Personal Deserts

Personal deserts, democracy and human rights

Introduction

The purpose of human rights is to allow for a transcendence of the nation state in terms of individual entitlement to an enjoyment of rights wherever individuals may find themselves (Landman 2013, 26). However, with respect to the varying philosophical and historical foundations of human rights, the supposed universality of human rights is debatable. States that reliably receive praise for their human rights records include most European countries, the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. What these countries have in common is a democratic political system and independent judiciaries that protect citizen rights (Posner 2014, 5). This observable fact would lead us to believe

Indeed, as Amartya Sen (2003) has argued, democracy as manifested through liberalism and the ballot box is a Western construct, while democracy as expressed through public reason is truly universal. Mouffe (2000, 3) claims that there is no necessary connection between liberalism and democracy, “only a contingent historical articulation.” Nevertheless, there is a widespread assumption that democracy and human rights are inherently compatible (Landman 2013, 7). For Mouffe (2000, 4), this assumption has had the effect of privileging excessive liberalism, whilst neglecting the fact that the legitimacy of liberal democracy remains premised on popular sovereignty.

It thus follows that hegemony of neoliberalism becomes a threat to democratic institutions. States are the main agents in the realization of democracy and human rights. However, globalizing forces have encroached on the state’s ability to freely implement policies, including policies concerning human rights. This phenomenon has been identified as a “democratic deficit” (Mouffe 2000, 15). At this point, elected governments lack the power to control neoliberal economic processes and the follow-on effects of major world crises (Cedroni 2012,

In theory, this is unproblematic since different ethical, legal, and political practices need to come together for the functioning of an effective society. In practice, however, human rights today often exclude larger emancipatory visions and can even have morally perverse unintended consequences (Donnelly 2006, 616). For example, the way in which torture is construed as the ultimate human rights violation has the effect of limiting the ways we conceptualize violence and rights violations at a broader structural level (Kelly 2011,