The Emergence of human rights politics in international finance: Transnational networks and the transformative potential of ideas

Elizabeth Friesen, PhD. CandidateCarleton University

Ottawa, Canada

Paper prepared for the “Pathways to Legitimacy? The future of Global and Regional Governance” Conference

Centre for the Study of Regionalisation and GlobalisationUniversity of WarwickSeptember 17-19, 2007

(Preliminary Draft – Please do not cite)

AbstractThis paper looks at the introduction of Human Rights politics into the debate around the international financial architecture and, more specifically, the debate around debt restructuring and debt cancellation in the developing world.  This paper argues that in the last two decades norms and values have played an increasingly important part in the contest to determine the rules governing finance and debt.  It traces the history of the apparent shift away from the Washington Consensus and examines the origins and strategies of the multitude of actors and organizations that have attempted to challenge the legitimacy and the economistic rigour of the Washington Consensus. Finally, it argues that these events provide an example of the tension between the outcomes of capitalist market dynamics and the social reaction to these outcomes and concludes that this process of contestation makes an important contribution to the resilience and adaptive capacity of capitalist systems.

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The Emergence of human rights politics in international finance:Transnational networks and the transformative potential of ideas

Capitalism is an evolving, adapting form of political economic organization with

variations which differ with time and place but are drawn together by the common

threads of private property and the free market mechanism. This paper argues that the

resilience and adaptive capacity of capitalist systems is, not only the result of their

impressive capacity to mobilize technical and material resources through market

relations, but that it is also due to their relation to social and normative structures and

that, historically, these structures have supported as well as generated societal limits on

market processes (Ruggie 1982; Polanyi 1944; and Gramsci 1971). Arguably, economic

structures in general, and international finance in particular, are best understood as

systems of rules and norms that are constructed through an ongoing process of

contestation and consent. While many of the competing forces are materially oriented, it

is also important to consider the power of norms, values, and identity in the contest to

determine the rules governing international financial relations. In the past 20 years social

movements and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have challenged the existing

structure of international finance by shifting the discourse surrounding the “proper” role

of international finance. Human rights and social justice based arguments have been

employed and a kind of global “consciousness raising” process can be seen in changes in

the discourse surrounding international finance. The power of norms, values, and

identity is an important part of this process and that recognizing this is necessary to

understanding the resilience and adaptive capacity of capitalism.

Theoretical Framework

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This paper seeks to complement materially oriented approaches which continue to

provide important insights into this process of construction as well as reproduction of

economic structures in general and international finance in particular (Helleiner, 1994;

Cohen, 1996; Pauly, 1997; Germain, 1997; Strange 1998; Kapstein 1994; Gilpin 2001;

Sinclair, 1994; Lindblom, 1977; Underhill, 1997; Bienefeld, 1996; Gill, 1995; Porter,

1993; Birchfield, 1999). It draws on work which addresses the historical development to

various systems of finance (Germain 1997; Langley 2002; Arrighi 1994; Braudel 1979)

and builds on work which explores the importance of ideas, norms, and values

(Eichengreen 1995; Cohen 1998; McNamara 1998; Hall, P. 1989; Blyth 2002; Best 2005;

Geske 2000; de Goede 2005; Thrift and Leyshon 1999) The rules governing the

organization of international finance are the product of a political process. Power

relations constrain, shape, and facilitate the outcomes of political contestation and it is

therefore necessary to develop a means of understanding, not only visible and obvious

conflict, but also the dynamics of hidden or latent conflict situations.

This work adopts a broad and flexible definition of power. Lukes’ three dimensional

definition of power emphasizes that power relations can be at work, even in the apparent

absence of overt conflict (Lukes,1974, 24). This helps to clarify the immense power

inherent in economic structures and the political power that derives from the capacity to

set the rules that govern these structures. Yet Lukes’ view of power is aware that the

privilege to set the rules is won in a political contest either overt or latent.1 Foucault

1 Others have developed similar insights. For example Galbraith considers power from an economists point of view. Like Lukes Galbraith divides power into three categories: condign; compensatory; and conditional. He argues that conditional power, based on personality, property and organization, is central to the functioning of the modern economy because it conditions people to believe that alternative economic forms are not practical (Galbraith in Lukes 1986,214 check original 1984 1-13, 131-143). Galtung defines three kinds of violence: direct, structural, and cultural. In his view cultural violence is also cultural power because it is the ability to shape actions by framing what is right or wrong (Reitan 17) As Reitan argues the concept of cultural violence is very close to Gramsci’s concept of hegemony (Reitan 17). The Gramscian

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contributes another important aspect to the definition of power. In his view power can be

not only invisible and pervasive but also internalized within the subject. This view of

power complements that of Lukes suggesting that, not only is setting the limits of what is

understood as possible an extremely powerful act but that such limits may well be set

within the agent. The governmentality approach underlines the power of ideas to shape,

not only understanding, but also the very possibilities of action (Foucault 1977; Dean

1999, Larner 2000; Gibson-Graham 1996; Walters 1999).

Although the understanding of political conflict adopted in this paper is greatly

influenced by Lukes’ definition of power it is important to emphasize that it does diverge

from Lukes in one important way. Lukes argues that what he calls “real interests” exist

and even if the excluded “may not express or even be conscious of their interests ...the

identification of those interests always rests on empirically supportable and refutable

hypotheses” (Lukes 1974, 25). However, “interest” is a good deal more complicated than

that. In both political and economic theory there has been a tendency to assume that the

goals pursued in a conflict will reflect the material interest of the parties involved. This

is not always the case. Although quantifiable, empirically measurable interests do remain

very important, material interests may conflict with normative interests and it is by no

means certain that the materially oriented, interest maximizing goal will always

dominate. The emergence of human rights politics in the contestation over debt

cancellation provides evidence of this.

