Explaining Costly International Moral Action: Britain's Sixty-year Campaign Against the Atlantic Slave Trade

Kaufmann, Chaim; Pape, Robert A.

doi:10.1162/002081899551020

Cited by 139 publications

(49 citation statements)

References 59 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…63 Yet, although NGOs were relatively well developed in Britain (perhaps more so than anywhere else) and made salient contributions 62. For a similar conclusion regarding the abolition of the slave trade, see Kaufman andPape 1999. 63.…”

Section: Domestic Deliberation and Public Justi Cationmentioning

confidence: 91%

The Origins of Human Rights Regimes: Democratic Delegation in Postwar Europe

Moravcsik¹

2000

Int Org

967

270

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Most formal international human rights regimes establish international committees and courts that hold governments accountable to their own citizens for purely internal activities. Why would governments establish arrangements so invasive of domestic sovereignty? Two views dominate the literature. “Realist” theories assert that the most powerful democracies coerce or entice weaker countries to accept norms; “ideational” theories maintain that transnational processes of diffusion and persuasion socialize less-democratic governments to accept norms. Drawing on theories of rational delegation, I propose and test a third “republican liberal” view: Governments delegate self-interestedly to combat future threats to domestic democratic governance. Thus it is not mature and powerful democracies, but new and less-established democracies that will most strongly favor mandatory and enforceable human rights obligations. I test this proposition in the case of the European Convention on Human Rights—the most successful system of formal international human rights guarantees in the world today. The historical record of its founding—national positions, negotiating tactics, and confidential deliberations—confirms the republican liberal explanation. My claim that governments will sacrifice sovereignty to international regimes in order to dampen domestic political uncertainty and “lock in” more credible policies is then generalized theoretically and applied to other human rights regimes, coordination of conservative reaction, and international trade and monetary policy.

show abstract

Section: Domestic Deliberation and Public Justi Cationmentioning

confidence: 91%

The Origins of Human Rights Regimes: Democratic Delegation in Postwar Europe

Moravcsik¹

2000

Int Org

967

270

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…ASI ASI 1 began as a grassroots movement against slavery near the end of the eighteenth century, grew to its crescendo in the nineteenth century and ultimately succeeded in changing the practices of Western Europe, particularly the UK, USA, and in the various colonies held by imperial powers. The remarkable emergence and momentum of this movement in Great Britain has been amply documented elsewhere (Kaufmann and Pape 1999;Drescher 2009). By the time of the founding of the League of Nations, the economic and moral questions about slavery had been settled, and slavery, as many understood it, had disappeared altogether.…”

Section: Agenda-setting In Ngos and Why It Mattersmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…One of the most effective strategies pursued by ASI was to mobilize constituencies to pressure their MPs, or replace them altogether, which is what eventually happened as the composition of the House of Commons changed after amendment of electoral rules through the Reform Act (Kaufmann and Pape 1999). Another strategy commonly employed was to gain the support of sympathetic MPs who would raise embarrassing questions about slavery and propose legislation in Parliament based on ASI's agenda (Welch 2008).…”

Section: Effects and Impactmentioning

confidence: 99%

Is Trafficking Slavery? Anti-Slavery International in the Twenty-first Century

Wong

2010

Hum Rights Rev

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Why was Anti-Slavery International (ASI) so effective at changing norms slavery and even mobilizing the support that ended the transatlantic slave trade at the end of the nineteenth century, and why has that success not continued on into subsequent eras? This article claims that ASI's organizational structure is the key to understanding why its accomplishments in earlier eras have yet to be replicated, and why today it struggles to make modern forms of slavery, such as human trafficking, salient political issues. Organizational structure is defined by how an NGO distributes power over agenda-setting (proposal and enforcement power) and its implementation. Those NGOs that centralize agenda-setting and decentralize the implementation of that agenda will be most effective at changing international norms. This paper demonstrates the tractability of that claim with a comparative analysis of ASI past and present to show that changes in organizational structure have led to differences in their effect on international norms, in spite of the fact that slavery in its modern forms persists as a political and social problem.

show abstract

“…They can hinge upon particular episodes or mass atrocities, or represent more diffuse changes in moral understanding, such as those which occurred through the various phases of abolitionism, first of the slave trade, then of slavery itself -both unfortunately still works in progress (Rorty, 1989(Rorty, , 1998Kaufmann and Pape, 1999;Hochschild, 2005;Hunt, 2007;Bass, 2008). The result of these political negotiations are various practices and concepts that one might consequently describe as humanitarian, in the sense of stemming from a concern to protect a vision of common humanity and an associated baseline of solidarity in response to cruelty and human suffering.…”

Section: The Rtop As Humanitarian Negotiationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Oxfam aid worker, and there is interesting work on the self-referential nature of abolitionism in Britain (Kaufmann and Pape, 1999;Vaux, 2001).…”

Section: Tony Vaux Has Written Eloquently Of This Kind Of Experiencementioning

confidence: 99%

The responsibility to protect as humanitarian negotiation: A space for the ‘politics of humanity’?

Radice

2015

Int Polit

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article first situates the Responsibility to Protect (RtoP) in relation to humanitarianism and the 'politics of humanity' through which common humanity is understood, negotiated and defended in response to 'crises of humanity'. It outlines the humanitarian negotiations at stake, connected with the mass atrocity crimes within the RtoP's remit. Second, it argues that, like other claims made 'in the name of humanity', the power relations implicit in attempts to create, delimit and safeguard 'humanitarian space' need to be unpacked. Third, it assesses the RtoP's potential to become a success with regard to the fulfilment of the humanitarian aspirations it represents, concluding that its inability to escape its political nature should be seen as a strength, not a weakness, but that the relationship between a humanitarian project like the RtoP and the notion of humanity will always be a dynamic, unpredictable and risky one, dependent on judicious political judgement.

show abstract

Explaining Costly International Moral Action: Britain's Sixty-year Campaign Against the Atlantic Slave Trade

Cited by 139 publications

References 59 publications

The Origins of Human Rights Regimes: Democratic Delegation in Postwar Europe

The Origins of Human Rights Regimes: Democratic Delegation in Postwar Europe

Is Trafficking Slavery? Anti-Slavery International in the Twenty-first Century

The responsibility to protect as humanitarian negotiation: A space for the ‘politics of humanity’?

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About