Hearing the Voice of the People: Human Rights as if People Mattered

New Political Science

Volumn 33, Issue 1, 2011, Pages 1-22

  Ackerly, Brooke A ^a   Cruz, José Miguel ^b  

^a VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 79952461741     PISSN: 07393148     EISSN: 14699931     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/07393148.2011.544475     Document Type: Article

References (103)

1. Often these groups experience oppression in an invisible way due to their being situated at the intersection of multiple social processes.
2. S. Laurel Weldon, The Structure of Intersectionality: A Comparative Politics of Gender, Politics & Gender 2:2 (2006), pp. 235-248;
3. Kimberle Crenshaw, Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex, The University of Chicago Legal Forum (1989), pp. 139-167;
4. Kimberle Crenshaw, Gender-Related Aspects of Race Discrimination, in Expert Meeting on Gender-Related Aspects of Race Discrimination (Zagreb, Croatia: United Nations, Division for the Advancement of Women, Office of High Commissioner of Human Rights, United Nations Development Fund for Women, 2000).
5. Brooke A. Ackerly, Universal Human Rights in a World of Difference (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008);
6. Jon Sobrino, S.J., Human Rights and Oppressed Peoples: Historical-Theological Reflections, in Michael Hayes and David Tomb (eds), Truth and Memory: The Church and Human Rights in El Salvador and Guatemala (Gloucester: Gracewing, 2001);
7. Adele Clarke, Situational Analysis: Grounded Theory after the Postmodern Turn (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2005);
8. Kathy Charmaz, Constructing Grounded Theory: A Practical Guide through Qualitative Analysis (London & Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2006).
9. Margaret Urban Walker, Moral Repair: Reconstructing Moral Relations after Wrongdoing (Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006);
10. Ackerly, Universal Human Rights in a World of Difference.
11. Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948). G.A. Res. 217A (III), U.N. Doc. A/810 (hereinafter UDHR). International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, G.A. Res. 2200A (XXI), U. N. GAOR, Supp. No. 16 at 52, U.N. Doc. A/6316 (1966); International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, G.A. Res. 2200A (XXI), U.N. GAOR, Supp. No. 16, U.N. Doc. A/6316 (1966); Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, G.A. Res. 39/46, U.N. GAOR, 39th Sess., Annex, Supp. No. 51 at 197, U.N. Doc. A/39/51 (1984); Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, G.A. Res. 34/180, U.N. GAOR, 34th Sess., Supp. No. 46, at 193, U.N. Doc. A/34/46 (1981) (hereinafter CEDAW); International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, G.A. Res. 2106 (XX), U.N. GAOR, Supp. No. 14, at 47, U.N. Doc. A/6014 (1966); International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families, G.A. res. 45/158 of 18 December 1990; Convention on the Rights of the Child, G.A. Res. 44/25, U.N. GAOR, 44th Sess., Supp. No. 49, at 161, U.N. Doc. A/44/49 (1989) (hereinafter CRC), Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, G.A. Res. 61/106 (2007) (hereinafter CRPD); International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, G.A. Res., 20 December 2007 (adopted, but not entered into force). See also United Nations, United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, ed. General Assembly, September 13, 2007.
12. UDHR, Article 2, emphasis added
13. CEDAW, Article 1, emphasis added.
14. CRC, Article 3.
15. CRPD, Article 1, emphasis added.
16. UDHR, Article 22, emphasis added.
17. UDHR, Article 26.
18. CEDAW, Article 3, emphasis added.
19. Brooke A. Ackerly, Women's Human Rights Activists as Cross-Cultural Theorists, International Feminist Journal of Politics 3:3 (2001), pp. 311-346.
20. This point was made clearly by Maria Grahn-Farley at the conference Human Rights without Freedom and was reiterated in personal correspondence August 13, 2009.
21. Carol C. Gould, Globalizing Democracy and Human Rights (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 37.
22. Ackerly, Universal Human Rights in a World of Difference, p. 198.
23. Amartya Sen, Justice: Means Versus Freedom, Philosophy and Public Affairs 19:2 (1990), p. 118;
24. Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 18.
25. Sen himself distinguishes rights from capabilities by treating the latter as inherent fundamental freedoms and rights as politically contingent in Amartya Sen, Elements of a Theory of Human Rights, Philosophy and Public Affairs 32:4 (2004), pp. 315-356.
26. For human rights activists engaged in struggle, for international law, for critical human rights theories and for those transforming public policy toward rights enjoyment, human rights are conceptualized in the same way that Sen conceptualizes capabilities.
27. Sen, Justice: Means Versus Freedom, p. 114.
28. Ackerly, Universal Human Rights in a World of Difference.
29. Onora O'Neill, Bounds of Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
30. Nancy J. Hirschmann, The Subject of Liberty: Toward a Feminist Theory of Freedom (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003);
31. Anne Phillips, Multiculturalism without Culture (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007).
32. On the purpose of measuring human rights see Todd Landman and Edzia Carvalho, Measuring Human Rights (New York: Routledge, 2010).
33. For a critical review of standards-based approaches to human rights see ibid., Chap. 5.
