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Mercy and the Structures of the World Mercy and the Structures of the World Stephen Chan OBE Third Hans Singer Memorial Lecture on Global Development Conference Proceedings 7 November 2011 German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) In cooperation with Discussion Paper / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) ISSN 1860-0441 Die deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detail- lierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.d-nb.de abrufbar. The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de ISBN 978-3-88985-543-5 Professor Dr. Stephen Chan OBE, Dean of the Faculty of Law & Social Sciences, School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London, UK. Dr. Thomas Fues, Head of Training-Department, German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE), Bonn. Sir Richard Jolly, Institute of Development Studies (IDS), University of Sussex, UK. Sir Hans W. Singer © Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik gGmbH Tulpenfeld 6, 53113 Bonn ℡ +49 (0)228 94927-0 +49 (0)228 94927-130 E-Mail: [email protected] http://www.die-gdi.de http://www.facebook.com/DIE.Bonn Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. mult. Sir Hans Wolfgang Singer (born 29 November 1910 in Wuppertal; deceased 26 February 2006 in Brighton), a renowned international economist and one of the most influential development practitioner of the 20th century has studied in Bonn and graduated from the Economics Department of the University of Bonn in 1932. Being Jewish, he fled the Nazi terror in 1933 and settled in the United Kingdom. After World War II, in 1947, he became an influential development scholar with the United Nations (UN) for two decades. During his time at the UN Hans Singer was a significant driver of establishing important organisations like UNDP, UNICEF and the World Food Programme. The main scientific finding of Hans Singer is the Singer- Prebisch Thesis, which states that the terms of trade for commodity exporting developing countries tend to deteriorate over time. From 1969 until his death he joined the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) at the University of Sussex. In commemoration and in honour of Sir Hans Singer the German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) and the Institute of Development Studies (IDS, University of Sussex) have established the “Hans Singer Memorial Lecture on Global Development”. The Lecture alternates between Bonn and Brighton on an annual basis. The first Memorial Lecture was given 2009 in Bonn by Prof. Dr. Paul Collier, CBE, University of Oxford on “Hans Singer's Legacy: The Problem of Commodity Exporters Revisited” (see: Discussion Paper 15/2009). The second Memorial Lecture took place 2010 in Brighton and was given by Jomo Kwame Sundaram, Assistant Secretary General, United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) on “Hans Singer, Economic Development, Crisis, Recovery and the United Nations”. The Third Memorial Lecture was given by Professor Dr. Stephen Chan of the School of Oriental & African Studies at University of London on 7 November 2011 in Bonn. Contents Hans Singer – one of the 20th century’s outstanding development researchers Thomas Fues 1 Hans Singer –the Gentle Giant Sir Richard Jolly 3 Mercy and the Structures of the World Stephen Chan OBE 5 Revitalizing the United Nations: Five Proposals Sir Hans W. Singer 19 (Originally published in October 1995) The German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) 27 List of Publications 29 Third Hans Singer Memorial Lecture on Global Development Hans Singer – one of the 20th century’s outstanding development researchers Dr. Thomas Fues The “Hans Singer Memorial Lecture on Global Development” is a joint initiative of the German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) and the Institute of Development Studies (University of Sussex) to honour one of the twentieth century’s most influential European development researchers, whose academic career began at the University of Bonn. It was in Bonn that he was to acquire his first academic degree, in economics, in 1931. He had already gained the support of Joseph Schumpeter, at that time a professor of political economics in Bonn, for his planned doctoral studies. However, Schumpeter, who was later to achieve eminence in his field, soon left Bonn for a position at Harvard University. Singer was in the midst of writing a new dissertation when he was forced to flee the National Socialist terror regime because of his Jewish background. In 1934 he arrived, by a roundabout way, in the UK, where he was soon to become a member of the group of Cambridge scholars around John Maynard Keynes. Since World War II, Sir Hans Singer – he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 1994 – shaped, in key ways, both the academic debate on the countries of the South and the practice of development policy. From 1947 to 1969, Hans Singer held a number of prominent posts in the United Nations’ development sector. From 1969 to 2006, the year