This brief theoretical overview now turns to the question of change and the structure

of international finance. What produces a “fundamental questioning” of previously

concept of hegemony provides a complex and broad based understanding of the power of ideas which has been developed by and applied to the present by neo-Gramscians (S. Hall 1988; Cox 1986; Gill 1995, Birchfield and Freyberg-Inan 2005).

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accepted orthodoxies, a sense that previously taken-for-granted and agreed upon

arrangements have somehow become less than satisfactory? Clearly changing material

circumstances can change interest. New technological possibilities or the emergence of

competitive rivals can stimulate efforts to change the rules of the game. Conventional

explanations of the defence of national interest or the interests of market participants

provide an important part of the explanation of the sources of change in international

finance in the twentieth century but materially oriented theoretical explanations, while

important, are incomplete. By emphasising material interest and calculation in decision

making, the power of dominant normative ideas to influence the agenda and, in this way,

play a part in defining the very limits of the possible has been neglected. Both ideas

based in material interest and those based on norms and values have the power to shape

institutions. Dominant ideas vary with time and place and shifts in these ideas can

produce change in institutional rules and frameworks. This results in a kind of paradigm

shift but, contra Kuhn, shift in consensus is not necessarily based on a scientific or

technical breakthrough. Rather, the shift in consensus can be based on changes in what

passes for knowledge including things like “self knowledge” and “spiritual knowledge”.

In this sense paradigm shifts need not be progressive or modern.

In Gramscian theory there is a dynamic relationship between hegemony and the forces

of counterhegemony which challenge it. Intellectuals, both organic and traditional, are an

important part of this challenge because they provide an effective means to “question the

forms of power (both ideational and material) that perpetuate marginalisation by slowly

building foundations for an alternative system of state-society relations” (Birchfield and

Freyberg-Inan 2005, 156). They begin to break down ways of thinking that legitimated

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existing forms of social and political control (Birchfield and Freyberg-Inan 2005, 157).

Polanyi’s concept of movement and countermovement is a useful complement to the

Gramscian concepts of hegemony and counterhegemony. It further underlines the power

of societal norms in changing, as well as maintaining, economic systems (Polanyi 1944;

Birchfield 1999). In Polanyi’s concept of the double movement, society acts to constrain

the dynamic of unfettered market processes in an effort to protect itself from potentially

intolerable outcomes of market processes. Countermovements arising within a society, in

response to the movement produced by free market processes, are a source of adjustment

in the market-society relationship. In Polanyi’s work, countermovements develop as

society seeks to protect itself and thus render the market-society relationship sustainable.

This is an important part of a continuous process of adaptation central to the

sustainability of any given form of capitalism. Blyth builds upon this insight by

emphasizing the role of economic ideas, in addition to interests, in providing agents with

an interpretive framework which provides a vision of how the economy and the polity

should be constructed (Blyth 2002 10,11).

The literature on social movements also contributes to the understanding of the power

of ideas in the political contestation around the structure of international finance. Earlier

social movement literature focuses on material benefit to participants as the primary

driving force behind social movements Della Porta and Diani 1999, 195; Tarrow 1998,

17; McCarthy and Zald 1979, 1213). More recently the emphasis on material benefit is

being challenged. The new social movement literature has produced work which

questions the validity of class based explanations and emphasizes the importance of issue

based cleavages as well as value based cleavages as the basis of NSM activity (Dalton

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1990,12; Melucci 1988; Offe1987) Other social movement literature examines the

distinction between “conscience” adherents and “benefit” adherents in social movement

organizations (McCarthy and Zald 1979, 1222); the importance of identity solidarity as

the foundation of a successful social movement (Reitan 56); the construction of identity

as a force that may potentially transcend material interests as a motivating force in social

movements (Jenkins 1983, 535; Piven and Cloward 1995, 160); and the argument that

network society, which is characterized by the emergence of social movements, has

emerged not only from a restructuring of capitalism - a material change - but also from

technological and communications revolutions - a change focussed on ideas and identity

(Castells 1997, 352-353). Therefore, this literature suggests, it is not only a conventional

structural shift in material terms but also a new kind of structural shift, related to norms,

values, and identities, that has produced the increased social movement activity of the

present.

The relationship between normative ideas and material change is complex and

mutually constitutive. Identity construction draws on material structures as well as

common understandings and interpretations of these structures. These understandings,

however, are not necessarily determined by material considerations alone. Arguably,

ideas can take on a life of their own and generate structures that are not based in material

relations but rather are based in values and understandings. It is this which makes the

discussion around structural change so ambiguous. Introducing identity and norms and

values as a driving force in social movements has enriched the explanatory capacity of

social movement theory and through this insight actions, previously dismissed as

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irrational, can now be better understood (Della Porta and Diani 1999, 223; Tarrow 1998,

114-117; McAdam et al 1997, 142).

The level of analysis is another area in which the social movement literature is

developing a more complex understanding. There is a growing body of work which

emphasizes the role of transnational processes and rejects the separation of the

comparative politics level from the global level (Keck and Sikkink 1998 4; Hamel et al

2000; O’Brien et al 2000; Guidry et al 2000; Tarrow 1998; Castells 1997; Smith 1997).

