Abstract
Since the emergence of the international human rights regime, after the Second World War, governments appear to have moved toward accepting increasingly broad rights. The present study seeks to explain this important shift. It draws upon a theoretical framework focusing on actors’ strategic responses to normative pressures. We argue that government officials involved in normative bargaining over new human rights are more likely to adopt strategies of broadening norms than simply yielding, challenging or narrowing them. We seek to assess the plausibility of this argument by focusing on the history of the right to development and the right to democracy. We contrast the debates surrounding these rights in academic circles to those among practitioners, in the UN. We show how broadening strategies in the latter circles have led to the empowerment of these two rights and even to strong associations between them.
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Notes
See, United Nations, Commission on Human Rights. 1977. Report on the Thirty-Third Session: Economic and Social Council, Official Record: Sixty-Second Session, Supplement No. 6, E/CN.4/1257.
See, UN General Assembly, Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action, 12 July 1993, A/CONF.157/23.
See E/CN.4/1999/SR.59.
See, UN General Assembly, Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action, 12 July 1993, A/CONF.157/23.
Interview with government official who participated in multiple conferences of new or restored democracies (January 2015). In order to discuss freely the debates surrounding the right to development and the right to democracy the interviewees preferred that their names not be made public.
See A/54/178, Item 39 of the provisional agenda, “Support by the United Nations system of the efforts of Governments to promote and consolidate new or restored democracies—Letter dated 19 July 1999 from the Permanent Representative of Romania to the United Nations addressed to the Secretary-General”.
Interview with government official involved in negotiations of the 1999 resolution (January 2015).
Ibid.
Personal interview with government official involved in negotiations on right to democracy (November 2014).
See, United Nations, Commission on Human Rights. 1977. Report on the Thirty-Third Session: Economic and Social Council, Official Record: Sixty-Second Session, Supplement No. 6, E/CN.4/1257.
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Grigorescu, A., Komp, E. The “broadening” of international human rights: the cases of the right to development and right to democracy. Int Polit 54, 238–254 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41311-017-0025-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41311-017-0025-0