Markets and global justice

Introduction
Despite the great economic and technological progress the world has 
achieved as of today and the spread of democracy in a growing number of 
countries, many people around the world are still living in quite hard con-
ditions. Massive poverty, malnutrition, civil wars and authoritarian rulers 
are some of the circumstances half of humanity has to face daily. These 
events are often referred to as the resource curse as such countries' wealth 
of natural resources has been pointed out as one of the main causes of the 
conditions they suffer. The sale of natural resources generates a flow of 
foreign money into resource extracting-countries that provides extra-in-
centives for all those actors powerful enough to arrange a coup attempt, 
encouraging events such as civil wars and the establishment of repressive 
regimes, and providing a fertile ground for corruption and severe poverty.
In many of his recent works, Leif Wenar has discussed the current 
challenges of the world economic system. Journal articles such as Prop-
erty rights and the resource curse (2008), Realistic reforms of 
international trade in natural resources (2009), and Clean trade in natur-
al resources (2011), are all mainly focused on what has been termed the 
resource curse. Recent studies such as Ross (2000), Wantchekon (2002), 
Lam and Wantchekon (2003), and Jensen and Wantchekon (2004), have 
demonstrated the causal relationship between wealth of natural resources 
and coups, civil conflict, endemic corruption, massive poverty, economic 
dysfunction and tendency to be ruled by authoritarian regimes. Although 
we can find this assertion fairly paradoxical, there is an actual negative 
correlation between the countries' richness in natural resources and their 
economic, political and social performance.
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Wealth of resources appears to correlate with authoritarianism, 
which can be pointed to as the main resource curse. This correlation is ex-
plained by the opportunity to sell off the country's natural wealth for those 
actors exerting effective authority over the territory where it is originally 
placed. The opportunity of being entitled to resource sales just in function 
of the exercise of effective authority over a territory provides strong in-
centives to seize power by whatever means, even by the use of force, 
violence and coercion. Coups and civil conflicts are likely to occur as a 
result. Moreover, whoever is in power will try to maintain and reinforce 
his rule by encouraging corruption, buying more weapons and soldiers, 
maintaining the population in a state of severe poverty, denying the exer-
cise of basic political rights such as the right to demonstrate, and violating 
human rights through arbitrary arrest and detention, exile, torture and 
massive murders. The combination of these events is what has been la-
belled the resource curse, and each of the events above is a resource curse 
by itself.
Some authors have attempted to demonstrate that the dramatic con-
ditions suffered by poor countries are due to domestic factors, such as to 
incompetent and corrupted élites, to a particular political culture, to 
flawed internal economic institutions, or to the inadequate capacities of 
the country's population. It might be true that some of these endogenous 
factors actually play a role in reproducing the dramatic situation daily 
faced by the people living in these countries, yet we are still missing a 
fundamental point when conceiving the resource curse just as a result of 
domestic contingencies.
Whoever has sufficient means – namely who has enough money and 
power to buy soldiers and weapons – to arrange a coup attempt and 
achieve power by undemocratic means will be recognized by other states 
as the legitimate owners of the country's resources, thus entitled to their 
sale. The behaviour of the international community is one of the main 
causes of the resource curse, since totalitarian dictators, authoritarian él-
5
ites or military juntas ruling a country by coercion are entitled to the right 
to sell natural resources just because of the decision of other states to 
grant this right to them. The opportunity for these actors to sell off re-
sources and to pocket the revenue, enforcing their rule, is mainly due to 
the attitude of the international community.
This is a severe infringement of the current international law, since 
some of its most basic principles are violated when trade in natural re-
sources occurs with countries ruled by authoritarian regimes against the 
will of the people. More specifically, the principles of self-determination, 
human rights and property rights are seriously threatened by the beha-
viour of the international community.
There are several international covenants and national constitutions 
affirming that the right to the property of natural resources belongs to the 
people of the country where they are originally placed, namely that they 
belong to the citizens of the state having jurisdiction over that territory. 
Thus, property rights with regard to natural wealth directly stem from the 
principle of self-determination, and its infringement can be considered as 
a human rights violation. When resource-importing countries trade in nat-
ural resources with repressive regimes that govern without the will of 
their people, they are trading in stolen goods.