Transnational identity politics are seen as a potentially powerful strategy available to

emerging transnational social movements. Keck and Sikkink argue that transnational

social movements and social movement organizations are increasingly working together

in transnational advocacy networks:

The network concept travels well because it stresses fluid and open relations among committed and knowledgeable actors working in specialized issue areas. We call them advocacy networks because advocates plead the causes of others or defend a cause or proposition. Advocacy captures what is unique about these transnational networks: they are organized to promote causes, principled ideas, and norms and they often involve individuals advocating policy changes that cannot be easily linked to a rationalist understanding of their ‘interests’.” (Keck and Sikkink 1998, 8,9)

The concept of advocacy network is useful in understanding the pattern of social

movement activity in the contestation over the structure of international finance. A

related concept is the “boomerang politics”in which social movements, finding paths to

their goals blocked within their own state, activate transnational networks and apply

pressure within other states. These states in turn apply pressure directly to the reluctant

state or apply pressure on international institutions to influence the reluctant state (Keck

and Sikkink 1998, 12,13). This is a particularly effective strategy where rights based

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arguments are employed as has been the case around third world debt in international

finance.

Finally, agents are important in shaping discourse and discourse is important in

shaping structural change. At present, a new politics is emerging in which some old and

many new actors are attempting to shift the dominant ideas in finance and produce

structural change. This new politics has been facilitated by the changed role of the state,

emerging transnational social movements, identity politics, and new technologies which

have created unprecedented capacities for communication and transnational organization.

In some cases the material basis for this challenge is clear but in others normative values

appear to play a part. Iideas and values, frequently justified by an appeal to the Universal

Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) or the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)

are influencing the agenda.

The politics around the third world debt crisis is an example of the power of ideas. In

this contest the Jubilee 2000 movement used religious and humanitarian values as a

foundation for their demands. They unselfconsciously put forward a vision of “right” and

“wrong” - “justice” versus “injustice”. They were not distracted by technical details or

expert discussion of the problems of fine tuning the international financial system. They

shifted the focus from the technical details of the way the system worked to an intense

emphasis on the shortcomings of its outcomes in human terms. They permitted

themselves to identify a problem without necessarily proposing a plan for its solution.

They refused to accept the human toll of the debt crisis as a tragic but necessary cost of

“long term” progress. By refusing to defer to expert financial opinion they made the

power relations underlying the debt crisis visible and facilitated popular involvement in

these issues in a way that was not possible earlier.

This paper will now consider the case of the introduction of human rights politics

into the ongoing debate around debt cancellation and examine the origins and strategies

of the multitude of civil society organizations (CSOs) that have attempted to challenge

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the Washington Consensus (WC) and the rules governing the deregulated international

financial system of the post Bretton Woods era. This case exemplifies the tension

between the outcomes of capitalist market dynamics and the social reaction to these

outcomes – a process of contestation, that, although apparently presenting a challenge to

neoliberalism, also contributes to the resilience and adaptive capacity of capitalist

systems.Background

The third world debt crisis was central to the emergence of human rights politics in

international finance. The outcomes of the Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs),

intended to remedy the debt crisis, eventually brought the norms and values underpinning

the rules of the international financial system into question. These effects, interpreted

and publicized by transnational CSOs, politicised the terrain of the debate and slowly

popular pressure, coupled with the use of “boomerang politics” (Keck and Sikkink 1998:

12-13), effected change in the policies of international financial institutions (IFIs). The

background to the debt crisis is a familiar story. The demise of the Brettton Woods order

in 1971 led to the development of international financial markets and the reemergence of

global finance. 2 Then the oil shocks of the 1970s resulted in substantial sums of

“petrodollars” seeking new international investment opportunities. Finally, policies

which sought to alleviate poverty through modernization and economic development

were enthusiastically embraced in the post war period and, ironically, they too were an

important part of the dynamic which led to the third world debt crisis. Driven by

attractive profits international lending took off in the 1970s and, as long as debt could be

rescheduled and serviced, the commercial banks ignored danger signals (George 1988;

James 1996; Escobar 1995). The end of the debt boom came suddenly with the Mexican

financial crisis in the summer of 1982. In only a few days it became clear that, contrary

to the prevailing wisdom, countries could indeed go bankrupt and, in the process, threaten

the solvency of major international banks and, therefore, the stability of the entire global

financial system. These events marked the official onset of the “third world debt crisis”.2 In Polanyian terms this shift can be understood as marking the success of a market based movement acting against the countermovement of Keynesian economics. In fact, as Helleiner argues, globalized finance is not so much a new financial order as the reemergence of global finance (Helleiner 1994; James 1996: 351 ; Kapstein 2006: 5).

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As early as 1980 the goal of adjusting the structure of the economies of the developing

world in accordance with neoliberal theory began to take hold in government and the

Bretton Woods institutions (BWIs) (Escobar 1995: 93; James 1996: 525)). The Baker

plan was launched in 1985. Under the Baker Plan debtor countries would receive funds

to restructure their debt but only on the condition that they also restructure their

economies according to the neoliberal policy prescriptions of the International Monetary

Fund (IMF). In theory, structural adjustment would allow unencumbered market

processes to generate wealth, allow debtors to service their debts and thus end the chronic

cycle of crisis and default. By the late 1980s, even though it was becoming increasingly

obvious that SAPs were failing, the neoliberal point of view retained its theoretical

persuasiveness within expert circles (James 1996: 399). Failures were attributed to

shortcomings in application or implementation. In 1990, when John Williamson coined

the term “Washington Consensus” to describe these policies, SAPs continued to be seen

as the solution (Yergin and Stanislaw 1998: 236-237).3

Finance was seen as an elite activity, confined to the realm of experts and too

important to be left to the uninitiated. Although there were protests and “IMF riots”, they

focussed primarily on specific grievances within individual states (George 1988 80-222;

James 1996; 534-541). However, the failure of the SAPs contributed to growing

resistance within civil society and eventually the debate over the organization of

international finance expanded from a narrow, technical debate driven by experts, to one

which included questions bearing on fundamental human rights. As transnational CSOs

joined forces with local and regional groups they stressed that the organization of

international finance was too important to be left to experts.

