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Human Rights and Global Democracy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

Michael Goodhart
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Abstract

Human rights and global democracy are widely assumed to be compatible, but the conceptual and practical connection between them has received little attention. As a result, the relationship is under-theorized, and important potential conflicts between them have been neglected or overlooked. This essay attempts to fill this gap by addressing directly the conceptual relationship between human rights and global democracy. It argues that human rights are a necessary condition for global democracy. Human rights constrain power, enable meaningful political agency, and support and promote democratic regimes within states, all of which are fundamental elements in any scheme for global democracy. The essay explores the normative and conceptual bases of these functions and works out some of their institutional implications.

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Features
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 22 , Issue 4 , Winter 2008 , pp. 395 - 420
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 2008

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References

NOTES

1 David Beetham, Democracy and Human Rights(Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999), ch. 7.

2 Though compare Michael Goodhart, Democracy as Human Rights: Freedom and Equality in the Age of Globalization(New York: Routledge, 2005); Carol C. Gould, Globalizing Democracy and Human Rights(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Jürgen Habermas, “On Legitimation through Human Rights,” in Pablo De Greiff and Ciaran Cronin, eds. Global Justice and Transnational Politics(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2002), pp. 197–214.

3 For example, Jack Donnelly, Universal Human Rights in Theory and Practice, 2nd ed. (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2003), p. 191ff; Michael Freeman, “The Perils of Democratization: Nationalism, Markets, and Human Rights,” Human Rights Review 2, no. 1 (2000), pp. 34–35; Fareed Zakaria, “The Rise of Illiberal Democracy,” Foreign Affairs 76, no. 6 (1997), pp. 24–43.

4 James N. Rosenau, “The Complexities and Contradictions of Globalization,” Current History 96, no. 613 (1997), p. 361; compare John Markoff, “Who Will Construct the Global Order?” in Bruce Morrison, ed. Transnational Democracy in Critical and Comparative Perspective: Democracy's Range(London: Ashgate, 2004), pp. 19–36; Michael Zürn, “Democratic Governance Beyond the Nation-State: The EU and Other International Institutions,” European Journal of International Relations 6, no. 2 (2000), pp. 183–221.

5 David Held, Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State to Cosmopolitan Governance(Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1995), p. 99.

6 See, e.g., Madeline Morris, “The Democratic Dilemma of the International Criminal Court,” Buffalo Criminal Law Review 5 (2002); John R. Bolton, “The Risks and Weaknesses of the International Criminal Court from America's Perspective,” Law and Contemporary Problems 64 (Winter 2001): 167-180.

7 Each of these problems affects different states differently. See Michael Goodhart, “Democracy, Globalization, and the Problem of the State,” Polity 33, no. 4 (2001), pp. 527–46.

8 This brief summary does not encompass recent scholarship on global justice; for an assessment of the (dis)connection between work on global democracy and global justice, see Simon Caney, “Cosmopolitanism, Democracy and Distributive Justice,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 31, Supp. (2005), pp. 29–63.

9 Held, Democracy and the Global Order.

10 For an excellent overview of cosmopolitan proposals, see Daniele Archibugi, “Cosmopolitan Democracy and Its Critics: A Review,” European Journal of International Relations 10, no. 3 (2004), pp. 437–73.

11 Beetham, Democracy and Human Rights, p. 144ff.

12 Held, Democracy and the Global Order, p. 223. Held's preference for “empowerment” rights turns on his reluctance to assert their universality. Nonetheless, Held argues, they are rights any democrat must accept.

13 See Archibugi, “Cosmopolitan Democracy and Its Critics.”

14 John S. Dryzek, Deliberative Global Politics: Discourse and Democracy in a Divided World(Cambridge: Polity Press, 2006), pp. 30–51; John S. Dryzek, “Transnational Democracy,” Journal of Political Philosophy 7, no. 1 (1999), pp. 389–420; Ronnie D. Lipschutz, “Reconstructing World Politics: The Emergence of Global Civil Society,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 21, no. 3 (1992), pp. 389–420; Jan Aart Scholte, “Civil Society and Democracy in Global Governance,” Global Governance 8, no. 3 (2002), pp. 281–304; Jackie Smith, “Global Civil Society? Transnational Social Movement Organizations and Social Capital,” American Behavioral Scientist 42, no. 1 (1998), pp. 93–107.

15 See Smith, “Global Civil Society?”

16 Dryzek, “Transnational Democracy,” p. 46ff.; compare John S. Dryzek, Democracy in Capitalist Times: Ideals, Limits, Struggles(New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 146.

