Human Rights

Gregg, Benjamin

doi:10.1017/cbo9781139059626.004

Cited by 2 publications

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“…21 They have bemoaned the inherent ineffectiveness of international human rights law, 22 and they have monitored and criticised the tendency of Western states to justify imperialist foreign policies with the need to protect international human rights standards. 23 The notion of human rights as local social constructs 24 that underlies the idea of the human rights state tackles these problems in several ways. It rejects the idea of human rights as a metaphysical or theological given that is valid a priori.…”

Section: Breaking Through the Metaphysical Limbo Of Legitimation: Hummentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In 'The Institutionalisation of Human Rights Reconceived: The Human Rights State as a Sociological "Ideal Type"', 27 René Wolfsteller deploys the human rights state as a vehicle for constructing a framework for the empirical sociological study of human rights institutionalisation. Drawing on Gregg's original formulation of the human rights state as a hypothetical alternative to the nation state, 28 Wolfsteller reconceptualises Gregg's normative political theory as a Weberian ideal type. It identifies the necessary structural conditions for the effective institutionalisation of human rights as locally valid, state-based norms of social justice.…”

Section: The Special Issuementioning

confidence: 99%

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A realistic utopia? Critical analyses of The Human Rights State in theory and deployment: Guest editors’ introduction

Wolfsteller

Gregg

2017

The International Journal of Human Rights

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We introduce this special issue on Benjamin Gregg's recent theory of a human rights state by contextualising it within current human rights scholarship and explicating its core claims, before we provide an overview of the eight contributions. We argue that the concept of a human rights state addresses two interrelated problems within human rights research by bridging the significant disconnect in the literature between human rights theory and practice. First, it conceives human rights as socially constructed norms whose reach and validity are historically contingent, depending on their free embrace and effective implementation by their local addressees. In this way it dispenses with the ever fruitless, even counterproductive attempts to advance human rights by claims about their putative, ultimate normative foundation. Second, it overcomes the limitations and failures of the top-down, generally unenforceable international human rights regime with a bottom-up alternative: the human rights state as a metaphorical polity in which activists promote human rightsfriendly change within the corresponding nation state. In each case of such a metaphorical polity, a network of self-selected activists within the nation state promotes the free embrace of self-authored human rights through incorporating those rights in the nation state's legal and political system. Subsequently, aspirations to an international human rights law would finally be redeemed as effective norms through the overlapping agreement among more and more political communities that have freely embraced their self-authored human rights and institutionalised them at local levels.

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Section: Breaking Through the Metaphysical Limbo Of Legitimation: Hummentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Special Issuementioning

confidence: 99%

A realistic utopia? Critical analyses of The Human Rights State in theory and deployment: Guest editors’ introduction

Wolfsteller

Gregg

2017

The International Journal of Human Rights

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“…This alternative approach, he argues, is more likely to be effective in the promotion of a free local embrace of human rights than international law and institutions like the United Nations or the International Criminal Court have been. 65 Gregg's special emphasis of the local definition and recognition is rooted in his conceptualisation of human rights as socially constructed norms. That is to say, their validity does not depend on theories of natural law or god but, according to Gregg, on human beings defining, recognising and, to some extent at least, identifying with them.…”

Section: The Roots Of the Human Rights Statementioning

confidence: 99%

“…If grounded in inclusionary political practices, institutions and culture, he argues, human rights can be constructed on the level of the individual state in a way that 'all persons, those inside state boundaries as well as those outside,' would be 'legally equal with respect to state-based human rights.' 69 Accordingly, Gregg explains, a human rights state would 'inscribe the universal within the particular; it would include the excluded' by translating the rather moral status of 'human beings' of those outside of its sovereign territory into a territorialised legal status. 70…”

Section: The Roots Of the Human Rights Statementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Finally, it is important to note that, in drawing on Gregg's notion of the human rights state, this article builds upon an understanding of the term as the normative ideal of a state in which human rights are fully realised, 14 rather than referring to the metaphor for a particular kind of social movement as proposed by Gregg in his more recent work. 15 Gregg's original formulation of the human rights state is a more promising starting point for developing a framework for the study of human rights institutionalisation because it puts primary emphasis on the structural conditions of their realisation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The institutionalisation of human rights reconceived: the human rights state as a sociological ‘ideal type’

Wolfsteller

2017

The International Journal of Human Rights

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In the contemporary political world order that continues to be structured by the principle of national sovereignty, the fate of human rights ultimately depends on states as the main guarantors and transgressors of rights. The analysis of the conditions and processes of their effective institutionalisation therefore requires a focus on the state level without losing sight of human rights' universalistic potential. This article develops the ideal type of the human rights state as a sociological framework for the systematic qualitative study and assessment of human rights institutionalisation. To this end, it reconceptualises Benjamin Gregg's normative political theory of the human rights state as an analytical yardstick that refers to the necessary conditions for the effective implementation of human rights as locally valid, state-based norms of universalistic scope. Based on the extrapolation of their core traits and the synthesis of these into a unified, coherent concept, the ideal type of the human rights state provides guidance for the empirical study of factual processes of human rights institutionalisation within states both as an analytical grid and benchmark for their critical evaluation. By integrating the divergent perspectives on legal, political and wider societal dimensions of human rights institutionalisation, this article contributes to the multidisciplinary field of human rights research as well as to the developing field of human rights sociology.

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Human Rights

Cited by 2 publications

References 0 publications

A realistic utopia? Critical analyses of The Human Rights State in theory and deployment: Guest editors’ introduction

A realistic utopia? Critical analyses of The Human Rights State in theory and deployment: Guest editors’ introduction

The institutionalisation of human rights reconceived: the human rights state as a sociological ‘ideal type’

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