34. For a rich evaluation of the literature on measuring human rights see Landman and Carvalho, Measuring Human Rights.
35. Steven C. Poe, C. Neal Tate, and Linda Camp Keith, Repression of the Human Right to Personal Integrity Revisited: A Global Cross-National Study Covering the Years 1976-1993, International Studies Quarterly 43:2 (1999), pp. 291-313.
36. Mary Caprioli et al., The Womanstats Project Database: Advancing an Empirical Research Agenda, (2008), on file with Ackerly. http://www.womanstats.org/index.htm. (accessed September 27, 2010).
37. David L. Cingranelli and David L. Richards, The Cingranelli-Richards (CIRI) Human Rights Dataset (2008), http://ciri.binghamton.edu/.
38. M. Gibney, L. Cornett, and R. Wood, Political Terror Scale 1976-2006 (2006), http://www.politicalterrorscale.org/.
39. Cingranelli and Richards, The Cingranelli-Richards (CIRI) Human Rights Dataset.
40. Ibid., 5.
41. Ibid., 6.
42. Ibid., 8.
43. Note the approach offered here also has a theoretical account of the relationship between human rights events and rights enjoyment. However, not all experiences that give people the sense that their rights are insecure are captured in event-based data.
44. Rodwan Abouharb and David L. Cingranelli, Human Rights and Structural Adjustment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
45. Thomas Pogge, World Poverty and Human Rights: Cosmopolitan Responsibilities and Reforms, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2008);
46. Thomas Pogge (ed.), Freedom from Poverty as a Human Right: Who Owes What to the Very Poor (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).
47. Christopher J. Anderson et al., In the Eye of the Beholder? The Foundations of Subjective Human Rights Conditions in East-Central Europe, Comparative Political Studies 38:7 (2005), pp. 771-798;
48. Matthew Carlson and Ola Listhaug, Citizens' Perceptions of Human Rights Practices: An Analysis of 55 Countries, Journal of Peace Research 44:4 (2007), pp. 465-483.
49. Christopher J. Anderson, Patrick M. Regan, and Robert L. Ostergard, Political Repression and Public Perceptions of Human Rights, Political Research Quarterly 55:2 (2002), pp. 439-456;
50. John A. Booth and Patricia Bayer Richard, Repression, Participation, and Democratic Norms in Urban Central America, American Journal of Political Science 40:4 (1996), pp. 1205-1232.
51. Carlson and Listhaug, Citizens' Perceptions of Human Rights Practices.
52. Some data and tools of analysis enable country-level and individual factors to be in the same model. Due to data limitations we were not able to use these methods; our sample of countries is only 22.
53. Anderson et al., In the Eye of the Beholder?, Carlson and Listhaug, Citizens' Perceptions of Human Rights Practices.
54. Carlson and Listhaug, Citizens' Perceptions of Human Rights Practices, p. 469.
55. Ibid., 470.
56. Anderson et al., In the Eye of the Beholder?; Carlson and Listhaug, Citizens' Perceptions of Human Rights Practices.
57. Sabina Alkire and James Foster, Counting and Multidimensional Poverty Measurement, OPHI Working Paper No. 7 (2007);
58. Sabina Alkire and Maria Emma Santos, Acute Multidimensional Poverty: A New Index for Developing Countries, OPHI Working Paper No. 38 (2010).
59. We thank Mitchell Seligson for sharing with us the complete database of the Americas Barometer democracy surveys of 2006-2007. LAPOP has been conducting these surveys and collecting citizens' opinions and attitudes toward democracy in the regionsince the mid-1980s. The team has time-tested qualitative methods for conducting public opinion surveys in contexts of political intimidation. Year 2006 was the first time when the Americas Barometer survey was carried out in most of the countries of the Americas, and more than 20 countries were included, covering North America, the Caribbean, Central America, and South America. In 2007, two more countries were added to the series. We use the 2006-2007 database comprising the countries of the Americas, including the United States and Canada. In future studies that use multivariate analyses, the inclusion of these larger economies could skew the results, but since we are performing only bivariate analyses in this exploratory study, we will work with all the countries of the Americas Barometer.
60. The item was responded to using a 7-point scale, where one meant Not at all, and seven A lot. This was transformed in a 101-point scale, ranging from zero (0), as the lowest level of perception of human rights protection, through to one hundred (100), as the highest level.
61. We took the mean values of the dependent variable per country in order to create a database with the standard institutional indicators of violations of human rights, assessments of democracy and statistics of human development. As a result we have a small country-level database with 22 countries and 12 possible independent variables.
62. For the country-level analysis we use the mean obtained in the scale of item (B3) for each country in the 2006-2007 series as the country-value for people's perception of rights for those years.
63. Anderson, Regan, and Ostergard, Political Repression and Public Perceptions of Human Rights, p. 451.
64. Carlson and Listhaug, Citizens' Perceptions of Human Rights Practices, reach similar finding extending the analysis to 55 countries in different regions of the world.
65. Christian Davenport, Human Rights and the Democratic Proposition, Journal of Conflict Resolution 43:1 (1999), pp. 92-116;
