Human Rights and Global Governance: Power Politics Meets International Justice

By William H. Meyer

International human rights have been an important matter for study, policy, and activism since the end of World War II. However, as William H. Meyer observes, global governance is not only a relatively new topic for students of interational relations but also a widely used yet often contested concept. Despite the conflicting and often politicized uses of the term, three key dimensions of global governance can be identified: the impact of diplomatic international organizations such as the International Criminal Court, the importance of nonstate actors and global civil society, and global political trends that can be gleaned from empirical observation and data collection. In Human Rights and Global Governance, Meyer defines global governance generally as the management of global issues within a political space that has no single centralized authority.

Employing a combination of historical, quantitative, normative, and policy analyses, Meyer presents a series of case studies at the intersection of power politics and international justice. He examines the global campaign to end impunity for dictators; the recognition, violation, and protection of indigenous rights; the creation and expansion of efforts to ensure corporate social responsibility; the interactions between labor rights and development in the Global South; just war theory as it applies to torturing terrorists, war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the drone wars; and the global strategic environment that best facilitates the making of human rights treaties. Meyer concludes with an evaluation of the successes and failures of two exemplary models for the global governance of human rights as well as recommendations for public policy changes and visions for the future.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Release date: Nov 8, 2019
• ISBN: 9780812296648

Book preview

Introduction

Question: What do the following cases have in common? Bringing former dictators to trial; indigenous lands in the Americas that have been stolen by developers; mineral rights to newly opened territories in the Arctic; sweatshop working conditions, and buildings collapsing on workers in the Global South; U.S. policy that exchanges access to domestic markets in return for better labor rights in Southeast Asia; war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan; drone warfare and torture used against suspected terrorists; and the interactions linking war, peace, and making new treaties to protect human rights.

Answer: Each of these cases raises issues and demonstrates processes that can help us to understand the evolving nature of global governance over international human rights.

International human rights has been an important topic for study, policy, and activism since the end of World War II. Global governance is, comparatively speaking, a relatively new topic for students of international relations. This text brings the two areas together by presenting six case studies at the intersection of power politics and international justice. Chapters 1 through 6 in this book will review: (1) the global campaign to end impunity for dictators; (2) indigenous rights; (3) the creation and expansion of efforts to ensure corporate social responsibility; (4) the interactions between labor rights and development in the Global South; (5) just war theory as it applies to torturing terrorists, war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the drone wars; and (6) the global strategic environment that best facilitates the making of human rights treaties. Chapter 7 concludes this research by presenting the successes and failures of two models for global governance of human rights. The conclusion also discusses reforming the UN Security Council in order to reduce war crimes. The final chapter ends with a description of what the future of global governance for human rights could look like.

This text uses a mixture of historical, quantitative, normative, and policy analyses to address these topics. Chapters 4 and 6 employ statistical methods to derive the connections between labor rights and development, and the impact of war on treaty-making. All seven chapters use historical, ethical, and policy-based analyses as well. An eclectic methodology is required because both human rights and global governance cover such a wide range of issues. Human rights and global governance are also both highly contested concepts. Both human rights and global governance mean different things to different people and within different contexts. Contestation over human rights can often be traced to the competing values of conflicting societies and the resulting debate over cultural relativism. Much of the contestation over global governance finds its roots in conflicting empirical and theoretical claims (see below for a review of global governance theory). Both human rights and global governance also sit at a nexus between power politics and ethics.

The term global governance came into vogue at the end of the twentieth century as a result of a massive sea change in global politics. In the 1990s, the Western powers declared victory in the Cold War. One immediate result seemed to be increased agency for the United Nations and other international organizations now independent of Cold War restraints. Relevant examples included UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s designs to reform humanitarian intervention, expand the Security Council (see Chapter 7), and establish new international laws to govern human rights obligations for corporations (see Chapter 3). Many began to refer to these new initiatives led by the United Nations as forms of global governance, but not global government. Supporters argue that global governance can perform some of the same functions as a government without relying exclusively on the formal institutional structures of national governments. Unfortunately, this new post–Cold War architecture for international relations did not lead to the prescriptive and normative outcomes that early champions of global governance had hoped for. Talk of the end of Cold War hostilities leading to a peace dividend that could be invested in green technologies or developmental assistance to the Global South turned out to be premature. Hopes for a brave new world of peace and increased standards of living throughout the globe fell victim to the power politics of anti-terrorism after 11 September 2001.

