The last fifteen years or so have seen an explosion of writing on global justice. Here I flag a flaw in this literature: its failure to address the emergence and consolidation of kleptocracies.

A kleptocracy is a state that steals from its citizens. Kleptocracies are exemplars of what Acemoglu and Robinson call extractive institutions. These are institutions that “concentrate power in the hands of a narrow elite and place few constraints on the exercise of this power.” (Why Nations Fail, pp. 81 ff.)  They block the mutual benefits that cement economic growth. In a kleptocracy, the government and its friends do not simply regulate property: they run roughshod over property rights and freedom of contract. Armed with populist justifications, these regimes prey on those who produce and end up harming everyone (see, in addition to Acemoglu & Robinson, here and here).

Kleptocracies may or may not violate traditional civil and political rights. Some of them do (Zimbabwe and Cuba are examples.) The interesting case, however, is the kleptocracy that generally respects civil and political rights. Two notable examples are my native country, Argentina, and, until recent events, Venezuela (on Argentina’s long decline, see here and here; for Venezuela, see here.) There are two reasons why kleptocracies succeed notwithstanding the harm they cause. First, because of the rational ignorance effect and the vividness of the short-term benefits of redistribution, the public cannot see the harm and keeps reelecting the kleptocrats. Second, the kleptocrat’s relatively decent human-rights record shields him from external scrutiny. Not only do kleptocrats come to power democratically: they rarely persecute, torture, or kill people. Nor (apart from the fact that they have few constraints on their power over resources) do they commit egregious violations of due process. They just enact confiscatory laws. Laws are confiscatory, in a loose sense, when they violate private property rights and force economic outcomes that are collectively ruinous but increase the kleptocrat’s wealth and power.

Enter the global justice literature. This literature pursues two themes. The first is the importance of human rights. For many, human rights are the moral foundation of international law and justice. This claim is eminently plausible in its general formulation –after all, protecting rights is arguably the main function of the state. However, human rights-based accounts (including, to my shame, my own early writings) neglect the very rights that enable the creation of wealth: property and contract. The human rights that writers extol are traditional civil and political rights, plus “economic and social rights,” that is welfare rights. In the global justice literature, economic liberties are nowhere to be found. Yet if economic liberties  generate prosperity there is every reason to include them in the list of human rights that governments, who are supposed to serve the public interest, ought to recognize and protect.

The second theme found in the global justice literature is that resources belong collectively to “the people.” Writers as diverse as Leif Wenar and Cara Nine have endorsed that view, which is echoed by some international documents. On this view, the ultimate title over resources, including land, lies not with private owners but with the state or the people. Since the state claims to represent the people, in fact the state ultimately controls the resources. For all practical purposes the state owns those resources, since it can dispossess private owners at any time for reasons of public interest.

To be sure, global justice writers do not endorse dictators who openly appropriate resources. Leif Wenar, to his credit, has denounced the appropriation of wealth by undemocratic rulers. But he says that the state can expropriate individuals if it it does it democratically, on the theory that democratic procedures guarantee that the “people” are taking what is theirs. But this is exactly what kleptocracies do. They win elections and then appropriate resources in the name of the “people.”  Majority rule is the tool of choice for perpetrating theft.

Global justice scholars ignore kleptocracies. I conjecture that, if asked, they would disapprove of them. They will say that a well-ordered society should have reasonable procedures for expropriating wealth, by taxes or other means, and that legitimate property owners cannot be arbitrarily dispossessed, even if ultimate title to their holdings rests with the “people.” The rule of law will protect individuals against the arbitrary and destructive economic policies of the kinds I am describing. But the truth is that the rule of law will not suffice. Kleptocrats can follow transparent procedures and still prey on their people. The problem is not that procedures are not transparent (although they will seldom be.) The problem is that the institutions in place are extractive and enable expoliation, transparency or not. Only effective limits on state power, that is, the rule of law and robust property rights, can curb this kind of depredation.

While I assume that global justice scholars would respond as suggested, we don’t really know, because in their world kleptocracies do not exist. These writers worry, on the one hand, about the more truculent abuses of state power and, on the other hand, about world poverty and inequality, and invariably assume that coercive redistribution of wealth is the way to go. They do not worry, as they should, about the importance of property rights and about the governmental economic depredation that is itself the main cause of poverty and stagnation. I am sure this is not their intention, but by recommending coercive redistribution and degrading the importance of private property global justice writers end up licencing, sub silentio, this kind of governmental misdeed.