Early Challenges

Many in the immediate postwar period were determined to avoid the mistakes of the

interwar years and worked to build a durable political as well as economic foundation for

the future. A number of secular, as well as religious, non-governmental organizations

3 Yergin and Stanislaw write that John Williams, the economist who coined the term, has regretted it ever since. They write the term “was coming clean about who made policy in the late twentieth century – not governments, but Washington. ‘Washington’ … embraced not only the IMF and the World Bank but also their less than shadowy master – the US government - and behind it, its shadowy masters, the American economics profession and Western business interests.” (Yergin and Stanislaw 1998: 236). Debt cancellation campaigners and others critical of neoliberalism used the term to advantage.

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(NGOs) embraced the goals of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights

(UDHR). At first NGOs provided international relief and emergency assistance (Escobar

1995; James 1996) but a number of them went on to become critics of the structure of the

international financial architecture.4 Dependency theory provided a compelling critique

of development economics from the perspective of the developing world (Escobar 1995:

80, 82). Environmentalists, such as the Club of Rome, fostered an “ecological fervour”

which undermined confidence in the capacity of the institutions of western capitalism to

deal with environmental issues (Escobar 1995: 193 – 197; TOESUSA 2004).

States also presented challenges. As debts required restructuring, international lenders

negotiated to impose conditionality. Individual debtor states tried to resist these terms.

In June 1984, 11 Latin American countries met at Cartegena and formulated a charter to

promote general default on external debt. In the end, however, the effort failed (James

1996: 392-93; George 1988:213). Similarly, in 1987 Burkina Faso’s president proposed

the creation for an African Coalition for Debt Cancellation. This effort came to an abrupt

end when he was assassinated shortly after the meeting (James 1996: 521-543; George

1988: 87; CADTM 2003: 7). In 1988 Brazilian President Sarney observed “the fact is we

(Brazil) cannot destroy the international system…We can scratch it, but it can destroy

us.” (James 1996: 400). This observation sums up the dilemma of most of the states

caught in the debt crisis. In 1994, after years of resistance, Brazil finally became the last

of the major debtors to accept a long-term debt rescheduling plan (James 1996: 383 –

385).

Foundations of Civil Society Activism 1982-1994

Just as the expert community in the IFIs was increasingly convinced that the way

forward lay in neoliberalism, a profound scepticism was growing within civil society

groups, both in the developing and developed world. This scepticism incorporated a sense

of moral outrage. On the secular side, the UDHR set the tone. On the religious side,

transnational faith groups added religious understandings of human rights and human

dignity to the debate. By focussing on the impact of neoliberal policies in human terms,

the issues were reframed and the measure of success (and failure) redefined.

4 For example Oxfam, War on Want, Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD) and Christian Aid.

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As resistance to structural adjustment spread within the developing world, well

established transnational church organizations facilitated communication from their

members in the South to those in the North (Reitan 2007: 71) and in the early 1980s a

number of Northern NGOs started to interest themselves in the international economy.

This led to the creation of a number of new NGO networks determined to address the

debt crisis and force a reassessment of the rules governing international finance (Jubilee

Debt Campaign 2007a; CADTM 2003; Ayres 2003: 31; RIFI 2007; Council of Canadians

2007; New Internationalist 1987). Based in civil society with transnational connections

these networks were able to force issues such as international debt onto the agenda at of

the G7 and G8 summits. Research groups and institutes were active in framing the

subsequent debate linking debt cancellation and human rights . Susan George, a fellow of

the Transnational Institute (TNI), wrote A Fate Worse than Debt; by connecting debt with

increased hunger, this book took finance out of the realm of the abstract (George 1988,

1).

The mid 1980s marked the beginning of popular demonstrations intended to create

pressure for change in the international financial order. In 1985 the G7 summit in Bonn

was the scene of mass protests. At the 1988 IMF and World Bank (WB) meetings in

West Berlin 50,000 to 80,000 people filled the streets calling for debt relief for the

poorest countries and reform of the IMF (Dissent 1989; George 1988; 238). In 1990 the

All African Council of Churches called for a year of Jubilee to cancel Africa’s debts

(Jubilee 2000 Coalition 1999). Following this, more groups specifically concerned with

international finance, debt and economic justice were founded while existing NGOs

devoted increased resources to addressing the cause. 5

Finally, two other events intensified the eventual impact of human rights politics in

this debate. The response to the 1985 Ethiopian famine politicized actors who would later

become important forces in the movement and provided a model of how a popular

transnational movement might work to address human rights abuses. “Band Aid”, “Live

Aid” and similar initiatives around the world marked the first intersection of celebrity,

transnational social activism and relief work (BBC 2007; Oxfam 2006; God’s Tears

5 See European Network on Debt and Development (EURODAD)(, Comité pour l’annulation de la Dette du Tiers Monde (CADTM), Welwirschaft, Okologie & Entwicklung (WEED), Réseau pour la réforme des institutions financières internationales (RIFI) and Oxfam.

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2005). AIDS had a similar impact. Many activists who were first radicalized in the bitter

campaigns surrounding the AIDS subsequently became active in the debt cancellation

movement. Also, the possible link between the spread of AIDS in Africa and cut backs

in public healthcare spending associated with the SAPS has become a damning

indictment of the unanticipated negative effects of neoliberal policy prescriptions (Lewis

2005: 5-15).

