Human Rights and Democracy: Expanding or Contracting?

Since the Second World War, many, including governments in the West, have treated human rights and democracy as closely linked and promoted both. Yet the global failure to assure the enjoyment of the full range of human rights through their explicit recognition, realization, and protection requires reviewing the underlying logic of the popular assumption that human rights are fully protected whenever democracy prevails. Several critics of current human rights policies and practices have pointed to the structural and institutional constraints of human rights; this essay emphasizes the negative influence of the conceptualization of human rights and democracy that is accepted in much of the Western World. This narrow Lockean conceptualization has led to a reduction in the scope and depth of the prevailing definitions of "human rights" and "democracy." This trend is likely to be sustained by the conditions of the post-Cold War international politics and the "post-Fordist" global economy; as more countries become "democratic," fewer people will actually enjoy democratic rights and more people will be denied social and economic rights.