A State-Centric Approach to the Islamic State?

In A Fresh Start, Beitz is careful to construct a practical conception of human rights -- this means taking the "doctrine and practice of human rights as we find them in international political life as the source materials for constructing a conception of human rights" (102). This means that there are no fundamental rights which are independently discoverable, and that normative discourse/the current international rights order is how one must come to understand human rights. In some sense, this "constrains our conception of a human right from the start," but "a practical conception need not take the details of present practice as beyond criticism" (103, 105).

Yet some elements of Beitz's model go beyond "the details." For example, his model has three primary elements, and each must be secured if it is to hold: 

1) Human rights are designed to protect urgent individual interests against predictable dangers 

2) Human rights apply in the first instance to the political institutions of states, including their constitutions and laws -- while not all elements of international human rights doctrine must be codified, "governments have limited discretion to choose the means" by which they carry out human rights requirements.

3) Human rights are matters of international concern, so the international community may hold states accountable. Further, states and non-state agents have pro tanto reasons to A) assist states' in their capacities and B) protect human rights when the state isn't willing to do so.

This brings me to my primary concern with Beitz: as is implicit in my first paragraph, he's committed to recognizing the situation on the ground, and protecting urgent individual interests as they're constituted "in the modern world" (112). However in focusing on the role of states, Beitz's discussion of non-state actors suggests we are to rely on states "to regulate the behavior of non-state actors" (124). Yet what happens when there are failed states, or groups with incredible destructive capacities and no international accountability? Beitz admits that since human rights is an "emergent practice," episodic political efforts could become highly structured, and so we might need "a revision of the model" (124). It seems we've reached this point with the Islamic State, but how would Beitz argue we should move forward?

In answering this question, we're inevitably going to have to discuss "pro tanto" reasons for action. Pro tanto reasons "are genuine reasons for action, but they do not necessarily override competing reasons that may also be in play" (117). This means that action should be a measured, normative response to a human rights failure -- it "will not require action by outside agents" who are appropriately placed to act (117). Some cases will have "very strong pro tanto reasons" pushing the international community to act, but even these special cases aren't binding -- urgency to act is scalar, not binary (110). However, are we convinced that certain situations should not REQUIRE action from well-placed international actors? I certainly think we have a responsibility to combat ISIS and other abhorrent cases of genocide, but is Beitz okay to leave this up to normative judgement?

Progressive Convergence

At the end of his fourth chapter, Beitz introduces the concept of "progressive convergence." Unlike overlapping consensus, which surveys the current moral and philosophical beliefs that exist in cultures around the world, progressive convergence analyzes different cultures by their possible transformations following pressures for change. Much of this change would occur as a result of "evolutionary reinterpretation," or the introduction of new interpretations of central, cultural texts (such as religious texts) in a way that is compatible with most human rights doctrines. Beitz notes that while beneficial for consensus, it must "be understood that the point of a fresh elaboration is not simply to fit the tradition to the demands of the world, but to provide that tradition with its most compelling statement" (89). Thus, Beitz concludes with progressive convergence, we can judge a certain culture's "reachability from" certain human rights, or how much would a society need to change in order to have views that are compatible with certain human rights.

Beitz' introduction of progressive convergence seemed to model Amartya Sen's approach that I took discomfort with in my last blog post. In our previous reading, Sen sets out to demonstrate how many cultures have "constitutive elements of democracy" if they reinterpret the works of their prominent philosophers. Applied to human rights, Sen would probably agree with the idea of progressive convergence because it seeks to reconcile cultures through revisiting traditionally interpreted texts.

For this reason, I think that Beitz provides a really strong criticism of Sen. Discussing the possible (but ultimately insufficient) reasons for supporting a progressive convergence theory, Beitz explains that this approach may be appealing because it avoids unjustifiable paternalism. It does so because:

Members of the society could not complain that the interference imposes values that they have no reason to accept because, by hypothesis, those values would be potentially available to them as adherents of their own society's worldview; members of the society do, in fact, have reason to accept the values imposed, even if the reason is not apparent to them. (93)

This argument echoes Sen's approach with his interpretations; people should not object to democracy because there are qualities of it within their own societies. However, as Beitz responds,

The problem is that the values relied on to justify interference would not, in fact, be widely established in the society. If the progressive convergence hypothesis were accepted, it could be said that these values are potentially available to its members, but it would not follow that the values would actually be accepted by reasonable members of the culture at the time of the interference. (93)

Here, Beitz argues that simply demonstrating that societies have the potential to have compatible views with human rights is insufficient. Instead, a society must have reason to adopt these views, which requires a break with the customs of the society which is not fully solved for by this approach. Beitz can thus be seen as similarly responding to Sen's approach by arguing that it is not significant that there are constitutive elements of democracy within other cultures. For these elements to make an impact, Sen's identified cultures would need to shift their traditional interpretations to emphasize these qualities. Such shifts which would raise questions about whether or not the values of other countries were then being imposed onto these cultures, even though such values technically already "exist" in the cultures.