Human rights and global governance are two areas that are inextricably linked to both international justice and power politics. Power politics and human rights are among the tectonic forces shaping the landscape of twenty-first-century international relations. Each of the case studies in this text stands as an example of the interconnected nature of justice and power. The remainder of this introduction will describe the case studies that follow in terms of their power politics and international justice dimensions. I will also include a brief overview of theories of global governance.

The six case studies of this text can be usefully divided into three subsets: (1) global governance and the dispossessed; (2) global governance and international markets; and (3) global governance, war, and peace.

Global Governance and the Dispossessed

The first two chapters in this study cover global governance to aid transnational populations that have been among the most marginalized peoples in the world. Chapter 1 presents the Pinochet precedent as an early archetype of global governance. The Pinochet precedent created the first international model for bringing Cold War dictators to justice (beginning with General Augusto Pinochet in Chile), particularly for the crime of political disappearances. Right-wing, anti-communist dictators in Latin America regularly made their political opponents disappear by means of torture and murder, then denied any role in these disappearances, and denied any knowledge of such crimes. Political disappearances carried over into the wars against terror after 9/11 in the form of renditions. Once again, people (e.g., suspected terrorists) were targeted, kidnapped, tortured, and murdered with governments once again denying any involvement or knowledge of their victims’ whereabouts.

The power politics of the Cold War ensured that pro-U.S. dictators enjoyed impunity from prosecution for such crimes during that era. American military aid and American diplomacy provided the means and political cover for right-wing repression. The power politics of post-9/11 anti-terror hysteria have shielded from prosecution those who tortured and murdered suspected terrorists (in most cases). However, international activists during both periods cried out for accountability and bringing to justice those responsible for political disappearances. Creation of the Pinochet precedent was a watershed moment that reversed the trend of unchallenged impunity. The Pinochet precedent also created momentum toward supporting the victims of political disappearances and led to prosecution of the guilty. Chapter 1 tells the story of bringing General Pinochet in Chile to justice, reviews subsequent international efforts to end impunity for dictators, and draws connections to post-9/11 instances of political disappearances.

Chapter 2 reviews key efforts to establish global governance in support of indigenous rights. Indigenous peoples are another (even larger) population of the dispossessed, disenfranchised, and abused. Power politics have determined the policies of the major states toward indigenous tribes, leading to widespread rights violations. Chapter 2’s discussion of the United Nations, the Organization of American States, and the Inuit Circumpolar Council identifies some recent successes in the campaigns for greater justice for indigenous peoples. This discussion of indigenous rights also leads to further consideration of a debate among global governance theorists over the alleged devolution of sovereign governmental powers. I will argue in Chapter 2 that, while indigenous peoples have made important inroads into state power and sovereignty in some areas, the conflict over independence for indigenous groups reveals some of the limits to (or boundary conditions for) global governance.

Global Governance and International Markets

Chapters 3 and 4 address human rights and transnational corporations (TNCs). Chapter 3 presents a history of corporate social responsibility, which includes an effort to impose human rights obligations on TNCs. Chapter 3 also reviews cases before federal courts in the United States that have sought to hold TNCs accountable for their human rights violations. To date, the economic and political power of advanced industrialized states has been employed to see that there are almost no binding international legal obligations requiring TNCs to respect human rights. There are also few legal avenues by which victims can bring TNCs to justice when corporations violate their rights. Chapters 3 and 4 bring together developments at the World Trade Organization (WTO) and case law under the U.S. Alien Tort Claims Act, that (in combination) can point the way toward a new global governance regime for TNCs and human rights in the future.

