Universal Ethics and Elite Politics: The Limits of Normative Human Rights Theory

Abstract

This article draws out the strengths and weaknesses of normative international relations theory, which places human rights at the centre of a critique of international society. The attractive and radical nature of the critique of international society, based on the 'human wrongs' committed or acquiesced in by governments and international bodies, is weighed against the conceptual difficulties involved in replacing the classical liberal rights subject with a new universal subject. These issues are discussed with particular regard to the problems confronted in defining the substance of universal rights, their conceptual and theoretical justification, possible institutional alternatives to the existing international system and the crucial question of agency. The article highlights why the radical nature of normative theorising tends to establish rights independently of, or in inverse relationship to, the capacity of rights-holders and the problematic consequences of this both in theory and practice. It is suggested that it is this gap between claim and capacity which inevitably leads to a more critical approach to democratic mechanisms of decision-making, and to the political sphere itself, while privileging new forms of 'ethical' elite paternalism manifested in new Western-dominated international regimes of human rights protection and implementation.