Civilization vs toleration: the new UN Human Rights Council and the normative foundations of the international order

Abstract

This article aims to explain the institutional design of the new United Nations (UN) human rights organ, the Human Rights Council (HRC). During the negotiation phase, it was contested between the North and the South: while the former opted for an exclusive body with a high membership threshold, the latter pressed for an inclusive structure and cooperative mechanisms. The eventual institutional design of the HRC features a moderate membership threshold. Both hegemonic stability theory and domestic-level approaches have difficulties explaining that outcome. I will argue that the institutional design of the HRC can be explained as the outcome of a discursive struggle between the North that promoted the paradigm of civilization and the South that endorsed the paradigm of toleration. The institutional design of the HRC, it will be argued, can be interpreted as a compromise between both paradigms in that it features a reflexive structure: the membership rules of the HRC contain the proviso that its members have to live up to the very standards that the HRC seeks to promote before they can legitimately place other states under scrutiny.