The internationalization of democracy and human rights since World War
II is an achievement of great proportions and significance. However,
while human rights are regularly seen as universally applicable, not
all see democracy as the most appropriate form of government for all
peoples. Some proponents of human rights have therefore come to the
conclusion that insisting on a link between human rights and democracy
will be harmful for the further acceptance of human rights within the
international society. They claim that human rights and democratization
should be separated. The author calls this claim the separationist thesis
and examines this thesis and the various grounds which may be presented
in its favor, before mounting a series of critical arguments against
it. He concludes that human rights without democracy are standards or
norms, but not rights as such.
Responding to efforts to ‘resurrect’ International Relations theory, this article suggests that the study of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) – and, more controversially perhaps, queer – global sexuality politics can bring new and transformative insights to the discipline. The study of this global sexuality politics is replete with ideas and approaches that can and should be integrated with IR theory. The article first considers the general absence of global sexuality politics within IR, and why this is significant for theorising the international. It then surveys some recent scholarship which shows how the study of global sexuality politics can speak to and within IR.
The language of human rights, along with much else in international relations, presently exhibits the features of globalisation and fragmentation. Globalisation in that human rights is used throughout the world at many levels to discuss moral approval and condemnation. Fragmentation in that human rights means different things to different people, and may well be used in contradictory ways by agents of social change. Yet most advocates of human rights wish to retain the adjective ‘universal’ along with a sense of the moral objectivity of human rights. This article suggests that a better way to ensure human rights universalism is to think of the concept as a tool, not an objectively existing moral standard or entity.
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