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Despite its increasing importance in contemporary political philosophy and its central role in international human rights law, there has been significant resistance among political theorists and philosophers to the idea that there is a moral human right to democracy. In John Rawls's late political philosophy of international justice and in the views of many who are sympathetic to his position, the idea that there is a moral human right to democracy is vigorously rejected.1 Other major recent treatments of human rights have either rejected the human right to democracy or shied away from making arguments one way or the other.2 One key concern animating the opposition to a moral human right to democracy is that the assertion of such a right in international society conflicts with the rights of peoples to collective self-determination. Some peoples, it is asserted, reject democracy or the equality on which it is founded, and because of this rejection, the recognition of a human right to democracy imposes on them a set of norms alien to their political cultures. Another concern, articulated in popular writings, is that new democracies often violate the basic moral rights of citizens. This worry about a tyranny of the majority suggests a strong conflict between democracy and other basic rights.

An increasing amount of attention is being given to the use of human rights measurement indicators in monitoring 'progress' in rights and there is consequently a growing focus on statistics and information. This article concentrates on the use of statistics in rights discourse, with reference to the new human rights institution for the European Union: the Fundamental Rights Agency. The article has two main objectives: first, to show that statistics operate as technologies of governmentality - by explaining that statistics both govern rights and govern through rights. Second, the article discusses the implications that this has for rights discourse - rights become a discourse of governmentality, that is a normalizing and regulating discourse. In doing so, the article stresses the importance of critique and questioning new socio-legal methodologies, which involve the collection and dissemination of information and data (statistics), in rights discourse.

"How does the globalization of law, the emergence of multiple and shifting venues of legal accountability, enhance or evade the fulfillment of international human rights? The utility of law for the fulfillment of human rights can be summarized as a combination of normative principles, universal repertoire of definitions and boundaries, links to state enforcement, predictable processes for conflict resolution, and a doctrine of equal standing (Kinley 2009 27. KINLEY , David . 2009 . Civilising Globalisation: Human Rights and the Global Economy , Cambridge , NY : Cambridge University Press . View all references : 215). The intersection between the globalization of law and the globalization of rights is a question of global governance: In what ways and to what extent can and should law across borders regulate and enforce the protection of individuals from abuse of both global and local authority? What does existing literature tell us about where we stand in our understanding of the extent and meaning of these intersecting forms of globalization? There is a rough spectrum from pessimistic structural theories through more optimistic cosmopolitan reformist theories of norm change, with a middle position of a sociological and indeterminate dialectical struggle over the terms and impact of global governance. While we see clear evidence in the international human rights regime of the globalization of norms, definitions, and processes, it is unclear how much the globalization of law has enhanced enforcement or even standing for the fulfillment of core rights of the person."

The WTO system and democratic rights are unexpected bedfellows. The GATT/WTO requires governments to adopt policies that provide foreign products (read producers) with due process, political participation, and information rights related to trade policymaking. Because these nations also provide these rights to their citizens, a growing number of people are learning how to influence trade-related policies. As trade today encompasses many areas of governance, these same citizens may gradually transfer the skills learned from influencing trade policies to other public issues. Thus, the WTO not only empowers foreign market actors, but also citizens in repressive states. We use both qualitative and quantitative analysis to examine whether membership in the WTO over time leads to improvements in these democratic rights. Our qualitative analysis shows that these issues are discussed during accessions and trade policy reviews. Quantitative analysis examines how members of the GATT/WTO perform on these democratic rights over time. We use a cross-national time series design of all countries, accounting for selection issues of why countries become members of the GATT/WTO regime. We find that longer GATT/WTO membership leads to stronger performance on our metrics for political participation, free and fair elections, and access to information.

Human rights and democracy have been regarded as a mutually reinforcing couple by many political theorists to date. The internationalisation of human rights post-1945 is often said to have severed those links, however. Accounting for the legitimacy of international human rights requires exploring how human rights and democracy, once they have been decoupled or disconnected, can be recoupled or reunited across governance levels (vertically) and maybe even at the same governance level (horizontally) albeit beyond the state

"On most accounts of global democracy, human rights are ascribed a central function. Still, their conceptual role in global democracy is often unclear. Two recent attempts to remedy this deficiency have been made by James Bohman and Michael Goodhart. What is interesting about their proposals is that they make the case that under the present circumstances of politics, global democracy is best conceptualized in terms of human rights. Although the article is sympathetic to this 'human rights approach', it defends the thesis that human rights are not enough for global democracy. It argues that insofar as we hold on to the general idea of democracy as a normative ideal of self-determination (self-rule) that is, of people determining their own lives and ruling over themselves, the concept of democracy accommodates two necessary conditions, namely, political bindingness and political equality. Further, it argues that neither Bohman's nor Goodhart's accounts fulfills these conditions and that one explanation for this could be traced to a lack of clarity concerning the distinction between democracy as normative ideal and democracy as decision method or rules (for example, institutions, laws and norms) for regulating social interactions. This ambiguity has implications for both Goodhart and Bohman. In Goodhart's work it manifests itself as a vagueness concerning the difference between political agency and democratic agency; in Bohman's work it becomes unclear whether he contributes a normative democratic theory or a theory of democratization. Although this article develops both a conceptual and a normative argument against their proposals, the aim is not to find fault with them but to point to questions that are in need of further elaboration to make them more convincing."