Chapter 4’s primary topic is the relationship between labor rights and development in the nations of the Global South. I discuss the campaign for a new social clause at the WTO to protect labor rights and the environment. Debate over a new social clause for the WTO broke down during the WTO’s Doha Round (2001–2015) of international trade talks. A social clause for the WTO in the future remains as a crucial and necessary next step for creating enforceable legal obligations that can hold TNCs responsible for rights violations. These interconnections between TNCs, labor rights, corporate social responsibility, U.S. courts, and a WTO social clause are laid out in Chapters 3 and 4, and further detailed in Chapter 7.

Global Governance, War, and Peace

Chapter 5 applies the principals of just war theory to America’s war on terror. It begins with a history of the origins of torturing suspected terrorists in the United States and the United Kingdom. After 9/11, the United States adopted the British model for mistreatment of detainees. The creation, evolution, and evaluation of America’s use of torture tactics are summarized. Chapter 5 then presents a review of American war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, with special focus on a series of massacres in those nations by U.S. troops. Chapter 5 ends with a consideration of the use of drones in relation to moral limits on the war against terror.

Chapter 6 takes a more systemic approach to war, peace, and global governance. This final case study draws on a data set of 160 human rights treaties, covering the time period of 1946 to the year 2000. I review prior studies and the debate over whether human rights treaties change the behavior of states. I also present two illustrative cases of treaty-making: the International Campaign to Ban Landmines that created the 1997 Ottawa Convention banning antipersonnel landmines; and the seventy-year campaign for a treaty on children’s rights that culminated in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989). This contextual material then serves as background for a quantitative analysis of the relationship between wars and the making of new human rights treaties. Statistical evidence from Chapter 6 shows that, contrary to widespread prior assumptions, the primary trigger for creating most human rights treaties is not a war or military crisis. Rather, creation of human rights treaties is much more likely after an extended period of global peace (with times of war versus peace measured as total battle deaths). Treaty-making for human rights is more likely during an extended peaceful interregnum between wars.

Two Models of Global Governance and the Future of Global Governance

The concluding chapter of this text summarizes the combined lessons from the collected case studies by presenting two models of global governance for human rights. This summary devotes special attention to the successes and failures of global governance for dictatorial impunity, indigenous rights, corporate social responsibility, labor rights, and treaty-making. Global governance and military interventions by the permanent members of the UN Security Council merit a separate discussion in the conclusion. I review proposals for expanding the Security Council as a way to discuss a possible future where there are greater restraints on unilateral military intervention and fewer war crimes

The final chapter also considers the future of global governance for human rights. I present Michael Walzer’s ideal types for governing the globe as a way to speculate on the likely shape of future global governance over human rights. I also consider policy proposals to help us reach this future state—policies that are derivable from the results of my case studies combined with Walzer’s normative theory.

An Introduction to Theories of Global Governance

In 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed and the Cold War ended. In 1992, James Rosenau and Ernst-Otto Czempiel published Governance Without Government: Order and Change in World Politics, a seminal text in the academic literature on global governance. In 1995, the Commission on Global Governance published its initial report expressing hopes that the United Nations would become a more powerful and influential organization. A new academic journal called Global Governance was also created in 1995. These rapid developments helped to bring the concept of global governance to center stage in research on world politics for the first time. A comprehensive description of the voluminous literatures on global governance is beyond the scope of this text. By way of introduction, I will summarize global governance studies in terms of three dimensions: global governance as an analytical worldview; empirical studies of global governance; and the special focus of global governance on international norms.

Mainstream approaches to international relations have a history of limited scope. Dating as far back as the times of Thucydides (historian in ancient Greece, fifth century BCE), most studies of world politics have had a central focus on states, power, and war. Actors other than states, and issues not directly related to national power or war, were largely overlooked or discounted. This view is usually referred to as realism or realpolitik. Global governance as an analytical worldview (or what philosophers call a Weltanschauung) is one of many alternatives that have been advanced to correct or expand upon realism and realpolitik. Other critics of realism can be found in theories of feminism, constructivism, or neoliberal institutionalism. Global governance as an analytical worldview is perhaps the most ambitious and wide-ranging recent alternative to classical realism and its successors (recent variants are referred to as neorealism). Global governance as a theory-based worldview seeks to correct the fallacies and myopia of realism and neorealism.