Growth 1994-1997

In 1994 the 50th anniversary of the BWIs focussed attention on their successes and,

more to the point, their failures. A number of NGOs critical of the IFIs were founded at

this time.6 In the mid 1990s Debt Crisis Network UK organized a tour around Britain for

Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia and Archbishop Makhulu of Central Africa. They spoke to

large audiences in London, Manchester, Edinburgh and Glasgow. A coalition of aid

agencies, trade unions, churches and campaigning groups was involved in organizing this

tour and this involvement raised the profile of debt issues among their own members.

Jubilee 2000 UK later acknowledged the importance or this in “building an informed and

motivated (and angry) mass movement”(Jubilee Debt Campaign 2000a; 2000b). The

supporters of the Jubilee 2000 campaign were indeed angry and indignant at the violation

of human rights that, in their opinion, was epitomized by the third world debt crisis.

They were determined to “do something” to “right the wrong”. For many, achieving

Jubilee became a matter of conviction and conscience. April 1996 saw the official launch

of Jubilee 2000 campaign in the UK.7 In 1997 Jubilee 2000 UK launched its first website

and Jubilee campaigns were established in the US, Germany, and Scotland (Jubilee 2000

Coalition 1999; 2001).

In the Jubilee movement there is a strong faith element which is used to strengthen the

human rights claims of the movement. Also, by linking debt with slavery the Jubilee

movement brought moral legitimacy to calls for debt “forgiveness” or cancellation.

Jubilee framed debt as a violation of human rights. They started to shift the conventional

6 These included the Reinventing Bretton Woods Committee (RBWC), the Rethinking Bretton Woods Project (RBWP), 50 Years is Enough, “FMI, Banque mondiale, OMC: 50 ans, ça suffit!”, the Halifax Initiative, the Bretton Woods Project (BWP) and the Structural Adjustment Participatory Review International (SAPRIN). 7 Jubilee was launched by the World Development Movement, Christian Aid, CAFOD, Oxfam and Tearfund (Reitan 2007: 76). In 1997 the Debt Crisis Network UK became part of Jubilee (Jubilee 2000 Coalition 1999).

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wisdom from the conviction that repayment of debts was a moral obligation to the view

that it was, on the contrary, immoral to demand debt repayment if this meant “enslaving”

people in the name of debt servicing. Perhaps, even more important, while Jubilee

insisted that the system had to change, it did not put forward a blueprint of exactly how

this change might be accomplished. This meant that the Jubilee campaign was less

vulnerable to charges of economic naiveté. Jubilee chose to fight their campaign on the

high road of human rights.

At this time a number of other NGOs and debt advocacy networks were becoming

increasingly organized and active in the South. For example, in 1995 Focus on the

Global South was founded (Focus 2005). In 1996 the Uganda Debt Network (UDN) was

formed (UDN 2005). Ties grew between CSOs in the North and the South. Oxfam, the

European Forum on Debt and Development (EURODAD), the Bretton Woods Project,

Bread for the World, The Africa Faith and Justice Network and Jubilee 2000 UK all

supported UDN with funding and capacity building (Collins et al 2001). In the face of

this kind of pressure the IFIs slowly began to acknowledge that poverty, inequality and

human suffering had increased in countries implementing SAPs: however, they continued

to insist that these effects could best be resolved by stricter adherence to neoliberal

policies.

Turning point in official circles 1997-1999

In 1997 the Asian financial crisis started in Thailand, spread through East Asia and,

eventually, threatened financial stability in Brazil and Russia. In financial terms this was

another brush with global financial disaster similar to the Mexican financial crisis of

1982. This time, however, the IMF response provoked a split in expert opinion (Davis

and Wessell 1998; Sachs 1997). As a result, after 1997 there were two parallel reform

movements at work in international finance. One was located in civil society and had

economic justice and debt cancellation as its focus. The other, centered in the community

of experts and policy makers in the IFIs, was primarily concerned with stability and their

priorities of most in the second group of would-be reformers remained very much in line

with those of the WC (G7 1998; Ragan 1999b). However, a few were critical of the

policy prescriptions of the WC and allowed themselves to focus on the poverty and

economic justice outcomes of these policies (Ragan 1999a; Stiglitz 1999). Their

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criticism provided a tremendous boost to the credibility of the civil society campaigners.

In January 1998, Joseph Stiglitz, Chief Economist at the World Bank (WB) was openly

critical of the WC and argued that the dogma of liberalization had become an end in itself

and not a means to a better financial system (Stiglitz 1998). Later he renamed the WC

“market fundamentalism” (Stiglitz 2002: 221). This term had a tremendous impact. In a

simple phrase it dispelled neoliberal claims to rationality and highlighted the

fundamentally dogmatic and irrational “faith” in the rules of liberal free market

economics that underpinned neoliberal theory. Suddenly human rights campaigners could

no longer be so easily dismissed as out of touch with the painful, but necessary, choices

of the “real” world. The use of the phrase “market fundamentalism” by Stiglitz, a Nobel

Laureate in economics (2001), reframed the contest as one of competing world views,

competing belief systems.

Throughout 1997 and 1998 CSOs critical of the organization of international finance

continued to multiply and increase their capacity to strategize and network. Activism

took popular and innovative forms. In February 1998 Erlassjahr, the German Jubilee

movement and Christian Aid launched a joint campaign. As Ann Pettifor, one of the

founders of the Jubilee 2000 campaign wrote, “Thousands of CA postcards were sent,

calling on the German people to remember that their debts had been cancelled in 1953.

