Translating Human Rights of the “Enemy”: The Case of Israeli NGOs Defending Palestinian Rights

This article explores the practices, discourses and dilemmas of the Israeli human rights NGOs that are working to protect and promote the human rights of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. This case can shed light on the complex process of “triangular translation” of human rights, which is distinct from other forms of human rights localization studied thus far. In this process, human rights NGOs translate international human rights norms on the one hand, and the suffering of the victims on the other, into the conceptions and legal language commonly employed by the state that violates these rights. We analyze the dialectics of change and reproduction embedded in the efforts of Israeli activists to defend Palestinian human rights while at the same time depoliticizing their work and adopting discriminatory premises and conceptions hegemonic in Israeli society. The recent and alarming legislative proposals in Israel aimed at curtailing the work of human rights NGOs reinforce the need to reconsider the role of human rights NGOs in society, including their depoliticized strategies, their use of legal language and their relations with the diminishing peace movement.     

On the efficiency of vote buying when voters have common interests

We examine the conditions under which vote buying may promote efficiency in an environment where voters have identical preferences with respect to the behavior of their elected representatives (who are subject to both moral hazard and adverse selection). Our results suggest that permission of vote buying may prove beneficial in the market for corporate control and in some types of local political elections.