Theories of global governance argue for an inclusion of, and emphasis on, nonstate actors (in addition to states). Nonstate actors highlighted by global governance include international organizations (IOs), private institutions, and civil society. Global governance theory offers a new lens on the world, freeing us from the restrictions of prior mainstream approaches. Studies of global governance, especially those by James Rosenau, point to the devolution or disaggregation of national sovereignty to other levels of analysis and other actors. They also investigate the linkages between local, national, regional, and global politics. Theories of global governance give us a new terminology, a new way of thinking, and an escape from the limits of mainstream international relations theory. Theories of global governance bring our attention to the rise of nonstate actors, the expanding activities of IOs, the dynamics of regionalism around the globe, and new forms of power.

To demonstrate the power of a global governance approach, most members of this school of thought engage in empirical research as well. Klaus Dingwerth and Philipp Pattberg (2006: 185) argue that global governance describes a specific set of observable and related phenomena and offers answers to failures of existing international relations theories to account for the empirical transformations of post–Cold War global politics.

Empirical studies of global governance abound. Once again, a comprehensive summary is beyond the scope of this discussion, but a series of illustrative examples should suffice. Global governance theory has been used as a guide for empirical studies on climate change and the environment (Cadman, Maguire, and Sampford, 2017; Hoffmann, 2005), the Red Cross and the rules of war (Finnemore, 1996), transnational advocacy networks and political activism (Keck and Sikkink, 1998), and international bond rating corporations (Sinclair, 2005). Other studies look at humanitarian intervention (Falk, 2015), the HIV/AIDS epidemic (Harman and Lisk, 2010), and corporate social responsibility (O. F. Williams, 2014). Additional recent texts look at global governance in the areas of rising powers (Gray and Murphy, 2017), the Security Council (Popovski and Fraser, 2017), or nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) at the UN (Ruhlman, 2017). Prior empirical works on human rights and global governance have focused on national human rights institutions that promote state compliance (Goodman and Pegram, 2012); human rights stewards that make international law more effective at the national level (Hafner-Burton, 2013); and networks of IOs that promote diffusion of rights for women and sexual minorities (Greenhill, 2015). International organizations such as the UN or the European Union, and civil society actors such as NGOs or social movements, are featured in numerous other global governance studies.

A third area of global governance that should be of special interest to students of human rights is its focus on international norms. Global governance scholars argue that norms shape the actions of states and nonstate actors just as much as (and in many cases more than) a realpolitik focus on power calculations. Norms, values, and ethics (not to mention human rights) are topics that realism largely ignored. Thomas Weiss’s work on global governance posits a norm gap in international relations that a global governance approach is especially well-suited to address. Weiss reviews the gaps in norms governing the Security Council, anti-terrorist policy, and humanitarian intervention (2013: chap. 5). He argues that such gaps prevent us from reaching consensus about universally accepted norms and closing these gaps through a better understanding of global governance is "what remains to be done" (2013: 45–48, emphasis in the original); closing the gaps and creating universally accepted norms would create more order, stability, predictability and prosperity with a fairer distribution of benefits for the planet (45). Weiss then relies on Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink’s seminal work (1998) that posits a life cycle of international norms through the stages of emergence, cascading, and internalization.

Global governance is not without its critics, both external and internal to this epistemic community. One major criticism is that global governance is overly broad and poorly defined. Lawrence Finkelstein’s 1995 article entitled What Is Global Governance? was one of the first to assert that the term global governance is so vague and imprecise that it has been used to mean virtually anything. Craig Murphy (2000) is often quoted regarding his view that global governance is poorly done and poorly understood. Alice Ba and Matthew Hoffmann, staunch defenders of global governance theory, admit that global governance can … be an entirely frustrating term and area of inquiry (2005: 1). Thomas Weiss and Rorden Wilkinson (2014) believe that now, more than twenty years after Finkelstein first posed his question, we have hardly advanced any closer to a definitive answer as to what global governance is.