On Cesco's Behalf: Protecting Collective Rights with the Mechanism of Human Rights?

 Hey guys! I was really interested in Beitz’s considerations of whether values with a collective dimension (right to participate in certain cultural practices, etc.) ought to be bound up in human rights. In short, Beitz acknowledges that some theorists—particularly Marx—criticized the “excessively individualistic” conception of human rights and the ensuing emphasis on interests like personal property and religious freedom over “forms of public action to which a high priority should be given,” like a baseline standard of living (112). To prove that his model of human rights does not exclude conceptions of collective rights at the outset, Beitz shows that any collective dimension of a right, which “cannot be explained without reference to their group membership” is accompanied by a value for the individual, which is then appealed to by his model of human rights.

I’m especially curious about how would go about adjudicating between a collective right (accessed through the individual’s desire to be in that group and have those rights) and an individual right if they were to conflict. I find it especially relevant when considering the erosion of cultural practices. What if an individual really needs access to a market to sell her wares/practices, but the mechanism that brings her increased economic resources also destroys local traditions? (roads, machinery, social values from the global North, etc.) As was mentioned by Sen, it can occur that in the name of increasing one right, another is restricted. Beitz seems to slip away by claiming to be agnostic about whether these should be included in a basket of human rights, but what do you guys think? 

Natural Rights and the basis for action

As I was doing the Beitz reading I kept going back to the discussion we had during our last seminar, during which Bria argued for an intrinsic grounding of rights, which is incredibly appealing to me. However, as Beitz introduced the idea of natural rights, it occurred to me that I am not completely clear on their functioning, as rights per se, as opposed to perhaps entitlements or some other such different framing.
On page 54 Beitz addressesses the view of natural rights as rights that exist outside of positive law or society. Essentially natural rights are put forth as pre-institutional rights that we all hold equally--and as Beitz goes on to argue: "express moral protections upon which people are entitled to insist regardless of their institutional memberships." The attractiveness of such a view of rights is obvious, and I am strongly drawn to such a conception of rights. As Beitz also notes, it effectively encapsulates the universal, non-negotiable nature of rights that appeals to me so much; regardless of who you, where you were born, etc. you retain certain inalienable rights that entitle you to protections and generally a basic standard of human dignity.
Unfortunately our recent exploration of rights has left me unsure of how to defend such a natural grounding of rights. Beitz indirectly brings up my concern on page 56: "the legislature is bound [...] to establish 'known authorised judges' who [by adjudicating] can help avoid the dangerous disorder likely to arise when each person is judge of his or her own case." This reminded me of Hobbes' and his State of War, we enter into society exactly for the sake of avoiding this issue. However, if natural rights are truly rights (and as such we entitled to their fulfilment), this would seem to pose a serious threat in the State of Nature. Let's imagine one of my natural rights is being infringed and I deem it appropriate to retaliate (reasonably) in order to defend myself and my right. My opponent is certain to escalate the situation, this being the State of War (which Hobbes convincingly argues is the same as the State of War). Natural rights then would appear to entitle or further propagate the issue of conflict in a pre-institutional setting. This is problematic not only because of the conflict but because this would appear to threaten the standing of natural rights as rights at all--for them to be meaningful do they not require some enforcement mechanism? Beitz discusses this in length in the case of international rights, and it seems to me that the requirements to be a right are not met by natural rights.
Honestly I don't like any part of the above reasoning and I would love it if someone could save me here and rescue natural rights from my logic. I'm hoping that I've missed something, because the advantages of natural rights appeal to me a lot.

Urgent Care in Human Rights

In proposing a two-level model of human rights, Charles Beitz describes human rights as the protection of vulnerable “urgent individual interests” from “standard threats” (110). I am interested in discussing the urgent interest aspect. He considers urgent interests, for instance, as standard protection from the state’s arbitrary use of power and assurance of personal security, liberty, and nutrition. Beitz carefully distinguishes an urgent interest from a universal one by defining establishing the qualification for an urgent interest as one that “would be reasonable to regard its satisfaction as important within some range of normal lives but we need not believe that all persons value the interest or care about its satisfaction in their own cases” (110). Receiving a certain level of education, for example under this definition, may not be important to everyone, but is considered as significant enough to fulfill and therefore, should receive  protection.

            While I enjoy how Beitz anticipates the question of how we should weigh the variety of urgent interests by defining urgency as a "scalar, not a binary, property,” I found his answer to the existence of a threshold to determine the qualifications of urgent interest as unsettling. Beitz argues that the consideration of urgent interest depends on the situation and mainly relies on normative judgment. He then sets limits on his model by mentioning that, “A model can draw attention to the relevant considerations but it cannot settle the judgments” (110). Considering this aspect, I am interested how this concept of urgent interest deals with relative position. The concept of dignity that Beitz mentions earlier in the reading directly corresponds with relative position (67). To maintain dignity, Beitz highlights that a higher level of material well-being may be necessary. Would the desire to uphold our dignity serve as sufficient justification for an urgent interest? If so, it seems that any want could be perceived as urgent as long as it fits under Beitz’s standard of an urgent interest. 

