Abstract
A Westphalian conception of world order would appear resistant to the emergence of human rights, the latter being understood primarily as claims against governments to uphold certain standards of behaviour in the treatment of their citizens.1 The fundamental binding idea of the modern juridical framework based on territorial sovereignty is that governments are not subject to standards or procedures of external accountability in the treatment of their own citizens or others under their control without an official expression of prior consent.2 And this jural thinking reflects the underlying Hobbesian view of an anarchic international society in which community and civic ties are absent, and morality and legality have little role to play.3 This understanding of statist logic underpins ‘realist’ schools of thought about international politics, with their stress on ‘national interests’ as the only reliable guide for policymakers and leaders and their critical rejection of any higher morality in international life as a courtship with dangerous Utopian illusions.4
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Notes
For a less rigid view of this dichotomy between domestic and international society, yet still situated firmly in the realist, anti-utopian tradition, see Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977).
Hans Morgenthau and Kenneth Thompson, Politics Among Nations; The Struggle for Power and Peace, Sixth Edition (New York: Knopf, 1985).
E.H. Carr, George Kennan, Henry Kissinger and Reinhold Neibuhr; also Robert Cox for an extension of critical realist thinking to encompass the political economy, ‘Social Forces, States, and World Orders; Beyond International Relations Theory’, in Robert Keohane (ed), Neo-Realism and Its Critics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986) pp. 204–54.
These differences in outlook and behaviour are well depicted in Harold D. Lasswell and Myres S. McDougal, ‘Diverse Systems of Public Order,’ in McDougal (ed), Studies in World Public Order (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1960)
Falk chapter in Human Rights and State Sovereignty (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1981).
For a highly critical view of American policies in relation to human rights see Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Hermann, The Political Economy of Human Rights (Boston: South End Press, two vols, 1979)
Richard J. Barnet, Intervention and Revolution’
Jeane J. Kirkpatrick and Allan Gerson, ‘The Reagan Doctrine, Human Rights, and International Law’, in Right v. Might: International Law on the Use of Force, Second edition (New York, Council on Foreign Relations, 1991).
Cf. David Held on the deeper significance of this step in Political Theory and the Modern State (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1984), pp. 232–4.
This was certainly the case with respect to ILO Convention No. 107 (1956), text available in Burns H. Weston, Richard A. Falk, Anthony D’Amato (eds), Basic Documents in International Law and World Order (St Paul, MN: West Publishing, 1990), pp. 335–40.
tentative text and resolution 1995/32 of UN Commission on Human Rights, International Legal Materials XXXIV: pp. 535–55 (March 1995).
On the right to development see Roland Rich, ‘The Right to Development: A Right of Peoples?’ in James Crawford (ed.), The Rights of Peoples (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), pp. 39–54.
But see the skeptical view of these pressures in Paul Krugman’s book, Peddling Prosperity: Economic Sense and Nonsense in the Age of Dim-inishing Expectations (New York: W.W. Norton, 1995), pp. 245–92.
For underlying philosophical specification see: John Rawls, ‘The Law of Peoples’, in Stephen Shute and Susan Hurley (eds), On Human Rights: The Oxford Amnesty Lectures 1993 (New York: Basic Books), pp. 41–82.
For a variety of reasons xenophobia and hostility to immigration is on the rise, including efforts to shift responsibility for job loss and de-clining real wages to immigrants, legal and illegal. One of the striking features of globalization is that despite its rhetoric of ‘freedom’, the impact on the majority of persons is likely to be a decline in relative and absolute economic security. Such an impact is often discussed as an aspect of the polarizing effects of globalization, but it is also a consequence of liberating capital from the constraints of territorial space, while tying most workers more closely than ever, as well as tightening up indirect modes of mobility by way of immigration, refugee flows and asylum policies. For an imaginative and persuasive treatment of these themes see Susan Jonas, ‘U.S. “National Security” vs. Regional Welfare as the Basis for Immigration Policy: Reflections from the Case of Central American Immigrants and Refugees,’ in Kay Castro (ed.), Transnational Realities and Nation States: Trends in International Integration and Immigration Policy in the Americas (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1996).
Sam Dillon, ‘Enforcement Reduces Illegal Crossings from Mexico’, International Herald Tribune, 25–26 November 1995.
Christopher C. Joyner and John C. Dettling, ‘Bridging the Cultural Chasm: Cultural Relativism and the Future of International Law’, California Western International Law Journal 20: (1989-90) pp. 275–314.
Many of these arguments are advanced in a significant way by Ahmet Davutoglu, Civilizational Transformation and the Muslim World (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: Mahir Publications, 1994)
For an essay relying on the terminology ‘globalization-from-above’ and ‘globalization-from-below’ see the Falk essay in Jeremy Brecher, John Brown Childs and Jill Cutler (eds), Global Visions: Beyond the New World Order (Boston, MA: South End Press, 1993), pp. 39–50.
The perspectives of JUST (Just World Society) in Penang, Malaysia are indicative of this orientation. See the proceedings of the 1994 conference, ‘Rethinking Human Rights’ (Kuala Lumpur) and the 1995 Penang workshop, ‘Images of Islam: Terrorizing the Truth’. See also the book by founder and director of JUST Chandra Muzaffar, Human Rights and the New World Order, Penang, Malaysia, Just World Trust, 1983.
See generally, David Held, Democracy and the Global Order (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995)
Falk, On Humane Governance: Toward a New Global Politics (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 1995)
David Held and Daniele Archibugi (eds), Cosmopolitan Democracy (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 1994).
Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon, 1978)
Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im (ed.), Human Rights in Cross-Cultural Perspectives: A Quest for Consensus (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992).
Fred Halliday, Islam and the Myth of Confrontation (London: LB. Tauris, 1995).
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Falk, R. (1999). The Quest for Human Rights in an Era of Globalization. In: Schechter, M.G. (eds) Future Multilateralism. International Political Economy Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-27153-5_7
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