Corporate Governance

Human Rights Protection in Global Politics

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The 2005 World Summit recognized the responsibility to protect. In one sense, this might be considered a normative revolution: a sign that the international human rights regime has reached a middle stage in a ‘lifecycle’ that has the potential to end in states’ internalization of the obligations of human rights protection (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998). In another sense, however, this was just a re-statement and consolidation of a long list of human rights responsibilities states have already taken on. These have been applied inconsistently, even hypocritically, over the last 65 years, as the modern human rights regime has developed (Krasner 1999). Looking beyond the text of the World Summit resolution itself and into its meaning and implications for theory and practice, we can ask: what is the best way to explain and understand these developments?
The main theoretical frameworks that have been used to answer this question so far in political science and international relations (IR) have been largely state-centered. They draw from rationalist and constructivist explanatory accounts of why rules are created and how states can be expected to act in response to them in conditions of anarchy. Questions about the actual nature and content of the responsibility to protect human rights have been largely taken for granted: as straightforwardly agreed in international law, or as instantiated in contemporary diplomatic discourse and practice, or as representing obvious philosophical or religious principles and treated as exogenous to the main scholarly analysis. As a result, most of the cutting-edge work on the nature of the responsibilities that are linked to human rights has come from other fields, such as international law (Meron 2006; Steiner et al.

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Detail Information

Series Title

Human Rights Protection in Global Politics

Call Number

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Publisher

United Kingdom : Palgrave Macmillan., 2015

Collation

1-335

Language

English

ISBN/ISSN

978–1–137–46316–6

Classification

NONE

Content Type

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Media Type

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Carrier Type

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Edition

1st Edtion

Subject(s)

Governance

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Statement of Responsibility

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