There has been a lack of analysis of the relationship between participation and human rights concerning the purpose and content of a right to participation. What analysis exists tends to focus on rights of political participation. However, the concept of

Counter-terrorist internment is generally rejected as illegitimate from a human rights perspective. However, while the practice of counter-terrorist internment has long resulted in the infringement of human rights, this article argues that the concept of internment holds some potential for legitimacy. This potential can only be realized if four legitimacy factors are fully embraced and complied with: public justificatory deliberation, non-discrimination, meaningful review, and effective temporal limitation. Outlining these factors, this article imagines a system of internment that is legitimate from a human rights perspective and can serve both real and pressing security needs, and rights-based legitimacy needs.

The traditional conception construes human rights as moral rights all people have due to some basic feature or interests deemed intrinsically valuable. This comported well with the revival of the discourse of human rights in the wake of atrocities committ

In comparison to GATT law, WTO law is characterized by a notably expanded coverage. Since its inception in 1995, its material density and reach has been further extended. It was only a question of time before the demand would arise for this branch of law to fulfil objectives lying outside the traditional borders of International Economic Law (IEL). In particular, it was recognized that WTO law touches in many ways upon human rights issues. Vigorous claims were made to transform the WTO order into a human rights organization. Some authors were of the opinion that human rights law (HRL) could be integrated into WTO law via the interpretative rules of the VCLT. This contribution tries to evidence that such attempts are inherently flawed.

This article advances the argument that there is a distinct ideology of Human Rights embedded in the International Bill of Rights (IBR). Instead of contrasting ideologies in terms of their stance on equality and liberty, it suggests employing three dimens

"This paper lays the foundations for a democratic defence of the argument that at least some non-citizens are entitled to claim rights of political participation with regard to states in which they are not resident. First I outline a distinctively democratic case for granting participatory rights to certain non-resident non-citizens, based upon the central claim that in a democracy those who are governed ought to have the opportunity to participate in the exercise of government. I offer support for extending rights of participation to some non-resident non-citizens by addressing two possible democratic objections, relating to political equality and reciprocity."

The 1990s was the era of human rights awareness, democratic transitions, and growing involvement of international organizations and the nongovernmental sector in human rights education (HRE). The UN Decade for HRE from 1995-2004 was not only born out of t

A number of scholars have recently claimed that 'stateness' is a prerequisite for democracy. However, a large-N empirical appraisal of this new research agenda is still pending. In this article, we demonstrate that stateness - conceptualized using the twin attributes of the monopoly on the use of force within a sovereign territory and a basic agreement about citizenship - is to a large extent a necessary condition for the four democratic attributes of electoral rights, political liberties, the rule of law, and social rights. However, the analyses also show that stateness is especially critical for the latter two attributes whereas the former two are sometimes encountered in its absence. These results are robust and they fit well into the dominant writings on democratization, which emphasize that in the present 'liberal hegemony' democratic elections are often grafted onto weak states - but that the rule of law and social rights are much more intimately wedded to structural constraints such as stateness.

The semantics of left and right provide an efficient heuristic to understand and organize political information. Most studies on the left-right schema have focused on established democracies, but the anchoring function that it serves for party systems may

Evidence from the Transitional Justice Data Base reveals which transitional justice mechanisms and combinations of mechanisms positively or negatively affect human rights and democracy. This article demonstrates that specific combinations of mechanisms-tr

A couple days ago, I posted about Pascal Lamy's speech on human rights, where he said, among other things, that "trade measures are the most commonly used instrument in developed countries to put pressure on states violating human rights." Presumably, on

Viewed through the lenses of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (or CRC), this article critically evaluates the growing controversy surrounding the teaching of human rights in Canada. During a lengthy period of multicultural angst an

While a large literature explores the effect that regime type has on personal integrity rights violations, few studies have explored a state-centric approach to understanding these violations. I develop an argument that focuses on the leaders of the state

The right to vote ultimately expresses political membership in democratic states. The logic behind franchise rules in a particular state tells us much about how that state conceives its polity. This becomes clear if we study voting rights of marginal grou