Democracy and development: A theoretical framework

A simple framework is set up to discuss the relationship between democracy, material welfare, and development. Democracy is regarded both as a good in its own right, and as an input in the production of material welfare. The optimum level of democracy is then related to the level of development. At the optimum point, the marginal cost of democracy in terms of foregone output is positive, and growth is a decreasing function of the level of democracy. Deviations from the optimum path are described as either repressive or populist. Democratization is not unambiguously an optimal response to exogenous shocks.     

Citizenship,reproduction and the state: international marriage and human rights

The relationship between citizenship, marriage and family has often been overlooked in the social and political theory of citizenship. Intimate domestic life is associated with the private sphere, partly because reproduction itself is thought to depend on the private choices of individuals. While feminist theory has challenged this division between private and public – ‘the personal is political’ – the absence of any systematic thinking about familial relations, reproduction and citizenship is puzzling. Citizenship is a juridical status that confers political rights such as the right to carry a passport or to vote in elections. However, from a sociological point of view, we need to understand the social foundations and consequences of citizenship – however narrowly defined in legal and political terms. This article starts by noting the obvious point that the majority of us inherit citizenship at birth and in a sense we do not choose to be ‘Vietnamese’ or ‘Malaysian’ or ‘Japanese’ citizens. Although naturalisation is an important aspect of international migration and settlement, the majority of us are, as it were, born into citizenship. Therefore, the family is an important but often implicit facet of political identity and membership. In sociological language, citizenship looks like an ascribed rather than achieved status, and as a result becomes confused and infused with ethnicity. This inheritance of citizenship is odd given the fact that, at least in the West, there is a presumption, following the pronouncements of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, to think of citizenship in universal terms that are ethnically ‘blind’, but it is in fact closely connected with familial or private status. These complex relations within the nation-state are further complicated by the contemporary growth of transnational marriages and this article considers the problems of marriage, reproduction and citizenship in the context of global patterns of migration.     

Competing paradigms in policy discourse: The case of international human rights

This article analyzes the different paradigms of human rights policy discourse that characterize non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and governments. Focusing on Canadian-based human rights NGOs and the Canadian government, it uses a five-fold classification scheme to make sense of these competing paradigms of discourse: (1) process: how actors define themselves, and how they define their roles within the international human rights machinery; (2) objectives: perceptions of the purpose of the international human rights system and goals to be pursued therein; (3) scope: the breadth of issue definition and consequent action; (4) evidence: the standards whereby empirical claims are filtered, constructed and judged; and (5) action strategies: the enduring patterns of practical action founded upon the preceding categories. The article shows that despite shared objectives and a common commitment to human rights, NGO and government discourses differ sharply and yield markedly different action strategies. Progress in international human rights will continue to depend on NGO-government collaboration, however, and the article ends with some observations on how these differences in discourse might be addressed.     

Dignity,discrimination, and context: New directions in South African and Canadian human rights law

Conclusion The current approaches to equality law in South Africa and Canada place these jurisdictions at the forefront of serious and comprehensive judicial at tempts to give effect to substantive equality. These attempts to overcome formalism are processes, judicially acknowledged as such, and as yet far from complete. At the conceptual center of the development of substantive equality is the legal realization of human dignity: not an abstract, individualistic notion, but a concept about the relation between the individual and state, and individual and group, which is circumscribed by concern, respect and consideration. But substantive equality is not possible only through the case law. The current issues surrounding intersectional discrimination and the contextual appreciation of a claimant’s circumstances are urgent reminders that the methods and remedies afforded by the structure of litigation of equality rights claims simply cannot accommodate many instances which call for relief. The fact that these inadequacies of court enforced claims are beginning to be laid bare by some of the problems being faced by the Courts in equality claims is perhaps not a failing of equality law and the concept of dignity, but its strength. The methodology of human rights litigation in countries like Canada and South Africa supports a dialogue between court and legislature. As substantive equality develops in these jurisdictions, the limits of judicial development will be challenged. That is ultimately to be welcomed, if the legislatures are responsive to the definition of human dignity and substantive equality in development judicially, and respond with efforts to support and promote these developments.     

Editorial introduction: international marriage,rights and the state in East and Southeast Asia

The dramatic increase in intra-Asia cross-nationality marriage is a distinct, yet relatively under-researched, aspect of globalization and regionalization. Most existing research focuses on individual experiences of international marriage, but articles in this issue are intended to examine the politics of legal recognition: namely, how states categorize, legitimate and de-legitimate various intimacies, and how gender, religion, nationality and class play their roles in this process. More specifically, the articles address the following four themes: (1) the links between the institutionalization of marriage and ideologies of family in the process of nation-building; (2) the coexistence and conflicts between different legal systems vis-à-vis marriage and the related social implications; (3) gender and its implications for access to citizenship; and (4) recent policy changes in nationality laws and the reconstruction of ‘national identities’ in the transnational context. Thus, collectively this volume deepens our understanding of citizenship issues in East and Southeast Asia by teasing out how, in the case of foreign spouses, membership of a nation is determined legally, politically, culturally and socially.     