17 Thomas Risse, Stephen C. Ropp, and Kathryn Sikkink, eds., The Power of Human Rights: International Norms and Domestic Change(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). On transnational issues, see Sanjeev Khagram, James V. Riker, and Kathryn Sikkink, “From Santiago to Seattle: Transnational Advocacy Groups Restructuring World Politics,” in Sanjeev Khagram, James V. Riker, and Kathryn Sikkink, eds. Restructuring World Politics: Transnational Social Movements, Networks, and Norms(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002), pp. 3–23.

18 Dryzek, Deliberative Global Politics, p. 7.

19 Ibid., pp. 93–94.

20 Erik Oddvar Eriksen and John Erik Fossum, “Europe in Search of Legitimacy: Strategies of Legitimation Assessed,” International Political Science Review 25, no. 4 (2004), p. 442ff.

21 Goodhart, Democracy as Human Rights, ch. 3.

22 W. B. Gallie, “Essentially Contested Concepts,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 56 (1955–56), pp. 167–98.

23 See Charles R. Beitz, “Sovereignty and Morality in International Affairs,” in David Held, ed., Political Theory Today(Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1991); Held, Democracy and the Global Order.

24 On this symmetry, see Held, Democracy and the Global Order, p. 221ff.

25 Carole Pateman, “Democracy and Democratization,” International Political Science Review 17, no. 1 (1996), pp. 5–12.

26 See Michael Goodhart, “Europe's Democratic Deficits through the Looking Glass: The European Union as a Challenge for Democracy,” Perspectives on Politics 5, no. 3 (2007); Michael Goodhart, “Civil Society and the Problem of Global Democracy,” Democratization 12, no. 1 (2005), pp. 567–84.

27 Henry Shue, Basic Rights: Subsistence, Affluence, and U.S. Foreign Policy, 2nd ed. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996).

28 This view excludes so-called minimalist conceptions of human rights, which do not explain, for instance, how rights to education or subsistence will be secure in the absence of political rights that allow people to influence and contest government policy or how political rights can be meaningful when people are ignorant or malnourished. The interdependence of rights makes such divisible conceptions undemocratic.

29 David Jacobson and Galya Benarieh Ruffer, “Courts across Borders: The Implications of Judicial Agency for Human Rights and Democracy,” Human Rights Quarterly 25, no. 1 (2003), pp. 74–92; James Bohman, “Constitution Making and Democratic Innovations: The European Union and Transnational Governance,” European Journal of Political Theory 3, no. 3 (2004), pp. 315–37; James Bohman, “International Regimes and Democratic Governance: Political Equality and Influence in Global Institutions,” International Affairs 75, no. 3 (1999), pp. 499–513.

30 Jacobson and Ruffer, “Courts across Borders,” pp. 74–75, 81–83.

31 Bohman, “Constitution Making,” pp. 321–23.

32 Ibid.

33 Ernst-Ulrich Petersmann, “Time for a United Nations ‘Global Compact’ for Integrating Human Rights into the Law of Worldwide Organizations: Lessons from European Integration,” European Journal of International Law 13, no. 3 (2002), pp. 621–50.

34 This suggests an alternative approach to global democratic accountability; compare Ruth W. Grant and Robert O. Keohane, “Accountability and Abuses of Power in World Politics,” American Political Science Review 99, no. 1 (2005), pp. 29–43.

35 Andrew Moravcsik, “The Origins of Human Rights Regimes: Democratic Delegation in Postwar Europe,” International Organization 54, no. 2 (2000), pp. 217–52.

36 Jamie Mayerfield, “The Mutual Dependence of External and Internal Justice: The Democratic Achievement of the International Criminal Court,” Finnish Yearbook of International Law 123 (2001), pp. 71–107.

37 Oona A. Hathaway, “Do Human Rights Treaties Make a Difference?” Yale Law Journal 111, no. 8 (2002); Eric Neumayer, “Do International Human Rights Treaties Improve Respect for Human Rights?” Journal of Conflict Resolution 49, no. 6 (2005), pp. 925–53.

38 A regime is commonly defined as “[a set] of implicit or explicit principles, norms, rules, and decision-making procedures around which actors’ expectations converge in a given area of international relations”; Stephen D. Krasner, “Structural Causes and Regime Consequences: Regimes as Intervening Variables,” International Organization 36, no. 2 (1982), p. 186.

39 See Goodhart, Democracy as Human Rights, ch. 8.

40 Oona A. Hathaway, “Between Power and Principle: An Integrated Theory of International Law,” University of Chicago Law Review 72, no. 2 (2005), pp. 469–536; Hathaway, “Do Human Rights Treaties Make a Difference?”

41 Thomas W. Pogge, “Achieving Democracy,” Ethics & International Affairs 15, no. 1 (2001), pp. 3–23.

42 Risse, Ropp, and Sikkink, eds., The Power of Human Rights; Thomas Risse, “The Power of Norms Versus the Norms of Power: Transnational Civil Society and Human Rights,” in Ann M. Florini, ed. The Third Force: The Rise of Transnational Civil Society(Washington, D.C.: Japan Center for International Exchange/Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2000), pp. 177–209; Daniel C. Thomas, The Helsinki Effect: International Norms, Human Rights, and the Demise of Communism(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001).

