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Social science and human rights

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DominguezJorge I., RodleyNigel S., WoodBryce, and FalkRichard. Enhancing Global Human Rights. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1979.

GlaserKurt and PossonyStefan T.. Victims of Politics: The State of Human Rights. New York: Columbia University Press, 1979.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

John F. McCamant
Affiliation:
International Relations at the Graduate School of International Studies of the University of Denver.
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Abstract

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Type
Review essays
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 1981

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References

1 Miller, William, compiler and editor, International Human Rights: A Bibliography, 1965–1969 and 1970–1976 (Notre Dame, Indiana: Center for Civil Rights, University of Notre Dame Law School, 1976)Google Scholar. A notable exception is Haas's, Ernest B. social science work, Human Rightsand International Action: The Case of Freedom of Association (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1970)Google Scholar.

2 Kommers, Donald P. and Loescher, Gilburt D., eds., Human Rights and American Foreign Policy (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979)Google Scholar.

3 Joyce, James Avery, The New Politics of Human Rights (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Other recent works include Brown, Peter G. and MacLean, Douglas, eds., Human Rightsand U.S. Foreign Policy (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1979)Google Scholar; Loescher, Gil and Loescher, Ann, Human Rights: A Global Approach (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1978)Google Scholar; Mower, A. Glenn Jr, The United Stales, the United Nations and Human Rights (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1979)Google Scholar; Ramaharan, B. G., Human Rights, Thirty Years after the Universal Declaration (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1979)Google Scholar; and Rubin, Barry M. and Spiro, Elizabeth P., eds., Human Rights and U.S. Foreign Policy (Boulder, Col.: Westview Press, 1979)Google Scholar.

4 Claude, Richard P., “Comparative Rights Research: Some Intersections between Law and the Social Sciences,” in Claude, , ed., Comparative Human Rights (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1976), p. 382Google Scholar.

5 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Philosophical Investigations, 3d ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1968)Google Scholar, and The Blue and Brown Books (New York: Harper and Row, 1958)Google Scholar. My understanding of Wittgenstein is greatly indebted to Pitkin's, HannahWittgenstein and Justice (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1972)Google Scholar.

6 Eddison J. M. Zvobgo, “A Third World View,” and Peter B. Reddaway, “Theory and Practice of Human Rights in the Soviet Union,” in Kommers and Loescher, eds., Human Rights and American Foreign Policy; also see Pollis, Adamantia and Schwab, Pete, eds., Human Rights: Cultural and Ideological Perspectives (New York: Praeger, 1979)Google Scholar.

7 Brecht, Arnold, Political Theory, the Foundations of Twentieth Century Political Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, discusses the logical necessity for separation between fact and value, which underlies the difference between the two approaches.

8 Galtung, Johan, Methodology and Ideology (Copenhagen: Christian Ejlers 1977)Google Scholar.

9 McDougal, Myres S., Lasswell, Harold D., and Chen, Lung-Chu, in Human Rights and World Public Order (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980)Google Scholar, also attempt to combine the normative and the empirical in a “policy-oriented perspective.” Their view of social science is rather restricted and, I expect, unacceptable to most social scientists. They are not at all concerned with different logics, as I am; rather, they seem to want to put a number of approaches together to make a policy. Although I find their approach rather obtuse, I do not think they contradict what I am saying here.

10 Wood could have drawn more on the work of Stepan, Alfred, The Military in Politics: Changing Patterns in Brazil (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971)Google Scholar and Authoritarian Brazil: Origins, Policies and Future (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973)Google Scholar, which he does footnote. Or he might have considered O'Donnell, Guillermo, Modernization and Bureaucratic Authoritarianism (Berkeley: Institute of International Studies, University of California, Politics of Modernization Series no. 9, 1973)Google Scholar, or Ernest Duff and McCamant, John, Violence and Repression in Latin America (New York: Free Press, 1976)Google Scholar. In any case, more good comparative analysis is needed.

11 Lasswell, Harold and Kaplan, Abraham, Power and Society (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1950 and 1965)Google Scholar, and Lasswell, Harold, Lerner, Daniel, and Montgomery, John, eds., Values in Development (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1976)Google Scholar.

12 See in particular McHale, John and McHale, Magda Cordell, Basic Human Needs: A Frame-work for Action (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1978)Google Scholar, and Overseas Development Council, The U.S. and World Development, Agenda for Action (Washington, D.C., annual)Google Scholar; also, Morris, David, Measuring the Condition of the World's Poor (New York: Pergamon, 1979)Google Scholar.

13 UNESCO, Statistical Yearbook.

14 Verba, Sidney, Nie, Norman H., and Kim, Jae-on, Participation and Political Equality, a Seven Nation Comparison (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978)Google Scholar, is the latest of several good works by the same authors. See also their bibliography.

15 I have discussed my suggestion in “A Critique of Present Measures of ‘Human Rights Development’ and an Alternative,” in Scarritt, Jim, ed., Global Human Rights: Public Policy, Current Measures, and NGO Strategies (Boulder, Col.: Westview Press, 1981)Google Scholar. I have worked out the freedom/repression dimension in more detail in an unpublished manuscript, “Varieties of Political Repression,” with Richard Bissell, Clara Haignere, and Mark Piklo.

16 Almost no resources have been devoted to measurement in political science in the last ten years. After the interesting but inadequate start of Banks, Arthur S. and Textor, Robert B., A Cross-Polity Survey (Cambridge: M. I. T. Press, 1963)Google Scholar, and Russett, Bruce M. et al. , World Hand book of Political and Social Indicators (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964 and 1972)Google Scholar, and the useful introduction of Gurr, Ted in Politimetrics (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1972)Google Scholar, there has been little followup. However, a new edition of the World Handbook is to appear shortly.

17 Galeano, Eduardo, “Cemetary of Words,” Index on Censorship 7 (03/04 1978), p. 4CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Arendt, Hannah, Eichmann in Jerusalem (New York: Viking Press, 1963), pp. 224–26Google Scholar.

19 Allison, Graham T., Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971)Google Scholar; and Halperin, Morton H., Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1974)Google Scholar.

20 I have seen no public statement on the status of the IMF loan, but a private source told me that only half of the loan had been used and that the IMF was not going to press for repayment. Perhaps there is a beginning of a change in these rules.

21 The revolutionary Iranian government considered the Shah to be a criminal while the U.S. government considered him a political refugee and a friend besides. This difference of view, of course, underlay the hostage crisis, the most unproductive diversion of U.S. foreign policy in recent years.

22 The Iranian government and the Nicaraguan government initiated legal and diplomatic efforts to recover some of the wealth taken out by their previous dictators, with no result to date. The agreement that settled the hostage crisis leaves some possibility of retrieving a small portion of the Shah's wealth, but it will take years to work the cases through the courts. New laws and procedures would be necessary to give the new governments much of a chance to win their cases, but changes here could greatly enhance the human rights process.

23 U.S. Senate, Covert Action in Chile 1963–1973 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1975)Google Scholar.

24 The U.S. Congress did establish more rigorous procedural control on covert activities but has not declared any actions to be out-of-bounds. Now the foreign affairs establishment is pushing hard to expand covert activities again.

25 Sources on this subject are too numerous to list. See Caporaso's, JamesDependence and Dependency in the Global System, special edition of International Organization (Winter 1978)Google Scholar for a good list of references on the subject.