Human Rights by Moral Intervention

Abstract

Die Macht der Menschenrechte: Internationale Normen, kommunikative Prozesse und politischer Wandel in den Landern des Sudens [ The Power of Human Rights: International Norms, Communicative Action, and Political Change in Developing Nations ]. By Thomas Risse, Anja Jetschke, Hans Peter Schmitz. Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2002. 226 pp., $20.00 (ISBN: 3-7890-7891-3). Die Macht der Menschenrechte ( The Power of Human Rights ) by Thomas Risse, Anja Jetschke, and Hans Peter Schmitz is dedicated to those transnational activists who are struggling against grave human rights violations around the world. For the three authors, these activists' efforts do make a difference. In fact, Risse, Jetschke, and Schmitz hold that sustained transnational engagement is a necessary condition for improving human rights in Third World countries suffering from repressive rule. Die Macht der Menschenrechte builds on an edited volume, The Power of Human Rights , that was published by Cambridge University Press in 1999 (Risse, Ropp, and Sikkink 1999). Even though key insights from the Cambridge volume are repeated for the German audience, the book clearly goes beyond this and other previous studies. For one thing, it widens our understanding of “transnational advocacy networks” (Keck and Sikkink 1998) and their impact on domestic politics, especially in developing countries. The book also contextualizes processes of national democratization within broader patterns of international politics (Grugel 1999). Finally, the book elaborates on the distinct moral resources that human rights networks are using to promote their cause. In the process, Die Macht der Menschenrechte makes a crucial contribution to the ongoing debate about the causal relationship between material and ideational factors in explaining state behavior (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998). To investigate the impact of transnational human rights networks on state practice, Risse, Jetschke, and Schmitz develop a five-stage “spiral model” of human rights change. The model explicitly focuses on the complex interplay among external mobilization, the target state's policy choices, and domestic opposition against repression. Stage 1 is characterized by widespread and severe human rights violations. State actors ruthlessly oppress citizens to advance particular political or economic interests. In stage 2, transnational human rights networks learn about the power abuses …