(DOWNLOAD) "Human Rights and Global Democracy (Essay)" by Ethics & International Affairs * Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Human Rights and Global Democracy (Essay)
- Author : Ethics & International Affairs
- Release Date : January 22, 2008
- Genre: Politics & Current Events,Books,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 301 KB
Description
Over the past dozen years or so democratic theorists and activists have become increasingly worried about globalization's adverse effects on democracy. Their concerns include: (1) democratic deficits, or the lack of democratic control over existing intergovernmental and supranational governance structures such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) or the European Union (EU); (2) democratic disjunctures, or the disparities in scope between such global political problems as climate change, economic development, and international terrorism, on the one hand, and instantiations of democratic authority in existing, state-level political institutions, on the other; and (3) democratic asymmetries, or the widening inequalities among states whereby the wealthiest and most powerful dominate international interactions. In response, democratic theorists have advanced various proposals for global democracy, including cosmopolitan and discursive (or global civil society-based) schemes. Such proposals presume whether explicitly or implicitly--that human rights form part of the basic political infrastructure of global democratic governance. (1) They thus leave the relationship between human rights and global democracy undertheorized, with two related negative results: first, there has been little discussion of the theoretical and practical role of human rights in global democracy; second, this inattention has left important questions about the compatibility of democracy and human rights neglected or unnoticed. Meanwhile, numerous critics have questioned the compatibility of the core democratic principle of majoritarian rule and human rights at the national level, citing fears of "illiberal democracy" (3); and scholars from very different ideological and theoretical perspectives have expressed worries about the democratic accountability of supranational human rights regimes--notably, the potential for such regimes to undermine democracy within the state, or to become sources of domination themselves. Further, many scholars and practitioners harbor doubts about the potential effectiveness of supranational human rights mechanisms. Yet all these critiques remain strangely isolated from the debates on global democracy--which are, nonetheless, predicated in part on the assumption that no significant tensions between democracy and human rights obtain.