of his death, he was a member of the teaching and research staff of the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) in Brighton. Hans Singer devoted the better part of his life to efforts to give the economic sciences a new, emphatically moral orientation geared to practical applications and advisory work. That may be the reason why he has, until today, received relatively little recognition in his own discipline, that is, outside the field of development studies. It was at the United Nations that Hans Singer developed his widely acclaimed theory on the long-term deterioration in the terms of international trade for developing countries specialised in the export of primary products, the so-called Prebisch-Singer Thesis, a hypothesis that has since become a core element of international economics. According to the Prebisch-Singer Thesis, integration into the world economy on the basis of exports of agricultural and mineral commodities works to the detriment of this group of countries, while at the same time the industrialised countries stand to benefit, disproportionately and systematically, from international trade. Hans Singer identifies the root structural cause of this interdependency, with its alarming implications for development policy, in institutional disparities in the labour markets of developing and industrialised nations. In connection with a mission to Kenya in the early 1970s that he headed, together with the renowned development scientist Sir Richard Jolly (IDS), on behalf of the International Labour Organization (ILO), Hans Singer also published some pioneering findings with immediate relevance for development practice. Together, the two development researchers developed the innovative idea of redistribution with growth, a concept that involved a reassessment and acknowledgement of the informal productive sector. Alongside the theoretical impulses he provided for development research, Hans Singer published a number of key conceptual contributions bearing on the development and qualification of international institutions, most of them part the United Nations system, including the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the World Food Programme German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) 1 Thomas Fues (WFP), the UN Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), and the UN Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD). The prodigious list of Hans Singer’s publications bears witness to an extraordinary creative power and at the same time serves to document the breadth of the interests that accompanied him in the course of his scholarly career, encompassing a period of over 70 years. He held his last lecture, on the origin of the 0.7 percent goal set for development policy, one week before his ninety-fifths birthday. It was no doubt his own biography that induced Hans Singer to work unceasingly for social justice, human development, and poverty alleviation, which he saw as the central concerns of scholarship and politics. He furthermore trusted in the ability of international institutions, and the United Nations in particular, to create and sustain peace. Hans Singer received broad international recognition and was honoured on numerous occasions; a total of five commemorative publications were dedicated to him in his lifetime. In Germany, the University of Freiburg awarded him an honorary doctorate in 2004. 2 German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) Third Hans Singer Memorial Lecture on Global Development Hans Singer –the Gentle Giant Sir Richard Jolly Hans Singer was a gentle giant. His intellectual leadership and extraordinary energy issued from a small man, of modest appearance and mild-mannered stance, head often cocked to one side, bushy eyebrows with a friendly but questioning smile. He was loved and deservedly feted for his visionary and creative thinking, bold, innovative and positive in contrast to his gracious and unassuming style and total disregard for outward appearances. When he was preparing to receive his knighthood from the Queen, he considered for several weeks whether he should wear his old suit or buy a new one. In the end, he bought a new one – from Marks and Spencer! In the UN he was widely known and admired for his outstanding professional qualities, his ready willingness to help and his scrupulous avoidance of gossip and infighting. The old guard of the UN remembered Hans as one who had maintained his integrity even while he was singled out for personal attack by Senator McCarthy (for his work on SUNFED, the proposed Special UN Fund for Economic Development). Indeed, because of these pressures on him, Hans Singer resigned from the UN in 1953 and was on the point of leaving when Dag Hammarskjöld, newly appointed as the Secretary-General, directly appealed to Singer to stay which, fortunately for the UN, he did. I was privileged to know Hans for over 42 years – from 1963, when, as a graduate student collecting data for my thesis, I shared a house with Hans for two months in Addis Ababa.
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