Wenar proposes a framework to address the resource curse, the 
clean trade approach. The main aim of this proposal is, in Wenar's words, 
"to create trade when now there is theft" as the main charge Wenar moves 
to the current global trading system is not simply that it is not fair, but 
rather that it encourages the theft of natural resources when allowing au-
thoritarians to sell off their country's natural wealth. Wenar's proposal 
involves changes in the trade policy of affluent countries that import nat-
ural resources from the countries where they are originally extracted. 
Most of the reforms required by the clean trade approach would take 
place within five main areas: anti-corruption, transparency, revenue distri-
bution, resource certification and commercial detachment and isolation. 
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There are no impositions on resource exporting countries as most of the 
reforms would have to take place within importing countries' trade 
policies.
As we have seen, to trade in natural resources with countries op-
pressed by authoritarian regimes represents a violation of some of the 
most basic principles of the existing international law. Thus, resource-im-
porting countries should quit this trade because it is quite illegal. But, 
aside from the legal ground, is there any moral reason to do so? Are we, 
citizens of affluent countries, related in some way with the massive 
poverty most people in the world suffer? And, if we are, do we have any 
moral obligation to help those people escaping from their dramatic situ-
ation?
Half of humanity today has to face starvation, child malnutrition, 
and death from easily curable diseases. In World poverty and human 
rights (first ed. 2002) and in other works, Thomas Pogge has argued that 
affluent countries and their citizens should find the eradication of massive 
poverty morally compelling because of their contribution to the estab-
lishment of the current global economic system. According to Pogge, the 
global order plays a causal role in reproducing massive poverty around 
the world, and the affluent countries have a serious responsibility as they 
have shaped the current world economic system in accordance with their 
national economic and political interests. Thus, affluent countries should 
assist the world's poor and oppressed people not only because property 
and human rights are not enforced within their countries, as in Wenar's 
view, but also because of some historical and moral reasons.
Other authors have tried to explain the poor countries' dramatic eco-
nomic and political situation by endogenous factors, thus, in their view, 
affluent countries have no responsibility and are not morally obliged to 
give help aside from humanitarian aid. Influential authors such as John 
Rawls and Thomas Nagel have assumed this position. In The law of 
peoples, Rawls argues that our duty towards what he calls “burdened so-
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cieties” is just a duty of assistance, since in Rawls' view affluent countries 
and well-ordered societies in general do not have any responsibility to-
wards the current living conditions of such burdened societies. Rawls' 
view of the global order is shaped by his assumption that no justice is 
possible outside the single nation-state as the international level lacks an 
institutional framework, the object to which principles of justice apply. 
Thus, the only obligation we have towards the poor is just a duty of as-
sistance, up to the point where they will be able to maintain just 
institutions by themselves. Nagel proceeds on the same way, since in his 
view the citizens of a sovereign state have a duty of justice towards one 
another because they are subject to the same sovereign power, they share 
institutions and are authors of the system and subject to its norms at the 
same time. Thus, it is the citizens' "special relation" itself what ties them 
together. No justice is possible outside the state, since there are neither 
shared institutions nor a sovereign authority at the international level, and 
there is no “special relation” between the members of an autonomous 
political community and outsiders. Examining these theories on what we 
are our responsibilities towards the poor can help us to understand wheth-
er it should be morally compelling to assist world's poor or not. We are 
going to go through different points of view in an attempt to find out 
whether affluent countries have some kind of moral reason to stop trading 
with repressive regimes, or if it should come just as a consequence of 
their current infringement of international law. We will argue that the 
claim that citizens of the affluent states do not have any responsibility for 
global poverty and should assist the poor only by mean of assistance in an 
humanitarian sense is at least misleading, thus concluding that affluent 
states should be both legally and morally forced to adopt the clean trade 
approach.
We shall argue that Wenar proposes a viable way to face the resource 
curse, yet there are some flaws in the clean trade approach and several 
questions the author fails to address. Wenar's proposal will have to face 
8
some obstacles external to its mechanism, such as contraband of natural re-
sources and corruption within resource exporting countries. But the main 
objections we will move to Wenar's proposal are two in particular: the ques-
tion of leadership and the incentives it should provide to affluent countries 
for its implementation, which we will discuss in chapter 3. We are going to 
underline that Wenar seems not to consider important issues such as nation-
al foreign policy interests, or energy supply problems.