That debt write-off had given German children a future. Could African children be given

the same hope?” (Pettifor 1998). In April 1998 the Jubilee 2000 Afrika Campaign was

launched (Jubilee 2000 Coalition 1998a). In May 1998 at the Birmingham G8, the

Jubilee 2000 coalition mobilized 70,000 people in peaceful protest (Jubilee Debt

Campaign 2007b). In October the defeat of the Multilateral Agreement on Investment

(MAI) demonstrated the power of carefully targeted and orchestrated social movement

politics (Clarke and Barlow 1997: 8; Ayres 2003: 29). In November thirty eight national

Jubilee campaigns and twelve international organizations met in Rome to decide a

common policy and campaign strategy (Jubilee 2000 Coalition 1998b; 1999). In the

same month Jubilee South, “a network of jubilee and debt campaigns, social movements,

people’s organizations, communities, NGOs and political formations” that would enable

the articulation of a united perspective, position and agenda on the issue of debt and aid

in the construction of a global campaign, was formally constituted (Jubilee South 2007;

16

Jubilee 2000 Coalition 2007). Jubilee took off as a transnational campaign for debt

cancellation and economic justice.

The Jubilee movement located itself at an intersection of the religious and the secular,

willing to accept support where it could find it and yet unwilling to ally itself with any

specific faith perspective (George 1989: 212; Engler 2005a; Jubilee 2000 Coalition 1999,

1998c; World Council of Churches 1998). The faith connection helped the campaign in

several ways. First, it underlined the moral basis on which the campaign to forgive third

world debt was framed. This was not a contest over efficiency or inefficiency, this was

about “doing the right thing” with respect to fellow human beings. This argument was

very difficult for the IFIs to address. Second, the faith group involvement gave the debt

cancellation movement access to ready made organizational networks ideally suited to

mobilize public opinion and coordinate activism. Finally, it connected the movement

with a number of individuals who were comfortable campaigning at the intersection of

idealism and pragmatism. This is not to deny that the material interests of many in the

debt cancellation movement were served by debt cancellation but there were many others

whose immediate material interests were not served by their involvement. Many, who

can be described as “conscience adherents”, were drawn to the movement by the

conviction that to do nothing would be a betrayal of themselves and their values

(McCarthy and Zald 1979: 1222). Secular human rights campaigners as well as faith

group adherents fell in to this category.

After Birmingham an increasing number of CSOs continued to pursue opportunities to

network, strategize, publicize and educate. Public education, especially the

demystification of popular knowledge on complex financial mechanisms, was

emphasized as an important strategy in generating active popular mobilization at the

grassroots level. Demonstrations and other actions designed to attract attention to the

campaign to cancel third world debt continued through the spring of 1999 (Jubilee 2000

Coalition 1999; Canadian Security Intelligence Service 2000). At the G8 summit in

Cologne in 1999, 50,000 Jubilee 2000 supporters demonstrated to demand deeper cuts to

debt and throughout the following summer and fall the campaign pressure continued to

build (Jubilee 2000 Coalition 1999). The main protest event of 1999 took place at the

World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministerial conference in Seattle, Washington. Jubilee

17

was an important actor in this protest but, as has been well documented elsewhere, Seattle

was a group effort (Barlow and Clark 2001: 11). Participants ranged from labour

unionists to anarchists, all drawn together by a conviction that “something” was seriously

wrong with the impact of the world economic system on human rights and the

environment.

After Seattle

The protests captured the public’s attention and, in the following year, campaigners

worked hard to build on this. The technique of targeting major world meetings

continued. In April 2000 10-15,000 people participated in protests, panels, and teach-ins

at the IMF/WB meeting in Washington where protesters were heartened by a number of

supportive statements by Stiglitz, Sachs, and James Wolfensohn, President of the WB

(Barlow and Clark 2001: 33-34). Protests culminated in the IMF/WB meeting in Prague

in September 2000. In spite of tight security, over 15,000 protesters took part and Jubilee

2000 delivered its final petition with 24,319,181 signatures from 161 countries (Barlow

and Clark 2001; 35-39; Jubilee 2000 Coalition 1999).

On December 31, 2000, the Jubilee UK Coalition ceased to exist but other Jubilee

continued to operate (Jubilee 2000 coalition 2000; Kairos 2007). The determination, not

only to achieve debt cancellation but also to address the underlying structural causes of

human rights abuses in the global economic system, remained a powerful motivation

(Pettifor 2000). After Seattle CSOs continued to consolidate their research and

networking capacities (IFIwatchnet 2007). The failures of the policy prescriptions of the

WC were documented and publicised while connections between financial structures,

debt, human welfare, the environment and the AIDS epidemic were made increasingly

explicit (Marshall and Pravda 2001; WDM 1999; NGLS 2001).

After the events of September 11, 2001, however, it became increasingly difficult to

mount large demonstrations, campaigning groups sought other means to mobilize

support. Starting in January 2001, the annual World Social Forums (WSFs) provided a

valuable space to network, publicise, and develop working relationships between CSOs.

In the fall of 2004 a new kind of transnational CSO started to take shape. The Micah

Challenge and the Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP) were launched. These

groups created a kind of virtual space to make activism more accessible by means of the

18

internet. Through these organizations individuals learn about and participate in

transnational campaigns for economic justice. They can network through the website, as

well as become involved in activities in their own communities.

The United Nations

So far in this account the United Nations (UN) has figured primarily as the

organization which proclaimed, and gave legitimacy to the rights enshrined in the UDHR.