There are also many competing definitions for the term global governance. The Commission on Global Governance (1995) defines it as: The sum of the many ways individuals and institutions, public and private, manage their common affairs. It is a continuing process through which conflicting or diverse interests may be accommodated and cooperative action may be taken. James Muldoon (2004: 9) defines global governance in terms of its three institutional pillars: The concept of global governance involves three primary actors—governments, markets, and civil society—who operate within three basic domains—the political domain, the economic domain, and the socio-cultural domain. This text will use as our working definition of global governance the one offered by Matthew Hoffmann (2005). Global governance in this study is understood to refer to the management of global issues in a political space that has no centralized authority.

The next six chapters fit most closely within the prior literatures that present empirical case studies of global governance. My primary purpose in this book is to demonstrate how a global governance approach can inform our understanding of international human rights. The case studies use global governance as an analytical guide. When relevant, global governance theory will be brought directly into the conversation. In Chapter 1 and Chapter 7, I use the Pinochet precedent to introduce and analyze two different models of human rights and global governance. In Chapter 2, I use the results of my studies of indigenous rights to speak to the limits of global governance, especially in regard to the jealous protection by the great powers over their sovereign rights to control their borders and natural resources. Chapters 3 and 4 bring together the campaigns for corporate social responsibility, a WTO social clause, and American federal court jurisdiction over TNC violations of rights to present a way forward in creating enforceable legal responsibilities for TNCs to respect human rights. The conclusion of Chapter 7 builds upon Walzer’s normative theories of governing the globe to present an achievable future for global governance of international human rights.

This study brings together global governance theory, global governance empirics, and global governance norms. I begin with a discussion in Chapter 1 of the Pinochet precedent. The Pinochet precedent will be presented as an early archetype of global governance for human rights.

Bridging the Divide Between Case Studies of Human Rights and Global Governance Theory

This text brings together case studies of human rights violations and theories of global governance (GG). In some chapters these connections are easy to make. Chapter 1 presents the unique normative contributions that attention to human rights can provide for GG theory. Chapter 2 considers how indigenous rights can help to sort through current debates regarding the changing nature of national sovereignty. Chapters 3 and 4 (combined) show how we can establish new mechanisms for global governance authority over TNCs and human rights. However, the relationships between the combined case studies (six in all) and global governance theory in general also require attention to a broader level of analysis.

While each of the case studies is important enough to deserve independent attention, there is also much to be learned from considering what the combined case studies can tell us about global governance for human rights. The broadest conclusions derivable from this book are based on an inductive logic. This analytical work is presented in Chapter 7. Chapter 7 details two models of global governance for human rights. These two models are introduced in Chapter 1, and then discussed more fully in Chapter 7. I have labeled them as Type I—Global Governance as Synergy; and Type II—Global Governance as Institution Building.

I arrived at the two models by doing my case studies first, and then asking myself what the combined results from all case studies can teach us. This is an inductive logic that uses the rich details of the case studies as a foundation on which to build broader generalizations—and policy prescriptions—that go beyond the particular case studies themselves.

During the process of bringing this book to press, at least one reviewer found it very useful to read the book like some people read detective novels. It is possible, for those readers primarily interested in GG theory, to read Chapters 1 and 7 first, and then go to the case studies contained in Chapters 2 through 6. For those who are more theoretically inclined, going directly to Chapter 7 after reading Chapter 1 will give you the functional equivalent of reading the ending of a detective novel (first) to get the whodunit moment up front. For a GG theorist (or perhaps graduate students) having a fuller understanding of Type I versus Type II global governance, as presented in Chapter 7, might be useful prior to reading the case studies in Chapters 2 through 6.