Our conclusion is that a deeper analysis of the incentives the clean 
trade approach should provide to importing countries is required for it to be 
complete. Moreover, for it to be possible for Wenar's proposal to give the 
best outcomes a large change in the extent to which people of wealthy 
countries are concerned about living standards in others is an inevitable re-
quirement. The clean trade approach is inextricably tied to moral and 
environmental concerns that are actually weak among the affluent people. 
In our view, the proposal needs a moral theory on what our duties towards 
the poor are, and should be completed with elements of environmental eth-
ics. The clean trade approach involves changes that have to pass through the 
political, economic and social field. Wenar proposes a viable framework to 
address poverty and oppression in resource cursed countries, but it is a long 
way to make it work properly.
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Chapter 1
The clean trade approach
In order to explain why the current world trade system in natural 
resources needs to be reformed, Leif Wenar starts from an empirical 
assumption: consumers buy stolen goods everyday. This statement may 
initially sound absurd to us, yet it is deeply rooted in what lies behind our 
payments for gas, for clothes produced in China or for high-tech products 
imported from Japan. Every single product we buy has been produced using 
a certain amount of capital – machineries, economic capital, natural capital 
and human work. Wenar's statement is based on the idea that an 
infringement of the norms governing one of the above factors of production 
– an infringement of property rights with regard to natural resources – 
obtains whenever we buy those sorts of goods.
At first glance, it can be hard to find this assertion persuasive. We 
would naturally tend to reply that if the goods we are going to purchase 
directly come from producers who had observed all the norms governing 
production within domestic and international law, there is no reason to 
declare that those goods are stolen. And, in fact, such producers have 
presumably respected all the norms on the production and the exchange of 
goods – they have paid for rough materials, they assure average wages to 
workers, they pay taxes and so on – but still there is something escaping 
from our view. When Wenar claims that we buy stolen goods everyday he 
refers to the fact that such goods have been produced by means of rough 
material – natural resources such as oil, gas or copper – looted from the 
territories where they were originally placed. 
Wenar's assumption refers to the conditions afflicting the countries 
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where those rough materials are originally placed, and thus extracted and 
exported. These extracting countries suffer from a series of events that are a 
direct consequence of their richness in natural resources. It may sound 
paradoxical to us, but such countries are far less wealthy than their richness 
in natural resources intensely requested by the rest of the world would 
allow us to believe, and besides they are often – in most of cases – torn by 
civil wars, corruption, authoritarian governments and economic 
breakdowns.
1
These dramatic happenings striking countries rich in natural resources 
are known as the resource curse.
2
 We are going to find out that the resource 
curse is mainly caused by the behaviour of international community. This 
behaviour breaches the norms in force under current international law, 
according to which the natural resources placed on a particular territory 
belong to the people living on that territory. The people are the ultimate 
owners of such resources, and they are entitled to the right to decide what to 
do with their property. Every appropriation by external or internal agents 
without the consent of their legitimate owners is illicit and should be 
punished by law, as usually happens for the common thefts we are used to 
see in our cities. The idea that an original infringement of property rights is 
made whenever resources are sold by authoritarian regimes is the basis on 
which Leif Wenar declares that we buy stolen goods every day. We are 
1 Ricky Lam and Leonard Wantchekon affirm that "There is much evidence that, somewhat 
counter-intuitively, the discovery of a natural resource can lead to a decrease in the rate of 
economic growth," in “Political Dutch disease” (New York University Press, 2003), 2. This 
phenomenon is in fact known as the Dutch disease, term first formulated by The Economist in 1977 
to describe the particular situation addressed by the Netherlands after the discovery of a new gas 
field within the country. The discovery of the new natural resource caused a decrease in the 
Netherlands' rate of economic growth. Lam and Wantchekon has termed political Dutch disease the 
fact that most long-standing authoritarian governments are sustained by natural resources rents. 