The UN, however, has played a much larger role. An ongoing series of UN declarations

have been important in reinforcing the connection between human rights and economic

relations. The 1995 Copenhagen Declaration called for people to be put at the centre of

development (UN 1995). The 2000 Millennium Declaration led to the articulation of

the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) (UN 2005). The MDGs, especially Goal 8 -

to develop a global partnership for development - have become an important source of

legitimacy for CSOs campaigning for debt cancellation and financial reform. Since civil

society campaigners activists are largely self identified and not selected through a

conventional political process, the legitimacy of their claims to speak for “the people” are

rightly subject to some scepticism but, invoking the UDHR and the MDGs has provided a

way through this particular deficit.

Change

The most important success of bringing human rights politics into the debate around

debt cancellation has been the shift in the discourse produced by this campaign and the

subsequent opening of economic debate to concepts such as justice, conscience, and the

morality of economic policies. Debt rescheduling and debt cancellation have long been

part of the tool kit for maintaining a stable international financial system and a healthy

international economy. Since its inception the IMF has taken an active part in co-

ordinating the provision of financial resources necessary to deal with balance of

payments problems and to stabilize the international financial system. The last 25 years

of the twentieth century were marked by ongoing debt rescheduling and increasing

amounts of debt cancellation, but this was the result of prudent financial management and

not evidence of any ethical squeamishness or concern for the impact of the debt burden

on the citizens of debtor states. These financial resources were increasingly conditional

and, by 1987, accepting IMF standards of conditionality was a requirement for any state

19

seeking to reschedule debt. The WC was eagerly embraced as the means to finally end

chronic debt problems and ensure growth, stability and profitability in the developing

world.

This enthusiasm did not survive the Asian financial crisis. Instead, the chronic debt

problems in the developing world started to be seen as evidence of the failures of the

policy prescriptions of the WC. Furthermore, after 1997, a growing unease with the

human costs of the debt crisis was apparent. After the 1999 Cologne G8 summit, a

number of developed countries, including Canada, the US and the UK, announced plans

to cancel their bilateral debts with many HIPC countries.8 The enhanced HIPC initiative

made the link between debt and poverty explicit. It called for Poverty Reduction Strategy

Papers (PRSPs) to be developed by national governments in consultation with civil

society and for these papers to be used to support country specific poverty reduction

strategies (WB 2007b). There was a growing concern with the social impact of debt and

structural adjustment policies in official circles and even within the IMF.9

The efforts of transnational civil society campaigners were central to this shift. 10 The

economistic, empirically oriented methodologies of those who forged the policies of the

Washington Consensus had little respect for the messy, anecdotal objections raised by

early debt cancellation campaigners and yet, the movement took off. Based on human

rights claims, driven by public outrage at human rights violations, and fuelled by

carefully orchestrated communication and research networks, over the course of thirty

years the campaigners were able to make a compelling connection between financial

rules and practices and their impact on human welfare. They brought into question the

8 For example in March 1999 Canada announced the Canadian Debt Cancellation Initiative (CDI) and promised to cancel the debt it was owed by a number of countries once they completed the HIPC. this was expanded in Feb 2000 to include all countries completing the HIPC (Finance Canada 2005)9 “The process of preparing Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) in low-income countries has given prominence to the need to understand the impact of public policies on social and poverty outcomes. A joint World Bank-IMF working group was established early this year (2001) to develop and approach to social impact analysis (SIA) and a work program to operationalize SIA in Bank and Fund programs that support national PRSP processes. The goals of SIA are i) to provide a basis for considering policy options an appropriate sequencing of policies, and (ii) to include offsetting measures into the reform program then negative consequences are unavoidable.” (IMF 2001). 10 “One powerful coalition “Fifty Years is Enough” …has created a moral crisis within the World Bank and the IMF. It has forced them to address Third World Poverty, which they now admit they had a major hand in causing.” (Barlow and Clarke 2001: 18);In March 1999 at the Bangkok conference Robin Broad of the American university started that she saw “cracks in the elite consensus” (NGLS 1999a); there was what was termed a “sea change in attitudes” (NGLS 2000: 14).

20

capacity of the prescriptions of the WC to achieve development. They were able to shift

the discourse from a technocratic analysis of abstract economic relations to focus on the

human impacts.

They mobilized public opinion in the developing as well as the developed world

and raised global consciousness of the practical impact of the rules governing

international finance. Not only did they bring these rules into question but they also

highlighted the political nature of the process which generated these rules. The shift in

the language around debt cancellation is important. Early campaigns called for debt

“forgiveness” and made the connection to charity. Later campaigns called for debt

“cancellation” and some even demanded reparations for the costs of colonialism and the

debt crisis. At present the term “cancellation” has largely replaced “forgiveness”

indicating that this is not an act of charity but rather an act of justice. The use of the terms

“odious” and “illegitimate” debt as a means to justify demands for debt cancellation

indicate a further implicit criticism of the international financial system since these terms

are used to refer to debt that should not be collected because it should never have been

made.

As de Goede argues “particular discourses of financial knowledge and rationality

make real material distributions and effects possible” (de Goede 2003: 95). CSOs

seeking to reform international finance targeted the economistic assumptions

underpinning the WC. They campaigned to put human rights at the centre of economic

relations and, in order to do so, put a human face on the negative outcomes of the

neoliberal rules governing the international financial system. By emphasizing that the

rules governing international finance were political constructions, the campaigns opened

the door to a new way of renegotiating these relations. Employing “boomerang politics”,

debt cancellation campaigners from around the world worked to mobilize social

movements within states, to push these states to pressure the IFIs for reform (Keck and

Sikkink 1998: 8-13).

