A Critical Inquiry into Economic Globalization and Human Rights: Delving into the Biggerr Picture of its Convergence

Abstract

The dominant view in international political economy has relied too much on positivist research when it comes to identifying the correlation of human rights with globalization. Focusing on quantitative research, positivism has detached itself from human subjectivity and experience to produce knowledge only from data sets and recorded statistics. Previous studies in IR have dealt with the relation of human rights to globalization and its facets: multinational corporations, foreign aid, economic progress, democratization, trade liberalization, neoliberalism and foreign direct investment (Hafner-Burton, 2005; Meyer, 1996; Milner & Mukherjee, 2009; Smith, BolyardI Regilme, 2014a; Regilme, 2014b). Most of these scholars have adopted a positivist approach in testing the relationship between such factors to human rights, while Regilme (2014a, 2014b) adopted a more critical perspective. With the problems in the IR scholarship on human rights, some researchers have mostly failed to elucidate the ‘bigger’ conflict that is relative to globalization and human rights. The thesis of this paper would argue for a more critical, postcolonial approach and the use of qualitative methods to produce knowledge based on facts and evidence. The paper, furthermore, would argue that globalization has reinforced repression of human rights than guaranteed its protection. Following Ulrich Beck’s notion of ‘militaristic humanism’, I would argue that globalization has legitimized the power of hegemonic powers and multinational corporations over the Global South and established a moral imperative for imposing against the latter while disregarding the sovereignty of other nation-states and their purpose of promoting the universality of the basic notion for human rights which is the right to life.