EMERGENCE OF A RIGHTS-BASED ECONOMY

In order to transform the economy and society, we first need to recognize that contemporary markets are largely a product of a concentrated effort of economization, defined as a set of practices that leads to the establishment and maintenance of economic markets (Çalışkan & Callon 2009). Economization since the Second World War – namely with the foundation of the Bretton Woods institutions in 1944 – has expanded the reach of Global North market actors and investors into countries in the Global South. The end of the gold standard in 1971 set in motion the shift towards flexible exchange rates and the end of capital controls, with the simultaneous rise of offshore tax havens (Bullough 2023; Shaxson 2005). The late 1970s and early 1980s saw the “Big Bang” of deregulation such as the control of capital, currency exchange, separation of investment from retail banking and other banking regulation. This caused risks to the wider economy and society in the form of successive financial crises, which led to large-scale bailouts of economic sectors, in most cases by states. Governments ended up enacting austerity measures and prioritizing in “saving the economy” rather than prioritizing human rights, as we have seen in particular both during and after the Covid-19 pandemic (Oxfam International 2023; Ortiz & Cummins 2022; FTC 2022).

Parallel to the rise of the dominant discourse of marketization, this volume has analysed the rise of the human rights language as the universally accepted “lexicon” that has been developed over the same period – since the Second World War (Balakrishnan, Heintz & Elson 2016; Dommen 2022; Bachelet 2021). Human rights have grown in importance as a counter-narrative to growing trends of economization and marketization. For instance, some governments are now looking to prioritize the human rights of their population by expanding fiscal resources through greater taxation of extractive industries, high incomes and wealth (Gobierno de Chile 2023). This trend is particularly evident with the growth in both recognition and articulation of the existence of economic, social and cultural rights (ESCRs), which originate from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).