Between Signing and Ratifying: Preratification Politics, the Disability Convention, and the Dutch

Abstract

The ever-increasing scholarship on the politics of human rights focuses on either international treaty negotiations or domestic politics after ratification. It thus misses how the stage of implementation is often crucially set in the period between signing and ratifying. This article addresses this lacuna via an in-depth discussion of the ratification process of the Disability Convention (CRPD) in the Netherlands. In this period, stakeholders highlight certain treaty obligations, while downplaying or ignoring others. This theory of preratification politics calls for more differentiation between treaty obligations and attention to the politics of their mobilization, even in the most monist countries.