By the spring of 2005 debt cancellation seemed to have won the day. “That the

legitimacy of the 100% debt cancellation is now widely accepted represents a dramatic

reversal in the debt debate.” (Engler 2005). At the Gleneagles G8 leaders agreed to the

Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI) created to support HIPCs efforts to reach the

21

MDGs by the cancellation of 100% of their debts owed to the WB, IMF and the African

Development Bank (G8 2005; Reilly-King 2006). However, while some declared victory

others did not agree.(Monbiot 2005) Although the terms appeared generous, as in earlier

debt relief initiatives, qualifying for the MDRI was still tied to neoliberal conditionality.

Gleneagles seemed like a breakthrough, but one year later criticisms abounded (Hallinan

2006; Beattie 2006).

Conclusion

This chapter has outlined the emergence of human rights politics in the debate over

international finance. The third world debt crisis and the impact of SAPs provided a

means of connecting the abstract world of international finance with the human impact of

economic outcomes. A multitude of CSOs campaigned for a reformed international

financial system but, within this crowded scene, this chapter has focussed primarily on

debt cancellation. While some of the CSOs campaigning for debt relief can be understood

as acting in pursuit of the material interest of their members, others are more puzzling.

Arguably many of the organizations and individuals involved were motivated by their

values - for them the effects of the debt crisis, especially when linked to hunger or

epidemic, were intolerable. Furthermore, after the Asian financial crisis, some officials

from within the IFIs questioned the WC. This gave additional momentum to the civil

society campaign. The strategies of the campaigning CSOs were innovative and

effective. Thanks to modern advances in communications and travel they were able to

create networks of activist organizations. Modern media and the use of celebrity

reinforced the message. Documentaries and interviews with those negatively affected by

the international financial system aroused feelings of empathy and anger. CSOs

practiced “boomerang politics”, lobbying politicians and officials while generating

popular pressure for change (Keck and Sikkink 1998). In short, the campaigning

organizations shifted the discourse. A measure of their success is that by 2005 the

connection between human rights violations and the outcomes of international financial

system seems obvious. This was not the case thirty years earlier.

Understanding this dynamic matters, because it demonstrates the battle between two

competing logics - the social and the economic. This competition is important in

understanding the adaptive capacity of capitalist systems. In liberal economic theory the

22

social and the environmental side effects of economic activity are considered to be

externalities, in other words external to the costs or benefits of a given economic

outcome. However, the costs of ignoring these effects are substantial. The potentially

catastrophic consequences of an ongoing shift in climate provide an example of the

dangers of excluding environmental factors from the economic equation. Similarly, the

social effects of economic relations are often neglected but, the social has a means of

expressing itself in unrest, insurrection or even elections. This process is described by

Polanyi as the “double movement” (Polanyi 1944). Liberalized market forces run freely

(the movement) until they create socially intolerable outcomes and, at this point, society

pushes back (the countermovement) with regulation and constraint. This

countermovement continues until a successful case is made for the efficiencies of

unfettered markets processes, at which point market liberalization re-occurs and the

whole process begins again.11

The story of the campaign for debt cancellation is the story of a countermovement,

based in a transnational society as defined by the UDHR and the MDGs, taking on the

WC on the basis of human rights and dignity. Previously the WC, or at least the

neoliberal movement which inspired it, had taken on embedded Keynesian liberalism and

the Bretton Woods order in the name of economic efficiency. Arguably, these contests

are seldom decisive. Movements can be partial and incomplete and yet, as long as

catastrophic disruptions, in the form of World Wars or environmental disasters can be

held at bay, this dynamic has the capacity to allow capitalist economic systems to adapt

indefinitely.

While Polanyi’s concept of the double movement is helpful in understanding the

emergence of human rights politics in international finance it raises other more questions.

How and why does a situation become “socially intolerable”? Exactly how does society

organize to “push back”? Gramsci’s concept of hegemony and counter hegemony help in

understanding the power of interests as well as ideas. Theories of power which underline

the capacity to determine the outcome of political contests may exist even in the absence

11 Polanyi’s theory was originally based at the level of the state but the same dynamic can be seen at the global level. In Polanyi’s work the countermovement is regressive and authoritarian, the rise of Nazi Germany, but arguably counter movements can be regressive or progressive. The point is that one must always be aware of the danger of countermovements to become regressive even when the countermovement in question appears to be based on human rights values.

23

of obvious coercion provide another part of the puzzle, as do theories of power which

emphasize the power of values and ideas. The recent literature on social movements,

moving beyond its emphasis on material interests, has started to address the impact of

norms and values in shaping political behaviour. But there is still much left to explore in

understanding the potential of ideas and values to shape political outcomes and power

structures. For example, what is the role of agency in this process and how does this

relate to structure? If agents do not always act rationally in pursuit of their material self

interest, how can their behaviour be understood or measured? Why do their efforts to

influence political outcomes, whether through framing or boomerang politics, succeed or

fail? Why are some issues taken up, while others fade away? What are the long term

outcomes of this kind of politics?

Around the turn of the century the issues raised by Jubilee 2000 and the campaign for

debt cancellation resonated with many individuals around the world. Perhaps this was

easier in the pre- September 11th world, in the brief window after the break down of the

Soviet Union and before the start of the war on terror, a time before security concerns

returned to their dominant position in international relations. Perhaps the discourse of

“right” and “wrong” in international finance had a greater impact on individuals as they

became aware of the gap in material welfare between the developed and developing

world. Perhaps this resonance was due to empathy based on some common sense of

humanity. The linkages between ideas, agents, structures, and change need to be further

developed. The theoretical framework employed in this paper points to directions to

explore in search of answers to some of these questions but more work is required in

order to better understand this process.

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