Human Rights in a Globalizing World: The Paradox of Empty Promises

Abstract

The authors examine the impact of the international human rights regime on governments’ human rights practices. They propose an explanation that highlights a “paradox of empty promises.” Their core arguments are that the global institutionalization of human rights has created an international context in which (1) governments often ratify human rights treaties as a matter of window dressing, radically decoupling policy from practice and at times exacerbating negative human rights practices, but (2) the emergent global legit- imacy of human rights exerts independent global civil society effects that improve states’ actual human rights practices. The authors’ statistical analyses on a comprehensive sample of government re- pression from 1976 to 1999 find support for their argument.