66. Conway Henderson, Conditions Affecting the Use of Political Repression, Journal of Conflict Resolution 35:1 (1991), pp. 120-142;
67. Richard Hofferbert and David L. Cingranelli, Democratic Institutions and Respect for Human Rights, in David L. Cingranelli (ed.), Human Rights and Developing Countries (Greenwich: JAI Press, 1996);
68. Steven C. Poe and C. Neal Tate, Repression of Human Rights to Personal Integrity in the 1980s: A Global Analysis, The American Political Science Review 88:4 (1994), pp. 853-872;
69. Poe, Tate, and Keith, Repression of the Human Right to Personal Integrity Revisited.
70. Christian Davenport and David A. Armstrong II, Democracy and the Violation of Human Rights: A Statistical Analysis from 1976 to 1996, American Journal of Political Science 48:3 (2004), pp. 538-554;
71. Helen Fein, More Murder in the Middle: Life Integrity Violations and Democracy in the World, Human Rights Quarterly 17:1 (1995), pp. 170-191.
72. Bruce Bueno De Mesquita et al., Thinking Inside the Box: A Closer Look at Democracy and Human Rights, International Studies Quarterly 49:3 (2005), pp. 439-457;
73. Davenport, Human Rights and the Democratic Proposition.
74. Bueno de Mesquita et al., Thinking inside the Box.
75. Monty G. Marshall and Keith Jaggers, Polity IV Project: Political Regime Characteristics and Transitions, 1800-2006, (2007), http://www.systemicpeace.org/polity/polity4.htm.
76. Called PARREG in the original Polity IV database, the variable ranges from one (representing no enduring national political organizations and no systematic regime controls on political activity) to five (stable and enduring political groups compete for political influence and positions with little use of coercion).
77. Called PARCOMP in the Polity IV database, the variables range from the lowest value (1) meaning that no oppositional activity is allowed outside the ruling coalition or party, to the highest value (5), representing fewer restrictions for political competition and stable and enduring oppositional political groups. For a full description of the values of the Polity IV variables,
78. http://www.systemicpeace.org/inscr/p4manualv2006.pdf.
79. The variables range from 0 to 16, with the exception of functioning of government and associational and organizational rights, which range from 0 to 12.
80. http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page1/4351&ana_page1/4341&year1/42008.
81. Sen, Development as Freedom;
82. Sen, Elements of a Theory of Human Rights; Martha C. Nussbaum, Human Rights Theory: Capabilities and Human Rights, Fordham Law Review 66 (1997), pp. 273-300;
83. Philip Alston and Mary Robinson, Human Rights and Development: Towards Mutual Reinforcement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
84. Poe and Tate, Repression of Human Rights to Personal Integrity in the 1980s; Poe, Tate, and Keith, Repression of the Human Right to Personal Integrity Revisited;
85. Neil J. Mitchell and James M. McCormick, Economic and Political Explanations of Human Rights Violations, World Politics 40:4 (1988), pp. 476-498;
86. Henderson, Conditions Affecting the Use of Political Repression.
87. Kenneth A. Bollen and Robert W. Jackman, Economic and Noneconomic Determinants of Political Democracy in the 1960s, Research in Political Sociology 1 (1988), pp. 27-48;
88. Seymour Martin Lipset, Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy, The American Political Science Review 53: 1 (1959), pp. 69-105.
89. Matthew A. Baum and David A Lake, The Political Economy of Growth: Democracy and Human Capital, American Journal of Political Science 47:2 (2003), pp. 333-347.
90. Patricio Navia and Thomas D. Zweifel, Democracy, Mortality, and Infant Mortality Revisited, Journal of Democracy 14:3 (2003), pp. 90-103.
91. Carlson and Listhaug, Citizens' Perceptions of Human Rights Practices.
92. United Nations Development Programme, Human Rights Development Report (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
93. Sen, Development as Freedom;
94. Sen, Elements of a Theory of Human Rights;
95. Sen, Justice: Means Versus Freedom. This is what Foster and Handy have called external capabilities.
96. James E. Foster and Christopher Handy, External Capabilities, in Kaushik Basu and Ravi Kanbur (eds), Arguments for a Better World: Essays in Honor of Amartya Sen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).
97. People struggling to support human rights often seek to develop social networks and work in networks.
98. Ackerly, Universal Human Rights in a World of Difference.
99. We will approach this from the notion of social capital. We hypothesize that social capital increases people's capabilities, so citizens who have higher levels of social capital will tend to show more perceptions of rights enjoyment.
100. We define social capital following the notion of Coleman James Coleman, Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital, in Partha Disgupta and Ismail Serageldin (eds), Social Capital: A Multifaceted Perspective (Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2000).
101. Russell J. Dalton, Democratic Challenges, Democratic Choices: The Erosion of Political Support in Advanced Industrial Democracies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).
102. Thusitha Pilapitiya, The Impact of Corruption on the Human Rights Based Approach to Development (Oslo: Oslo Governance Centre UNDP, 2004). On file with the author at: http://www.undp.org/oslocentre/docs05/Thusitha_final.pdf.
103. Sen, Justice: Means Versus Freedom, p. 112.