Bound to Withdraw? The United States and the Global Human Rights Regime

Abstract

Since 1945 a number of human rights conventions have been signed. Yet, despite this rise in institutionalized norms and rules, the international human rights regime remains weak and mainly declaratory. Not only are presumed norms often contested, but decision-making procedures and measures of implementation exist only in the weakest of forms. US Hegemony and the Project of Universal Human Rights by Tony Evans attempts to explain why the desire to protect human rights, one of the twentieth century's most powerful ideas, has failed to motivate the creation of a strong, effective international regime. Evans's book is structured chronologically and examines how the global human rights regime was developed and implemented at different stages between 1945 and the post-Cold War era. The theoretical framework is developed in the first chapter. However, the theoretical hypothesis, which is crucial to follow Evans's argument, is outlined only in the fourth chapter. Chapter 1 starts with a brief review of different approaches to analyzing human rights regime-building, which Evans divides into a and a strand. The cosmopolitan approaches focus on a world society based on values and norms; the statist approaches stress the continued existence of a system of states engaged in maximizing power or utility. Evans points to the shortcomings of both approaches, giving little indication of his own theoretical position. He then introduces the concept of hegemony. Consistent with the theory of hegemonic stability, he assumes that the formation of a regime depends on a hegemonic country. But whereas neorealist theorists (Kindleberger 1973; Krasner 1976; Gilpin 1981) restrict hegemony to military and economic power, Evans includes the dimension of moral leadership as introduced by Antonio Gramsci and currently employed by critical political economists (Cox 1981, 1983). According to Evans, three factorsderived from both the neorealist and the Gramscian traditions-are necessary for establishing a successful regime (chapter 4). First, a hegemon must possess material resources as well as organizational skills. Second, it must be willing to commit these to a regime. Third, accepting its leadership, weaker states must defer to the hegemonic state. Chapters 2 and 3 look at the global human rights negotiations after 1945, which focused on defining principles and norms, analyzing them within the context of the beginning Cold War. Three issues complicated this early human rights debate. First, there was a fundamental conflict between the need to keep the principle of sovereignty, nonintervention, and domestic jurisdiction, on the one hand, and the establishment of an international regime that would regulate the relation between ruler and ruled within states, on the other. Second, states disagreed on whether a