What is distinctive about international human rights politics?

Résumé du document

Three main theories lead the international human rights political politics: the realist, the ideational and the republican liberalist theory.
The realist theory assumes that democratic countries, and especially the great powers use coercion to make other governments adopt international human rights regime. They think that the most powerful countries are the primary of the international human rights politics.
The ideational theory believes in the transnational persuasion power of civil societies from democratic countries fighting for human rights. They think that these civil societies may influence the undemocratic countries to adopt a more compassionate international human rights regime.

However, and after having analysed these two theories but also republican liberalism, it seems that republican liberalism is the theory that is the most strongly connected to the reality of the international human rights politics, and as Andrew Moravcsik says "historical records strongly supports the republican liberal theory" (Moravcsik, 2000, p230). This is the reason why this essay will be focused on this theory.
This essay will first show how the international human rights institutions are getting more powerful, then the reason why governments may wish to adopt the international human rights regime and to conclude, we will show the relevance of these theoretical concepts through an empirical analysis of the situation of the European Court of Human Rights, and the United States.

Extraits

[...] What is distinctive about international human rights politics? Introduction Three main theories lead the international human rights political politics: the realist, the ideational and the republican liberalist theory. The realist theory assumes that democratic countries, and especially the great powers use coercion to make other governments adopt international human rights regime. They think that the most powerful countries are the primary of the international human rights politics. The ideational theory believes in the transnational persuasion power of civil societies from democratic countries fighting for human rights. [...]

[...] It is clear that sovereignty is definitely not the only matter that countries care about when dealing with international human rights, and we can imagine that the decision not to intervene in Syria is linked to the same matter that Lake and Morris raised. Bibliography GOLDHABER Michael, A People's History of the European Court of Human Rights, Rutgers MORAVCSIK Andrew, Origins of Human Rights Regimes: Democratic Delegation in Post-War Europe”, International Organization MORAVCSIK Andrew, is US Policy so Unilateralist?”, in Shepard Forman and Patrick Stewart, The Cost of Acting alone: Multilateralism and US Foreign Policy, Liene Riener Publishers PAPE Robert and KAUFMANN Chaim, “Explaining Costly International Moral Action: Britain's Sixty-Year Campaign against the Atlantic Slave Trade”, International Organization POWER Samantha, “Bystanders to Genocide”, The Atlantic Monthly, 2001. [...]

[...] States are indeed self-interested in their relations to international human rights institutions. Andrew Moravcsik talks about the “sovereignty cost” (Moravcsik p227) of the governments: they accept to renounce to some sovereignty if they consider that it would improve or protect their democracy. Old democracies who are established over a really long time do not have any fear about the stability of their democracy and can not find any interest in renouncing to their sovereignty because their democracy is stable enough and does not need the “locking (Moravcsik p226) of the international human rights politics. [...]

[...] The disturbing point is that the unstable or non-democratic countries take exactly the same decisions as established democracies, but for different reasons: while the established democracies evaluate their “sovereignty cost” and realise that they do not need to renounce to some sovereignty to protect their democracy, the non- democratic countries such as Greece or Turkey just do not want human rights matter to divert the order of the country. It is also interesting to study the behaviour of the United States, considered as an established democracy, toward the United Nations and the International Criminal Court. When we look at the declaration, we realize that the United States signed the declaration but did not ratify it. Russia did the same. Again, we see an established democracy and a non-democratic country having the same behaviour toward a international human rights institution. [...]

[...] Also, new democracies are the main actors of the International Criminal Court: they are the origin of the jurisprudence. For instance, the lawfare theory is a sort of thinking the restrictions on the use of force that came out from the negotiations in the International Criminal Court, when the developing countries mostly new democracies wanted the concept of aggression to be included in the declaration. Conclusion To conclude, and after having studied the interference of international human rights institutions, explained the reasons why some countries accept to renounce to some sovereignty, and showed the application of those concepts on the European Court of Human Rights and the International Criminal Court, we may still have some interrogations. [...]