43 See Jack Donnelly, “The Relative Universality of Human Rights,” Human Rights Quarterly 29, no. 2 (2007), pp. 281–306; Eyal Benvenisti, “Margin of Appreciation, Consensus, and Universal Standards,” International Law and Politics 31, no. 4 (1999), pp. 843–54.

44 Laurence P. Helfer and Anne-Marie Slaughter, “Toward a Theory of Effective Supranational Adjudication,” Yale Law Journal 107, no. 2 (1997), p. 278.

45 Karen J. Alter, “Who Are The “Masters of the Treaty”? European Governments and the European Court of Justice,” International Organization 52, no. 1 (1998), pp. 121–47; compare Tom Farer, “The Rise of the Inter-American Human Rights Regime: No Longer a Unicorn, Not Yet an Ox,” Human Rights Quarterly 19, no. 3 (1997), pp. 510–46.

46 Hathaway, “Between Power and Principle”; Hathaway, “Do Human Rights Treaties Make a Difference?” Similarly, on the political and institutional components of effective adjudication, see Helfer and Slaughter, “Effective Supranational Adjudication.”

47 Hathaway, “Do Human Rights Treaties Make a Difference?” For a good survey of the literature, see Sonia Cardenas, “Norm Collision: Explaining the Effects of International Human Rights Pressure on State Behavior,” International Studies Review 6, no. 2 (2004), pp. 213–19. For a comprehensive—and more optimistic—empirical study, see Todd Landman, Protecting Human Rights: A Comparative Study(Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2005).

48 For example, Martha Finnemore, National Interests in International Society(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1996); John W. Meyer et al., “World Society and the Nation-State,” American Journal of Sociology 103, no. 1 (1997), pp. 144–81.

49 Darren Hawkins, “Explaining Costly International Institutions: Persuasion and Enforceable Human Rights Norms,” International Studies Quarterly 48, no. 4 (2004), pp. 779–804.

50 Nicholas Greenwood Onuf and V. Spike Peterson, “Human Rights from an International Regimes Perspective,” Journal of International Affairs 38, no. 1 (1984), pp. 329–42.

51 Douglass Cassel, “Does International Human Rights Law Make a Difference?” Chicago Journal of International Law 2, no. 1 (2001), pp. 121–35.

52 Ibid.

53 Robert O. Keohane, Peter M. Haas, and Marc A. Levy, “The Effectiveness of International Environmental Institutions,” in Peter M. Haas, Robert O. Keohane, and Marc A. Levy, eds., Institutions for the Earth: Sources of Effective International Environmental Protection(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1993), pp. 3–24.

54 See, e.g., Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1998); Risse, Ropp, and Sikkink, eds., The Power of Human Rights; Thomas, The Helsinki Effect. For a theoretical model describing this process, see Thomas Risse and Kathryn Sikkink, “The Socialization of International Human Rights Norms into Domestic Practices: Introduction,” in Thomas Risse, Stephen C. Ropp, and Kathryn Sikkink, eds., The Power of Human Rights: International Norms and Domestic Change(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

55 Robert Dahl, A Preface to Democratic Theory(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956), p. 36.

56 See, e.g., Ronald Dworkin, “Rights as Trumps,” in Jeremy Waldron, ed., Theories of Rights(New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), pp. 158–67.

57 For example, Robert Dahl, “Can International Organizations Be Democratic? A Skeptic's View,” in Ian Shapiro and Casiano Hacker-Cordón, eds., Democracy's Edges(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Will Kymlicka, Politics in the Vernacular: Nationalism, Multiculturalism and Citizenship(New York: Oxford University Press, 2001); Charles Taylor, “No Community, No Democracy, Part I,” Responsive Community 13, no. 4 (2003), pp. 17–28; Charles Taylor, “No Community, No Democracy, Part II,” Responsive Community 14, no. 1 (2003/2004), pp. 15–25. I am grateful to reviewers for helping me to sharpen and clarify the argument here.

58 James Bohman, “Deliberative Democracy and Effective Social Freedom: Capabilities, Resources, and Opportunities,” in James Bohman and William Rehg, eds., Deliberative Democracy: Essays on Reason and Politics(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1997); David Miller, Citizenship and National Identity(Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000), pp. 321–48; David Miller, On Nationality(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995); Yael Tamir, Liberal Nationalism(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993).

59 See Goodhart, Democracy as Human Rights, ch. 6.

60 Ibid., ch. 7; Michael Goodhart, “Neither Relative nor Universal: A Response to Donnelly,” Human Rights Quarterly 30, no. 1 (2008), pp. 183–93.