Allocating aid: Justification, fairness and deliberation in international aid organizations.
Published: 2006
Language: eng
Number of pages: 222
ISBN-13: 9780494220030
Description: The central question addressed in this dissertation is as follows: "How ought international, non-governmental aid organizations decide who to aid, given that they operate under resource constraints and so will not be in a position to help all eligible recipients?" The dissertation begins by considering whether or not international aid agencies (IAOs) ought to take global distributive justice as their goal. Having established that they have a limited obligation to contribute to global justice, I move on to consider several consequentialist and prioritarian principles for allocating resources. Due mainly to problems of uncertainty and undue arbitrariness, these are rejected. I then introduce several additional problems which further complicate the choice situation of IAOs. In particular, since IAOs make choices from a position in which they are already committed to many populations, they have obligations to particular beneficiaries in the form of associative duties. These ongoing relationships also generate other, non-welfare goods which must be taken into account when allocation decisions are made.Following Norman Daniels and James Sabin, I argue for a broadly deliberative approach to just decision-making. I take their four conditions of "accountability for reasonableness" as my general framework. With its focus on deliberation and reasons capable of generating free agreement among stakeholders, this approach nicely accommodates the variety of principles and values at stake. I expand this general account by specifying three constraints which IAOs must not violate: a minimum threshold for welfare improvement, a concern for fairness, and a legitimacy constraint. I also argue that IAOs may permissibly adopt various other goals, provided these are independently justifiable. Finally, some practical issues are addressed, including IAO complicity in prolonging situations of armed conflict and the extent to which IAOs must design projects which reflect their beneficiaries' values and culture. The overall aim of the dissertation is not to specify a rigid decision-procedure for IAO resource allocation. Rather, I aim to specify the kinds of constraints on the decision-making process that will foster fair, legitimate outcomes while at the same time allowing for the diversity of values and projects that IAOs typically wish to endorse.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-01, Section: A, page: 0209.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Toronto, 2006.

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