Assessing the impact of decentralization on governance: A comparative methodological approach and application to Tunisia

The relationship between decentralization and governance has not been adequately explored in the literature. Many past studies have failed to assess fully the impact of decentralization because of the lack of a set of independent, comparative indicators of the quality of decentralization being implemented in a given country. The authors adopt the working hypothesis that decentralization, both as a process and as an end state in terms of organization and operations, is closely related to the quality of governance in developing countries. In order to provide an empirical basis for a comparative assessment, the authors have developed a model based on the scope, intensity and commitment to decentralization in a country. Each of these concepts is operationalized in terms of a set of empirically measurable variables. The method is then applied to the case of Tunisia and assessed as a tool for the comparative study of decentralization and governance. Decentralization in Tunisia is shown to have an important relationship to the quality of governance in that country. The methodology developed here for the analysis of the quality of decentralization appears, based on the examination of a significant case, to be worth pursuing cross-nationally.     

Institutions and economic growth: Recent British experience in an international context

The impact of institutions and political constraints on economic growth is greater than many economists’ models acknowledge. At the same time judgements about growth performance and policy effectiveness need to take account of differential scope for growth through ‘catch‐up’ across countries and over time. British performance, particularly that of the 1980s, seen in the light of the earlier relative economic decline of the UK, is reviewed and comparisons with other European countries are highlighted. This evidence confirms the importance of an approach to growth based on political economy and permits some predictions about relative growth rates in the 1990s.     

Global poverty and responsibility: Identifying the duty-bearers of human rights

Many rights theorists argue that global poverty violates certain human rights, so that responsibility to address poverty involves carrying out the duties that correspond with relevant rights-claims. Liberatirians argue that the rights and duties associated with global poverty, especially what are sometimes thought of as “positive” rights, or rights of assistance, are inappropriately agent-neutral, giving them less justificatory force than agent-relative rights and duties. To counter libertarian concerns, Thomas Pogge tries to reframe the responsibilities corresponding to human rights as institutional rather than as belonging to agents. While admirable, his approach inadequately expalains the relationships between institutional responsibility and individual and collective action. A better way to respond to libertarian concerns—that is also compatible with Pogge’s emphasis on institutional responsibility—is to show that the duties regarding global poverty are indeed agent-relative, but by virtue of individual and collective action within institutions.     

浅析人权、主权和球权的关系

人权、主权、球权是当今人类社会最为重要的三项权利。三者中,人权是核心;主权是人权的延伸,目的是为了保护人权;而球权则是人权和主权的让渡,根本目的是为了在全球化时代维护国家主权和保护基本的人权。因此,可以认为人权是目标,主权和球权则是达成这一目标的手段。     

Explaining the Vientiane Action Programme: ASEAN and the institutionalisation of human rights

Abstract

Existing explanations for the emergence of human rights on the political agenda in ASEAN focus either on the role of external pressure on ASEAN member states to ‘do something’, or on the way those states copied the form, but not the function, of other regional organisations such as the EU. Both approaches tacitly acknowledge that given the strong preference for intergovernmental governance displayed by ASEAN, regardless of interpretations, that it was states that drove the institutionalisation of rights forwards. Through examining in detail the causes and consequences of the Vientiane Action Programme this article disagrees with that assertion. At crucial moments before and after 2004 it was the Working Group for the Establishment of an ASEAN Human Rights Mechanism, a track III actor, which both inserted human rights into ASEAN discussions and forged the link between protecting those rights and the continuing success of ASEAN's security goals. Through understanding the role of the Working Group as a norm entrepreneur, assisting in the localisation of human rights standards, this article suggests that existing explanations of ASEAN institutionalisation need to be revised to include a wider range of political dynamics than previously were acknowledged.     

Legal development and human rights in Uruguay: 1985–2002

This article attempts to explain why Uruguayan judges have lagged behind judges in Chile and Argentina in the prosecution of the military for human rights violations committed during the dictatorship period in the 1970s and 1980s. By tracing judicial human rights activity in Uruguay from the transition to democratic rule in 1985 until the end of 2002, I argue that Uruguayan judges have been actively restricted by an aggressive anti-human rights policy expressed through a national amnesty law and explicit executive interference in judicial matters. Structural changes to the judiciary might have aided Uruguayan judges to overcome these barriers. Instead, failure to reform the judiciary has prolonged its conservative nature and made judges slow in responding to international legal development in the human rights field.