Free Trade/WTO structurally disadvantage developing countries in favor of corporate interests. Use your ballot to withdraw consent from the global economy

(Alison M, Vulnerable Women and Neo-Liberal Globalization: Debt Burdens Undermine Women's Health in the Global South, Theoretical Medicine 23, 425-40)

Liberal democratic theory holds that all citizens are collectively responsible for decisions made by their democratically elected governments. Even citizens who disagree with particular government policies are said to have consented to them indirectly if not directly because they agreed to the rules of the electoral game.16 Like most bio-ethicists, most liberal political philosophers hold that such consent is binding only if it is informed, rational and uncoerced. In practice, however, people’s rationality is always imperfect, their information incomplete and their available options restricted; hence the validity of consent is always a matter of judgement. I shall argue that, when many Southern countries undertook their supposed debts, their citizenry was largely uninformed and/or their options were virtually nonexistent. Consent to the debt as coerced: many Southern countries were forced to borrow because their wealth was stolen One reason why citizens in the global South cannot be said to have undertaken their supposed debts voluntarily is that neo-liberalism was not introduced into a global state of nature, comprised of nation states that were politically sovereign and economically independent. Instead, it was introduced into a world previously made unequal by colonialism – which also often exacerbated inequalities among and between men and women. Despite the lip service paid by the European Enlightenment to such ideals as universal freedom and equality, European expansion was characterized by violence, slavery and genocide. These destroyed many non-European societies and drastically weakened many others, forcibly converting them into sources of cheap raw materials, food and labour, as well as markets for the manufactured goods of the colonizing countries. The import of manufactured goods from Europe and the US undermined production by local artisans and suppressed the manufacturing potential of the colonies. Thus, it made formerly self-sufficient communities economically dependent. Patterns of colonization varied but typically they created powerful local elites whose interests were linked to maintaining an open economy. At the same time, much of the population was severely impoverished and the seeds were planted of land misuse and environmental degradation.17 In short, colonialism drained massive resources and wealth away from the colonies and destroyed their economic self-sufficiency. After political independence, the erstwhile colonies were left dependent on the metropolis for manufactured goods and also for training indigenous professional and skilled people. Seeking to end their economically disadvantageous position as suppliers of raw materials, many Southern countries sought to develop their own industries. However, so much wealth had been siphoned off from their nations during the colonial period that they lacked sufficient capital to invest in new plant or infrastructure and were forced to borrow. It was because they had been impoverished by previous centuries of Northern colonialism that these countries cannot be said to have undertaken their debts voluntarily – even if they consented formally to accept the loans. Basically, they are forced to borrow back wealth that was stolen from them – and to borrow it from (the descendants of) the robbers. Consent to Southern debt as uninformed or non-existent The people who bear the overwhelming burden of paying Southern debt are the poorest citizens of the poorest countries in the world. This is especially Southern women. These citizens are held economically responsible for debts undertaken by their governments, often before they were born. Every baby born in the developing world today owes about $500 at birth. In most heavily indebted countries, however, electorates were uninformed about the meaning or even existence of foreign loans. Debts were often assumed by local elites, who spent them on unproductive prestige projects or siphoned them into personal foreign bank accounts. Many debtor countries were run by autocratic rulers, who were supported by wealthy First World countries as a bulwark against popular insurgencies regarded as “communist,” and they often used borrowed funds on the military repression of their own populations. Thus, much of the money lent to ThirdWorld rulers in the 1970s and 1980s by wealthy FirstWorld states not only did not support economic development but in fact undermined it by subverting democracy. Given this history, it is plausible to argue that poor people in the global South have no responsibility to pay back money that they did not ask to borrow, from which they enjoyed no benefits, and through which they were even repressed. It is especially unreasonable to expect Southern women to be responsible for the debts because, even if they had the formal equality of the vote, they had even less input than men into taking on the loans and benefited even less from them. We have seen that women in the global South, as a group, receive less food, health care and education than men, and they benefit even less from military expenditures. Absence of democracy in global economic institutions So far I have contended that the entry of many Southern countries into the neo-liberal global economic system occurred under considerable duress and was therefore less than fully voluntary. I now wish to argue that a situation of duress continues, since these countries have little or no influence over the conduct of the global economic system, despite being bound by its rules. The political weakness of what was then called the Third World was already evident in the 1980s, when SAPs were imposed on many debtor nations. At that time, the International Monetary Fund and theWorld Bank were the main institutions governing the global economy and their policies were heavily influenced by a small group of wealthy countries. At both the World Bank and IMF, the number of votes a country receives is based on how much capital it gives the institution, so rich countries have disproportionate voting power.18 Although it is intuitively reasonable that lenders should be able to determine the conditions under which they lend their money, we have seen that much of the wealth of world’s rich countries was derived, directly or indirectly, from a long history of conquest and colonial exploitation. Since this wealth was acquired illegitimately, I suggest that those who currently claim ownership of it lack the moral right to control its disposal, much less to use it in ways that worsen the lives of those from whom it was taken. The birth of theWTO created a supranational organization whose rules, as we have seen, supersede the national laws of its members on issues of trade. Joining the WTO limits the sovereignty of member nations over an enormous range of issues, since the WTO construes trade so broadly as to include many matters of ethics and public policy. The WTO is formally democratic in that each of its 142 member countries has one representative or delegate, who participates in negotiations over trade rules, but democracy within the WTO is limited in practice in many ways. Wealthy countries have far more influence than poor ones, and numerous meetings are restricted to the G-7 group, the most powerful member countries, excluding the less powerful even when decisions directly affect them. Moreover, even though sovereign states are the only official members of the WTO, this organization’s dispute resolution system allows powerful multinational corporations to challenge trade barriers or domestic regulations, sometimes seeking to reverse decisions lost in the political arena at home. The dispute resolution system of the WTO violates most democratic notions of due process and openness. Cases are heard before a tribunal of “trade experts,” generally lawyers, who are required to make their ruling with a presumption in favor of free trade, and the burden is on governments to justify any restrictions on this. The WTO dispute resolute system permits no amicus briefs, no observers, no public record of the deliberations, and no appeals. The present organization of the global economy undermines democracy by increasing the political exclusion of the poorest and most marginalized people across the world. It especially excludes women, who are among the poorest and most marginalized of all. Even though the proportion of women representatives recently has increased in most national legislatures, except those of Eastern Europe, the significance of this gain is diminished when the authority of national legislatures is reduced. The virtual absence of women from the decision-making processes of such bodies as theWorld Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization reflects the very limited influence exercised by women at all levels of global politics. (433-6)