Most students of human rights, on the other hand, will probably be primarily interested in how global governance is related directly to abuses of indigenous rights, labor rights, and the rights violated by corporations or the war on terror. For those students looking first and foremost for materials on specific violations of rights, I suggest reading the chapters in the order presented. Once the details of the six case studies have been mastered, the inductive logic that produced the theoretical generalizations and policy recommendations of Chapter 7 should be easy to follow.

Chapter 1

The Pinochet Precedent as an Exemplar of Global Governance

Global governance and human rights constitute two areas that are rarely considered in relation to one another. Here I will make some preliminary connections between the two. I begin by considering what a global governance perspective has to offer those of us who have been involved in more traditional approaches to human rights. I then move on to discuss what a human rights perspective can add to existing treatments of global governance. I follow with an illustrative example that shows how combining these two analytical perspectives will give us a better understanding of global politics. My first example of global governance in the area of human rights is what has come to be known as the Pinochet precedent. I will also tie global governance to two alternative perspectives on international justice. This chapter concludes by discussing political disappearances during the post-9/11 war on terror, and more recent efforts to bring dictators to justice.

The Global Governance Contribution to Studies of Human Rights

Mainstream treatments of human rights have traditionally been centered on nation-states. This is, perhaps, as it should be because nation-states are both the primary violators of human rights and (at the same time) those actors charged by international law with the principal responsibilities for protecting and promoting basic rights and fundamental freedoms. More recently, research on human rights has turned (in part) to an added focus on at least some nonstate actors that also violate rights. This more recent development has addressed the impact of economic actors on human rights, especially transnational corporations (TNCs). Supplementing the traditional statecentric bias of human rights literatures with attention to TNCs was an important step forward (see Chapters 3 and 4 in this text). However, to keep the human rights epistemic community current with both the changing nature of global relations, and with recent advances in international relations (IR) theory, we must now expand the scope of our attention. Students and scholars of human rights must come to grips with global governance (GG).

Global governance is a relatively recent development in policy circles and among IR theorists. Much of the early work regarding GG was directed at international organizations (IOs), especially the UN. In 1995, the UN’s Commission on Global Governance published its initial report. The end of the Cold War, combined with the centrality of the Security Council for legitimizing the Gulf War of 1991, led to hopes that the UN would become a stronger and more influential body. Supporters of the UN popularized the term global governance because they wanted to distinguish between GG and global government. Governance is a broader term than government. Talk of governance is designed to highlight global political management that falls short of the formal powers and procedures of a government. Global governance is not about a world state or the creation of some supranational body that would have control or sovereignty above that of the nation-state.

One skilled GG theorist defines global governance as the management of global issues in political spaces that lack centralized authority (Hoffman, 2005). Hence, global governance is explicitly not about making the UN into some sort of global federal state. In many areas of global governance, such as the Pinochet precedent (to be discussed below), the UN may have little or no significant part to play. Global governance has become a sort of catchall phrase to denote all those recent global political trends that are beyond the reach of state sovereignty or outside the scope traditional IR theory. A GG approach, therefore, requires that we study human rights (or any similar topic) in such a way as to cover all of the following (to some extent): states and national interests (standard realpolitik areas); nonstate actors (e.g., TNCs, ethnic groups, NGOs); global civil society (e.g., social movements, NGOs again); regional and international IOs; and even key individuals. Global governance seeks to deconstruct the old IR theory levels of analysis conundrum—that is, if we want to understand global problems such as human rights or environmental destruction, at what level should we cast our analysis? Global governance argues that all levels of analysis may be relevant. Further, the events and actors at these many levels interpenetrate and fuse with one another to such an extent today as to make the old IR theoretical perspectives of realism, neorealism, and neoliberal institutionalism somewhat archaic. A quick synopsis of the evolution of mainstream IR theory should help to make clearer the case in favor of global governance perspectives.

Theoretical treatments of international relations have always struggled to some extent to keep up with the world around us. Classical IR theory, from Thucydides (fifth century BCE) to Machiavelli’s The Prince (1513), and into the post–World War II era, sought to understand states and national power. Hans Morgenthau authored Politics Among Nations, the seminal post–World War II text for realism, in 1948 at a time when