Books:
Politics as Usual: What Lies Behind the Pro-Poor Rhetoric
Thomas Pogge
Cambridge: Polity Press, 2010
Worldwide, human lives are rapidly improving. The affluent states and many international organizations are working steadily to extend the blessings of modernity through trade and generous development assistance, and it won’t be long until the last pockets of severe oppression and poverty are gone. Heavily promoted by Western governments and media, this comforting view of the world is widely shared, at least among the affluent. Thomas Pogge’s new book presents an alternative view: Poverty and oppression persist on a massive scale; political and economic inequalities are rising dramatically both intra-nationally and globally. The affluent states and the international organizations they control knowingly contribute greatly to these evils—selfishly promoting rules and policies harmful to the poor while hypocritically pretending to set and promote ambitious development goals. A powerful moral analysis that shows what Western states would do if they really cared about the values they profess.
Edited Volumes:
Global Tax Fairness
Thomas Pogge and Krishen Mehta
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016
This book addresses fifteen different reform proposals that are urgently needed to correct the fault lines in the international tax system as it exists today, and which deprive both developing and developed countries of critical tax resources. It offers clear and concrete ideas on how the reforms can be achieved and why they are important for a more just and equitable global system to prevail. The key to reducing the tax gap and consequent human rights deficit in poor countries is global financial transparency. Such transparency is essential to curbing illicit financial flows that drain less developed countries of capital and tax revenues, and are an impediment to sustainable development. A major break-through for financial transparency is now within reach. The policy reforms outlined in this book not only advance tax justice but also protect human rights by curtailing illegal activity and making available more resources for development. While the reforms are realistic they require both political will and an informed and engaged civil society that can put pressure on governments and policy makers to act.
Incentives for Global Public Health
Edited by Thomas Pogge, Matthew Rimmer and Kim Rubenstein
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010
This portrait of the global debate over patent law and access to essential medicines focuses on public health concerns about HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, the SARS virus, influenza, and diseases of poverty. The essays explore the diplomatic negotiations and disputes in key international fora, such as the World Trade Organization, the World Health Organization and the World Intellectual Property Organization. Drawing upon international trade law, innovation policy, intellectual property law, health law, human rights and philosophy, the authors seek to canvass policy solutions which encourage and reward worthwhile pharmaceutical innovation while ensuring affordable access to advanced medicines. A number of creative policy options are critically assessed, including the development of a Health Impact Fund, prizes for medical innovation, the use of patent pools, open-source drug development and forms of “creative capitalism.”
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Articles and Book Chapters:
Thomas Pogge, “Poverty” in Mortimer Sellers and Stephan Kirste, eds.: Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy (Dordrecht: Springer 2023)
Thomas Pogge, “Just Rules for Innovative Pharmaceuticals,” Philosophies 7(4) (2022), 79-95. Open access.
“Can Liberalism Envision a Widely Acceptable World Order?”
Thomas Pogge. In Yun-han Chu and Yongnian Zheng, eds.: The Decline of the Western-Centric World and the Emerging New Global Order (Abingdon & New York: Routledge 2021), Chapter 6.
The authors of this volume were convened to discuss “the search for the emerging global order in the 21st century.” I have interpreted this phrase normatively: what sort of order do we have most reason to seek? My response was based on three key normative ideas that are central to Western liberal political philosophy as well as to Western domestic political organization: the ideas of rule-of-law, human freedom, and human equality. I have sought to understand these three ideas in a way that allows them to find support well beyond the Western orbit. So understood, they give us a widely sharable basis for envisioning how the whole world might be reorganized in a just and peaceful way.
Thomas Pogge, “Fighting Global Poverty,” International Journal of Law in Context 13(4) (2017), 512-26. Open access. Many different indicators are used to monitor poverty and poverty-related deprivations. Two kinds of legitimacy worries may arise about any such indicator: one regarding its reliability as a measure of progress, and another regarding the uses to which it is being put. This essay touches upon both worries, beginning with the latter.
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Op-Eds and Newspaper Articles:
“The Ethics of Measuring Uncertainty”
Thomas Pogge interviewd by Krisha Kops
TERA