Explaining the Paradox of American Human Rights Policy: Rights Culture or Pluralist Pressures?

Andrew Moravcsik[1]

 

Conference on Unilateralism and U.S. Power Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University 5 December 2003.

 

 

Introduction

Why is the US so reluctant to ratify and apply multilateral human rights treaties? Compared to most advanced industrial democracies, the US still refuses to formally accept nearly all widely accepted international legal human rights norms and uniformly rejects legal enforcement of those norms within its borders, whether by international or domestic means. This is a paradox in a country with a robust tradition of domestic civil rights enforcement and a vigorous record of unilateral (even often multilateral) action abroad to promote human rights. The resulting ambivalence on the part of the US is now a striking exception among Western democracies and has been the target of criticism from domestic civil libertarians and foreign governments as being inconsistent, hypocritical and cynical.

How is this paradoxical policy mix to be explained? Explanations for US non-adherence can usefully be divided into two broad categories. The most common category contains explanations that stress the enduring, broadly-based “rights culture” of the US—the particular political ideals and notions of procedural propriety distinctive to the US. An alternative category comprises “pluralist” explanations, which stress partisan and material political interests, as filtered through American political institutions. I shall argue that the second sort of explanation—and, in particular, the combination of superpower status, democratic stability, concentrated conservative opposition, and fragmented political institutions—best accounts for this form of US unilateralism.

Although the object of considerable speculation, the causes of US exceptionalism in human rights constitute, above all, an empirical question of history and social science.[2] There are numerous prima facie plausible explanations—many of them consistent with the (often opportunistic) rhetoric of politicians with regard to human rights commitments. The difficult and more essential task is to locate and interpret empirical evidence that bears on this question. The best such evidence concerns neither the crude fact of US non-adherence nor the rhetoric of politicians, but instead the nature of domestic cleavages, the anomalous position of the US in comparative perspective, and the scope of US non-adherence. I present the most relevant data below.

The Politics of Networks: Interests, Power, and Human Rights Norms

By David A. Lake and Wendy Wong

 

From The Politics of Networks: Interests, Power, and Human Rights Norms (with Wendy Wong), in Networked Politics: Agency, Power, and Governance, Miles Kahler, ed. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, forthcoming Spring 2009).

 

Introduction

            Network theory has recently gained importance as an interdisciplinary approach for understanding complex systems. With roots in the physical sciences and sociology, scholars have identified common features of networks in diverse physical and social settings (Barabasi 2003, Watts 1999, 2003). Despite considerable interest in political networks, especially transnational advocacy networks (TANs), political scientists have imported few insights from network theory into their studies.[i] Nor have political scientists apparently exported their insights and knowledge of political processes to network theory.[ii] This essay aims to begin an exchange between network theorists and political scientists by addressing two related questions. How can network theory inform the study of international relations, particularly in the examination of TANs? Conversely, what problems arise in political phenomena that can enrich network theory?

            We make two general arguments focusing on the process of norm emergence in networks based on the history of the global human rights movement and the formation of Amnesty International (AI). First, political power can be an emergent property of networks, found most likely in scale-free structures. That is, central (or more connected) nodes can influence a network directly or indirectly and thereby shape the ends towards which the nodes collectively move. Power, in turn, is efficient and perhaps even necessary for overcoming conflicts of interest within networks. Incorporating distributional conflicts into network theory highlights a new and broader role for political power than now recognized. Our conception of networks considers the differences between nodes, taking into account specific characteristics that may privilege their likelihood of gaining links to other nodes and, therefore, increasing their power in the network. While TANs are sometimes celebrated as spontaneously-organized, horizontal, and egalitarian alternatives to states, power may be crucial in the early stages of advocacy network development, as we demonstrate in the case of AI.