Societies of Rights: What Does a Political Community Look Like?

Abstract

This chapter examines the sort of society in which rights recognition can occur, and examines how rights recognition occurs. It argues that rights recognition requires meaningful equality, which can be expressed as ‘equality of access to rights recognition arenas and debates’, as well as freedom of communication within a society. The second half of the chapter makes the case for rights as recognised claims, rather than established ways of acting, and argues that recognition is distinct from legal enforcement and regulation of rights by government. In this way, egalitarian rights recognition avoids some of the problematic conservative tendencies displayed by other recognition theories of rights.