This timely book explores the extent to which national security has affected the intersection between human rights and the exercise of state power. It examines how liberal democracies, long viewed as the proponents and protectors of human rights, have transformed their use of human rights on the global stage, externalizing their own internal agendas.
This book examines what makes accountability for previous violations more or less possible for transitional regimes to achieve. It closely examines the other vital goals of such regimes against which accountability is often balanced. The options available are not simply prosecution or pardon, as the most heated polemics of the debate over transitional justice suggest, but a range of options from complete amnesty through truth commissions and lustration or purification to prosecutions. The question, then, is not whether or not accountability can be achieved, but what degree of accountability can be achieved by a given country. The focus of the book is on the politics of transition: what makes accountability more or less feasible and what strategies are deployed by regimes to achieve greater accountability (or alternatively, greater reform). The result is a more nuanced understanding of the different conditions and possibilities that countries face, and the lesson that there is no one-size-fits-all prescription that can be handed to transitional regimes.
Analyzing nineteen cases, this title offers practical perspective on the implications of constitution-making procedure, and explores emerging international legal norms.
In the first project of its kind to compare multiple mechanisms and combinations of mechanisms across regions, countries, and time, Transitional Justice in Balance: Comparing Processes, Weighing Efficacy systematically analyzes the claims made in the literature using a vast array of data, which the authors have assembled in the Transitional Justice Data Base.
Law has become the vehicle by which countries in the 'developing world', including post-conflict states or states undergoing constitutional transformation, must steer the course of social and economic, legal and political change. Legal mechanisms, in particular, the instruments as well as concepts of human rights, play an increasingly central role in the discourses and practices of both development and transitional justice. These developments can be seen as part of a tendency towards convergence within the wider set of discourses and practices in global governance. While this process of convergence of formerly distinct normative and conceptual fields of theory and practice has been both celebrated and critiqued at the level of theory, the present collection provides, through a series of studies drawn from a variety of contexts in which human rights advocacy and transitional justice initiatives are colliding with development projects, programmes and objectives, a more nuanced and critical account of contemporary developments. The book includes essays by many of the leading experts writing at the intersection of development, rights and transitional justice studies. Notwithstanding the theoretical and practical challenges presented by the complex interaction of these fields, the premise of the book is that it is only through engagement and dialogue among hitherto distinct fields of scholarship and practice that a better understanding of the institutional and normative issues arising in contemporary law and development and transitional justice contexts will be possible. The book is designed for research and teaching at both undergraduate and graduate levels. ENDORSEMENTS An extraordinary collection of essays that illuminate the nature of law in today's fragmented and uneven globalized world, by situating the stakes of law in the intersection between the fields of human rights, development and transitional justice. Unusual for its breadth and the quality of scholarly contributions from many who are top scholars in their fields, this volume is one of the first that attempts to weave the three specialized fields, and succeeds brilliantly. For anyone working in the fields of development studies, human rights or transitional justice, this volume is a wake-up call to abandon their preconceived ideas and frames and aim for a conceptual and programmatic restart. Professor Balakrishnan Rajagopal, Ford International Associate Professor of Law and Development, Massachusetts Institute of Technology This superb collection of essays explores the challenges, possibilities, and limits faced by scholars and practitioners seeking to imagine forms of law that can respond to social transformation. Drawing together cutting-edge work across the three dynamic fields of law and development, transitional justice, and international human rights law, this volume powerfully demonstrates that in light of the changes demanded of legal research, education, and practice in a globalizing world, all law is "law in transition". Anne Orford, Michael D Kirby Chair of International Law and Australian Research Council Future Fellow, University of Melbourne A terrific volume. Leading scholars of human rights, development policy, and transitional justice look back and into the future. What has worked? Where have these projects gone astray or conflicted with one another? Law will only contribute forcefully to justice, development and peaceful, sustainable change if the lessons learned here give rise to a new practical wisdom. We all hope law can do better – the essays collected here begin to show us how. David Kennedy, Manley O Hudson Professor of Law, Director, Institute for Global Law and Policy, Harvard Law School
A history of the successes of the human rights movement and a case for why human rights work Evidence for Hope makes the case that yes, human rights work. Critics may counter that the movement is in serious jeopardy or even a questionable byproduct of Western imperialism. Guantánamo is still open and governments are cracking down on NGOs everywhere. But human rights expert Kathryn Sikkink draws on decades of research and fieldwork to provide a rigorous rebuttal to doubts about human rights laws and institutions. Past and current trends indicate that in the long term, human rights movements have been vastly effective. Exploring the strategies that have led to real humanitarian gains since the middle of the twentieth century, Evidence for Hope looks at how essential advances can be sustained for decades to come.
The third edition of Global Politics: A New Introduction continues to provide a completely original way of teaching and learning about world politics. The book engages directly with the issues in global politics that students are most interested in, helping them to understand the key questions and theories and also to develop a critical and inquiring perspective. Completely revised and updated throughout, the third edition offers up-to-date examples engaging with the latest developments in global politics, including the Syrian war and the refugee crisis, fossil fuel divestment, racism and Black Lives Matter, citizen journalism, populism, and drone warfare. Global Politics: examines the most significant issues in global politics – from war, peacebuilding, terrorism, security, violence, nationalism and authority to poverty, development, postcolonialism, human rights, gender, inequality, ethnicity and what we can do to change the world; offers chapters written to a common structure, which is ideal for teaching and learning, and features a key question, an illustrative example, general responses and broader issues; integrates theory and practice throughout the text, by presenting theoretical ideas and concepts in conjunction with a global range of historical and contemporary case studies. Drawing on theoretical perspectives from a broad range of disciplines, including international relations, political theory, postcolonial studies, sociology, geography, peace studies and development, this innovative textbook is essential reading for all students of global politics and international relations.
