The International Relations of Human Rights Class 24 Flashcards
What two concepts are blended in Western Political Theory?
Real Politik and Liberal Values
Example: US demands HR behind Iron curtain but not with Allies in Central America.
What are the two important questions for Human Rights and public opinion?
1) what causes institutionalism
2) what effect does HR have on the behavior of states
What is the double-standard paradox?
public submission to HR goals but leaders often subordinate HR to other goals.
1) need to obtain/maintain power
2) anarchy makes enforcing treaties difficult
3) major powers push for universal moral claims
Example: Turkish crackdown on freedom of the press following the 2016 coup after the president committed himself to democracy and human rights.
What two phenomenon does liberalism explain in Human Rights?
1) policies to replace authoritarian government
2) seek stronger institutions
Example: cold war led to replacement of many authoritarian states by democratic states which led to the institutionalization of Human Rights in the 1990s.
Human Security
State instruments to protect the individual citizen’s rights.
Example: Sweden’s no-cost healthcare system.
Contested concept
The fundamental meaning of a term is publicly contested by competing groups. Example: Human Security concept
Theory of Containment
US theory to block soviet expansion until the eventually development of a democratic soviet middle class that would overthrow communism.
Example: above?
Constructivist explanations of the International Relations of Human Rights.
1) when rights are a fundamental component of state creation, there is an incentive to spread claims
2) HR ideas are spread through norm cascades
3) HR norms are spread as ideas through transnational social movements
Example: The Human Rights expansion in the ’70s as a consequence of the emergence of NGOs like Amnesty International.
5 Steps of Norm cascade
1) act of HR repression
2) international HR groups criticize repressing state
3) international groups help repressed
4) State feels inclined to enact HR policy due to pressure
5) States automatically enact HR
Example: The eventual dismantling of South African apartheid is a case in which international pressure influenced such an outcome.
3 Ways Nongovernmental organizations propagate Human Rights.
1) network of communication of right violations
2) monitoring of treaty compliance
3) humiliation of noncompliant states
Example: The Open Society Justice Initiative investigating compliance with CAT, the convention against torture and other cruel of inhumane forms of punishment.
What did the commission on intervention and state sovereignty do?
CISS redefined sovereignty from aa right to exclude foreign intervention to a responsibility to protect.
Example: the 1993 Rwanda massacres increasing the interventionist role within Human Rights.