2 On resources and authoritarian governments, see Leonard Wantchekon, “Why do resource 
dependent countries have authoritarian governments?” Journal of African Finance and Economic 
Development, 5.2 (2002), 57-77. Michael L. Ross, “Does oil hinder democracy?” World Politics, 
53.3 (2001), 325-361; Nathan Jensen and Leonard Wantchekon, “Resource wealth and political 
regimes in Africa,” Comparative Political Studies, 37 (2004), 816-841; and Lam and Wantchekon, 
“Political Dutch disease,” 8-9. on resources and civil conflict see M. Doyle and N. Sambanis, 
“International peacebuilding: a theoretical and quantitative analysis,” American Political Science 
Review, 94.4 (2000), 779-801; M. Ross, “A closer look at oil, diamonds, and civil war,” Annual 
review on Political Science, 9 (2006), 265-300; Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler, “On economic 
causes of civil war,” Oxford Economic Papers, 50 (1998), 563-573; Paul Collier, Anke Hoeffler 
and Dominic Rohner, “Beyond greed and grievance: feasibility and civil war,” Oxford Economic 
Papers, 61 (2009), 1-27.
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going to find out that he is actually right.
1.1 The resource curse
Many resource-dependent economies are torn by civil wars, constantly 
threaten by coup attempts, governed by authoritarian élites and have to 
address great economic dysfunctions.
3
 Scholars have labelled “resource 
curse” this combination of events, and each event is a resource curse by 
itself. Countries rich in natural resources are "more prone to authoritarian 
governance, they are at higher risk for civil wars and coup attempts, and 
they exhibit a greater economic dysfunction."
4
Natural wealth correlates with authoritarianism, civil conflict and 
economic dysfunction.
5
 Wenar explains this unfortunate correlation by a 
system of “wrong” incentives towards such kind of events actually provided 
by international community, mainly because of a customary rule still in 
force under current international law.
6
 For instance, the tendency of 
3 Leif Wenar makes a list of some resource-cursed countries in Clean trade, 5-6, book 
project based on “Property rights and the resource curse,” Philosophy & Public Affairs (2008). 
Among them, Nigeria, Burma, Sierra Leone and Equatorial Guinea. All of these countries have 
been afflicted for several years by civil wars or oppressed by dictatorships. In “Civil war”, 
Working paper (2005), 24, Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler claim that “it takes 21 years to get back 
to the level of GDP that would have prevailed without [a] conflict.” Considering that, on average, 
civil conflict lasts for seven years, “by the end of the conflict the economy will be 15% smaller 
than if the war had not taken place.” Thomas Pogge notices that "resource-rich developing 
countries [...] fell far below the 2.2 percent average annual real per capita growth of the high-
income OECD countries, even while the developing countries on the whole did slightly better 
(+2.4 percent) thanks to rapid growth in China (+8.4 percent) and the rest of East and South Asia," 
in World poverty and human rights (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2008), 2nd ed., 287. Cf. Jeffrey 
Sachs and Andrew Walner, “Natural resource abundance and economic growth,” National Bureau 
of Economic Research Working Paper 5398 (1995).
4 Wenar, Clean trade, 4.
5 Pogge argues that "there is a significant negative correlation between a developing 
country’s resource endowment and its rate of economic growth" in World poverty, 169. We find the 
same statement in Pogge's essay “The role of international law in reproducing massive poverty,” 
included in Samantha Besson and John Tasioulas, The philosophy of international law (New York: 
Oxford University Press, 2010), 429. Cf. Lam and Wantchekon, “Political Dutch disease,” 4-5. 
About the wealth in natural resources and its side effects, Jensen and Wantchekon write: “Does 
natural resource dependence, even when controlling for political regimes, lead to worse 
government performance? Our empirical results find a robust negative relationship between the 
measures of voice and accountability, the rule of law, and control of corruption,” in “Resource 
wealth and political regimes in Africa,” 829.
6 See Leonard Wantchekon, “Why do resource dependent countries have authoritarian gov-
ernments?” Journal of African Finance and Economic Development, 5.2 (2002), 57-77. The 
resource curse and the behaviour of international community are briefly presented also in Charles 
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