the Great Recession and the Global Refugee Crisis, in order to understand the crisis prone tendencies of globalisation and its linkages to everyday practices in global political economy.
Chapter
8. Economic Liberalism, Inequality, and Populist Backlash
Jonathan Hopkin
This chapter covers the interplay between economic liberalism, inequality, and populist backlash. It introduces the concept of anti-system politics, which overwhelmed the political systems of the European countries. The contours of backlash politics in Europe since the Global Financial Crisis of the late 2000s showcase how party systems have changed under pressure from hard-pressed voters facing stagnating living standards. Additionally, the causes and consequences of this backlash include how the crisis of the European economy has sparked political contestation and how political institutions responded to the aforementioned backlash. The chapter then considers analytical tools of European political economy to discuss the European countries' political upheaval and economic pressures that drive political instability.
Chapter
16. Global political economy
Nicola Phillips
This chapter introduces the field of international political economy (IPE), the themes and insights of which are reflected in the global political economy (GPE), and what it offers in the study of contemporary globalization. It begins with three framing questions: How should we think about power in the contemporary global political economy? How does IPE help us to understand what drives globalization? What does IPE tell us about who wins and who loses from globalization? The chapter proceeds by discussing various approaches to IPE and the consequences of globalization, focusing on IPE debates about inequality, labour exploitation, and global migration. Two case studies are presented, the first looking at global value chains (GVCs) and global development and the second dealing with globalization and child labour.
Chapter
Human Rights Claiming as a Performative Practice
Karen Zivi
This chapter
analyses the politics of human rights from a performative perspective. It starts
with identifying rights claiming as one of the most common ways to highlight and
demand redress for injustice across the world. The practice and promise of human
rights have a clear gap as human rights violations remain a global issue despite
the years of political activism, international human rights standards, and human
rights theories. Indeed, several scholars are sceptical about the power of human
rights in bringing an end to injustice and inequality. The chapter then covers
the ideology of performativity correlating to a theory of language, gender, and
politics. It explains that rights claiming may employ non-traditional forms of
political engagement and depend on the state to secure the desired
change.
Chapter
The Politics of Human Rights
Michael Goodhart
This chapter
explores the politics of human rights. As human rights function as an ethical
standard in international law and political practice, the standard enabled the
naming and shaming strategy that became the mainstay of international human
rights nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). The chapter covers why human rights
as politics generate controversy by referencing the understandings of social
constructs, paradox of institutionalization, and cultural relativism. Indeed,
human rights are inherently political and controversial. The chapter then
discusses the accommodation of inequality through neoliberal conceptions of
human rights. It explains the two important contemporary debates about human
rights: its effectiveness in combatting economic inequality and precarity, and
the evidence of a global backlash against human
rights.
Book
Edited by Manuela Moschella, Lucia Quaglia, and Aneta Spendzharova
European Political Economy combines the key theoretical and empirical approaches of political economy and EU scholarship. It draws on theoretical debates and recent policy case studies, to help readers apply theories and methods to real life issues in European political economy. The book offers a clear analysis of some of the most pressing challenges confronting Europe, such as the political impact of rising inequality, the functioning and the effects of Economic and Monetary Union, the future of the ‘European’ social model, the ongoing impact of Brexit, Europe's role in a changing global economy, and Europe's response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Chapter
16. Development
Tony Addison
This chapter examines development policy objectives and their explicit focus on poverty reduction. It first considers different definitions of development policy objectives before discussing the roles that the market mechanism and the state should play in allocating society’s productive resources. In particular, it looks at the economic role of the state as one of the central issues dividing opinion on development strategy and explains how rising inequality led to a backlash against economic liberalization. The chapter proceeds by exploring the relationship between economic growth and poverty reduction, along with the political difficulties that arise from economic reform. It also analyses the importance of transforming the structure of economies and the new global development landscape, including changes in development finance.
Chapter
6. Equality and social justice
Jonathan Wolff
This chapter addresses equality and social justice. In the 1980s and 1990s, the goal of social justice was challenged both on political and philosophical grounds and was largely supplanted by an emphasis on economic growth and individual responsibility. Although still given little emphasis in the United States, considerations of social justice came back onto the political agenda in the United Kingdom following the election of the new Labour government in 1997. To rehabilitate social justice, it was necessary to decouple it from traditional socialist ideas of common ownership of the means of production. Key debates on social justice concern theories of equality, priority, and sufficiency, and how inequality should be defined and measured. Of particular concern has been the place of personal responsibility for disadvantages causing inequalities. The chapter then considers equality of opportunity and social relations.
Chapter
6. Inequality
Jenny Pearce
This chapter examines the key conceptual debates on inequality that were common until the end of World War II and the birth of the field of ‘development’. Two inequality-related questions have dominated development debates for decades. Firstly, does growth inevitably lead to inequality? And if so, does it matter, as long as poverty declines? The debates around these questions began in the 1950s with Simon Kuznets’ introduction of the ‘inverted-U hypothesis’, which posited that relative inequality increases, but only temporarily, in the early stages of economic growth, improving once countries reach middle-income levels. The chapter considers the politics and economics of inequality in the developing world as well as inequalities in the age of globalization. It concludes with an assessment of the World Bank’s incorporation of the goal of ‘shared prosperity’ in its discourse alongside its ongoing concern to reduce poverty.
Book
Edited by Tim Allen and Alan Thomas
Poverty & Development in the 21st Century provides an updated, interdisciplinary overview of one of the world's most complex and pressing social problems. The book analyses and assesses key questions faced by practitioners and policy makers, ranging from what potential solutions to world poverty are open to us to what form development should take and whether it is compatible with environmental sustainability. This third edition considers the complex causes of global poverty and inequality, introducing major development issues that include hunger, disease, the threat of authoritarian populism, the refugee crisis, and environmental degradation. Three new chapters illustrate the impact of climate, refugee and health crises on development by drawing on accounts of lived experience to explore the real-world implications of theory.
Chapter
22. Digital Technologies and the Future of Poverty and Development
Tony Roberts, Kevin Hernandez, and Becky Faith
This chapter assesses the use of digital technologies in international development. Digital technologies are transforming economic and social life and are used in almost every sector of development. However, positive benefits in the form of digital dividends are limited by continued digital divides in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) access. Use of digital technologies tends to reflect, reproduce, and amplify existing patterns of inequality. Thus, digital development initiatives need to design for equity, include non-digital communication, and pay attention to potential risks. The chapter then provides examples of contemporary digital development projects applying Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D), and looks at 'frontier technologies' that may shape the future of international development.
Chapter
2. Poverty and Inequality
Naila Kabeer and Alan Thomas
This chapter examines a range of different ways of determining whether or not someone is 'poor' in an absolute sense, before discussing poverty in relative and cultural terms and the related idea of inequality. Income poverty has many limitations as a measure of poverty. Other ways of conceiving and measuring the poverty of individuals include: taking gender and other inequalities into account within and between households; relative poverty or social exclusion; poverty as a deprivation of capabilities; and incorporating multiple dimensions of deprivation. Poverty is also applied to whole communities, regions, or countries. Two main contrasting ways of measuring poverty at these levels are gross national income (GNI) per capita and the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI). Globally, patterns of poverty and inequality are changing so that the majority of poor people no longer live in poor countries as measured by GNI per capita. Global poverty also has to be considered alongside social disintegration and environmental destruction as interrelated issues and parts of a 'global crisis'.
12
