How does the American public understand basic human rights issues-and what, if anything, are they willing to do to promote such rights? This article analyzes data from a 2006 national public opinion survey on human rights conducted by the authors. We explore how the American public understands three basic human rights that have not previously been included together in a single survey: the right not to be tortured, the right to freedom of thought and expression, and the right to a minimum guaranteed standard of living. We then assess respondents' willingness to promote, through their personal actions, the right to a guaranteed minimum standard of living-specifically, by purchasing "sweat-free" and/or "fair trade" products. We find public acceptance of a broad range of rights as inviolable human rights, and a strong association between willingness to pay more for both types of ethical consumption.
This article explores the potential and limits of contemporary economic rights-based social activism by analysing an ongoing 'Right to Food Campaign' in India. While social movement theory often positions radical and reform strategies as alternatives, the RTF campaign has adopted a hybrid strategy: it has made a radical legal demand that the right to food be recognized as intrinsic to the right to life, while seeking implementation of this right through reform of existing government feeding programmes. The campaign's dual strategy reflects two distinct logics of human rights: a logic of non-derogable rights that are immediately actionable (such as the right to life) and a logic of progressive implementation of rights that can only be realized fully over time (such as economic rights). This article draws on original data to demonstrate that the campaign's radical legal demands framed around the non-derogable right to life have come closer to fulfilment than its reformist demands around progressive implementation. The RTF campaign's relative success in galvanizing legal action on hunger is tempered by ongoing challenges in sustaining grassroots-level mobilization and influencing public policy implementation.
Activists involved in human rights advocacy across borders may share common interests in changing the status quo-but they do not always agree on the rights centrally at issue, nor the best strategy for promoting and protecting them. This is particularly true in campaigns in which "economic rights" claims emerge. Two new mechanisms I develop in this article shed light on the complexities of transnational advocacy and norms evolution. Two case studies offer insights into the operationalization of the mechanisms: a campaign to prevent child labor in Bangladesh, and a campaign to prevent employment discrimination against pregnant workers in Mexico.
The availability of relatively reliable and comparable data online and the increasing emphasis on statistical and formal research methods has led many political scientists to dismiss research in foreign countries as a waste of time and money. We leave that debate to others (see, e.g., Comparative Politics Organized Section 2005; Qualitative Methods Organized Section 2004). Instead, we offer suggestions for maximizing the contributions of fieldwork to the production of original research. We pay particular attention to research in developing countries owing to the unique challenges of undertaking research there, but we believe our insights are applicable to field research more generally.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.