Interesting Article: Sen's Measure of Poverty Applied

Hey everyone,

Was just reading this article because the title caught my eye, and it turns out Sen is responding to Rawls as best he can. Here's an excerpt in case anybody was interested:

"Scholars and policy-makers inspired by the capabilities-based approach of Amartya Sen are advancing broader approaches to measures of poverty and well-being. Some nations including Mexico have formally adopted a multidimensional measure. Others such as France and England are giving more weight to non-monetary forms of disadvantage. The U.S. has made strides in addressing the many shortcomings of the official poverty measure through the creation of the much more nuanced Supplemental Poverty Measure. But it is still an income-only yardstick.A more multifaceted approach to measuring poverty, like the one offered here, reveals some of the insights that can be gained in the U.S. by framing the issue more broadly—from revealing the deep racial and ethnic disparities that exist to shedding light on the differing dimensions of disadvantage experienced from one group to the next."

Check out the full article here.

The Language of Human Rights

I really enjoyed this reading -- Beitz put forward a bunch of really interesting ideas that I'm excited to see how he develops. I have questions that I think I will hold off on asking until next seminar when we've read chapters 3,4, and 5.

I thought one of the coolest points in the reading was the importance of human rights as a moral language. In the preface, Beitz frames his book by discussing his decision not to write this book earlier: "That might not have been a mistake then, but it would be today. In the intervening years the language of human rights has become the common idiom of social criticism in global politics. That there should be wide acceptance of global critical standards for domestic political institutions is one part of what people mean when they speak of a “human rights revolution” in the last several decades" (xi). Beitz seems particularly interested in the language that we use to talk about rights because of the normative force of the language of human rights. He continues that, "The problem is that, although the idea and language of human rights have become increasingly prominent in public discourse, it has not become any more clear what kinds of objects human rights are supposed to be, why we should believe that people have them, or what follows from this belief for political practice" (xi). I find this last sentence especially interesting in retrospect because Beitz does not base his argument in trying to understand "what kinds of objects human rights are supposed to be." Instead, he focuses on the empirical fact that we developed human rights (and the associated language) as a normative force that gives us reasons to act. This empirical claim is largely based on the language that we use to talk about human rights, despite the fact that (aka other empirical claim) that people have different justifications for supporting the idea of human rights. The language provides the platform to bridge the differing justifications and create the empirical fact of human rights -- "Today, if the public discourse of peacetime global society can be said to have a common moral language, it is that of human rights" (1).

Thinking of human rights in terms of language also avoids the limitations of other conceptions. "The idea of a regime focuses attention on explicit rules and formal procedures for their application. To some extent these elements are present for human rights, but an exclusive focus on them would fail to embrace the ways in which human rights function as standards of aspiration— for example, as bases of political criticism, elements of a shared moral language, and ideals that guide efforts at political change by individuals and nongovernmental organizations" (43-44).

I wrote about this mostly because I thought it was really really cool. It also helps me think about rights differently, and raises a potentially obvious (but I think relevant?) question. I think, under Beitz's conception of human rights as an empirical fact of the world, they are essentially objects that we constructed to provide a common language of moral touchstones. If we created them, in theory, we could potentially dismantle them -- as norms make way for new norms. Language (even powerful, normative language) changes throughout history. Beitz himself acknowledges that the language and prevalence of human rights deteriorated during the Depression (16), supposedly when we had bigger (or smaller?) fish to fry. This is always my concern with empirical arguments -- just because the language of human rights is a fact now doesn't mean it will always be. But human rights feels (to me) like it carries a moral force separate from whatever we constructed in our shared history. Maybe I'm an intrinsic value person -- though I really think I'd rather be a practical, empirical person. And maybe this post will be irrelevant after we do Wednesday's reading. I'm really excited to see how Beitz develops this, because I might be on his team!

Stateless populations & lack of universality in Beitz

Beitz defines human rights as a global discursive and political practice that 'consists of a set of norms for the regulation of the behavior of states' (8). He claims that 'The central idea of international human rights is that states are responsible for satisfying certain conditions in their treatment of their own people' (13). Beitz's practical conception of human rights puts the responsibility on states to satisfy certain basic condition for its people, and to 'protect against threats to personal security and liberty and to guarantee some recourse against the arbitrary use of state power' (29). However, he also claims that human rights are universal, 'Everyone has human rights,' (1).

I see a contradiction here, because Beitz's theory addresses states, however human rights are individual rights and should therefore address individuals. The theory claims that holding states responsible for upholding human rights will lead to universal human rights, however there are many stateless people. For example more than one million people in Myanmar's Rakhine district are stateless, it is estimated that over 700,000 Ivorians are also stateless and the occupants of Guantanamo Bay are stateless (to name a few). Under Beitz's practical conception of human rights, these people have no protection of their rights because their is no state to be held accountable for the fact that their rights are not being realized. If human rights are universal, surely they should extend to these stateless people, and I think this is an issue for Beitz.