Human Rights and Global Democracy

Abstract

Human rights and global democracy are widely assumed to be compatible, but the conceptual and practical connection between them has received little attention. As a result, the relationship is under-theorized, and important potential conflicts between them have been neglected or overlooked. This essay attempts to fill this gap by addressing directly the conceptual relationship between human rights and global democracy. It argues that human rights are a necessary condition for global democracy. Human rights constrain power, enable meaningful political agency, and support and promote democratic regimes within states, all of which are fundamental elements in any scheme for global democracy. The essay explores the normative and conceptual bases of these functions and works out some of their institutional implications.

Brazil’s Organization of the NET mundial Meeting: Moving Forward in Global Internet Governance

“…Enabling rights are those that make effective agency possible, including civil and political rights (petition, assembly, expression) and social and economic rights (education, health care, subsistence). 32…”

The New Sovereigntist Challenge for Global Governance: Democracy without Sovereignty1

“…These basic democratic imperatives—constraining power and enabling meaningful political agency—can be conceptualized and operationalized in a variety of ways. For the purposes of illustration, we shall utilize a conception of democracy as human rights developed elsewhere (Goodhart 2005, 2008). While we cannot fully defend this interpretation here, we shall flesh it out somewhat in the course of the following discussion, which is intended primarily to demonstrate the possibility and potential of eschewing the logic and the forms of popular sovereignty.…”

“…These criticisms presuppose that democratic majorities (for better or for worse) have the right to do whatever they want, constrained only, if at all, by domestic constitutions. When a democratic majority violates minority rights, however, it also violates the premises that justify its authority in the first place (see also Goodhart 2008:412–15).…”

“…This can be achieved in part by ensuring that agency rights are among those that IGOs must recognize and respect. In addition, all institutions of global governance should be required to create institutionalized points of access for deliberation, influence, and contestation of their decisions (see, for example, Jacobson and Ruffer 2003; Bohman 2004; for a fuller defense of this type of agency, see Goodhart 2008). This could include forums for popular input at various stages of the planning, decision, and implementation process, mechanisms for providing information and gathering feedback, and opportunities (legal or administrative) for challenging decisions 25…”

Cosmopolitismo y las barreras insalvables de la cultura y los gustos en La Ética Protestante y el Espíritu del Capitalismo de Max Weber*

“…Por ejemplo, al respecto de los derechos humanos en las propuestas de Bohman 15 Traducción por el autor, el texto original dice: "cosmopolitanism as planetary conversations take us beyond the cosmopolitanism we know". (2007) y Goodhart (2008), hay quienes afirman que no son soporte suficiente para una democracia global. Según Erman (2011), ambos autores parten de un supuesto cuestionable al entregar las bases de la democracia global a los derechos humanos.…”