Democracy and Human Rights

Many commentators think that democracy and human rights are different sides of the same coin and that advance in one necessarily brings advance in the other. Conceptually, the two share a commitment to well-being and a set of principles around accountability, representation, transparency,

participation and inclusion. Empirically, analyses have indeed shown a positive and significant relationship between the two across large samples of countries and time. 

At both the conceptual and the empirical level, however, there are certain challenges to the naive view that ‘all good things go together’. Conceptually, democracy and human rights share certain features, while other features remain quite distinct. Where democracy offers political accommodation, spaces for deliberation and negotiation and the possibility for peaceful resolution of conflicts, human rights are grounded in a strong moral discourse and fortified through the rule of law, which has a particular judgemental and ‘adjudicative’ way of resolving disputes and finding particular actors and parties in breach of their legal obligations. 

This judgemental, adversarial and confrontational orientation of human rights, while motivated by a shared set of principles, can sometimes be at odds with democracy and its ability to find common ground between and among contending groups. While there are many studies in political science and international relations that demonstrate the positive and significant relationship between democracy and human rights (Landman 2005a), it is vitally important to understand that such a relationship is very far from perfect. 

It was popular at the end of the last century to identify the problem of ‘illiberal democracy’ as a trend among transitional countries that had managed to establish basic democratic institutions, hold several free and fair elections and guarantee at least the chance that the opposition could win power while at the same time fail to provide protection for a wide range of different human rights (Diamond 1999; Zakaria 2003; Landman 2005a). 

This ‘human rights gap’ is a significant challenge not only for the new and restored democracies in the world but also for the old and established democracies. The nature of precariousness developed in this book is one that affects all societies, and defenders of human rights need to remain vigilant in all political contexts. Explanations for the gap include weak state institutions and the failure of a human rights culture to grip national consciousness in ways that inculcate human rights values throughout societies.

The post-9/11 ‘war on terror’ demonstrated how quickly long-fought and long-held commitments to human rights can be undermined through appeal to external threat and the priorities of national security. Democratic publics are quick to rush in legislation that centralizes executive authority and provides legal means to subvert rights protections at national and international levels. 

The international community roundly condemned the Bush Administration’s rewriting (or reinterpreting) of international law in ways that justified the use of extraordinary rendition, the detention of ‘enemy combatants’ and the use of ‘intensive interrogation techniques’ such as waterboarding (Blakeley 2011). 

The election of Barack Obama in 2008 led many to expect a reversal of such policies, which by and large has happened, but in their place, President Obama has increased the use of targeted assassination carried out primarily through drones and remote warfare, which many believe runs afoul of international law. In late 2011, President Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which codifies into law indefinite military detention without charge or trial. 

The provisions in the act authorize the president to order the military to pick up and imprison people who are captured anywhere in the world indefinitely. The use of such practices sends strong and contradictory signals to both allies and enemies of the United States in ways that continue to undermine human rights and limit the ‘soft power’ (Nye 2005) of the world’s democracies.

Source : Human Rights and Democracy By : Todd Landman