ON JUST INSTITUTIONS AND DEVELOPMENT: RETHINKING GLOBALIZATION IN THE CONTEXT OF JUSTICE

Abstract

A recurrent modern day narrative is that the expansion of people’s freedom often tied to the democracy is the best form of government and that once the institutions of democracy are in place, a country is assured to thread the path of development. Unfortunately, the smoldering ruins of non-development of most countries in Africa and beyond after embracing this narrative tell us a different story. Yet the promoters of this narrative introduce another variable in the equation of development-enhancing-governance – corruption and injustice. Another look reveals that injustice and corruption are not lacking in any measure in the so-called developed countries. Put in the context of globalization, the underdeveloped/developing nations and the so-called developing nations are today permanently forced into an unequal relationship through globalization whereby the developing nations are encouraged to enter a relationship for the promotion of a world order they neither contributed in designing nor understand its rules of engagement. Yet the only countries that are not in the West that command respect today are those that defy this externally imposed while pasturing a homegrown definition of what is governance and the institutions necessary to foster it. Against the above backdrop, this essay argues in part that while no nation should re-invent the wheel, respecting the cultures and peculiarities of nations is the first step towards a peaceful co-existence which assures development. It further argues that the institutions of modern-day democracy by itself can never ensure development and that in deed, in some instances promotes lack of development. The essay is anchored on the understanding that history displays a great variety of arrangements and ideologies with regard to distributive justice and that indeed, what becomes justice, while constituted of some basic similarities is a human construction, and it is doubtful that it can be made only one way.