Odiousness—whether of regimes, individuals, or certain cooked green vegetables—is a subjective concept. But in this context it dangerously invites ethnocentrism. Is a democracy a necessary condition for avoiding the label odious? Is it a sufficient condition? Is universal suffrage a necessary predicate? Equal rights for women? Is a regime odious if it misprizes environmental issues or civil rights? And so forth and endlessly so on.
...
Finally, who is to make the judgment? The lender? Obviously not. Were this the test, the municipality of Rome would still be paying off Caligula’s gambling debts.
The sovereign debtor? Unlikely. Remember that the sovereign debtor in this case means the successor regime, the one that has every economic motivation to paint its predecessor in an unflattering light. After a hard-fought political campaign, much less a hard-fought insurrection, politicians are already predisposed to view the ancien régime as a gang of deeply dyed villains. If reaching this conclusion also provides an excuse to repudiate the debts incurred by that prior administration, economy will inevitably beget calumny.
This leaves the international community, or some subset or organ of the international community. But is this realistic?
E così via. (da Buchheit-Gulati-Thompson)
