2agendas share a more complex and c

2
agendas share a more complex and contradictory relationship than is often assumed
.
Specifically, I seek to highlight the importance of paying attention to the
possibility
that
rights
themselves are inherently ‘contradictory’ in nature and that therein lies their
contribution to
the
democratisation
agenda
. Indeed, the
provo
cative aim of this article is
,
by
d
rawing on
Samuel
Bowles
’s
and
Herbe
r
t
Gintis’s vie
w of rights claim
s as
‘clashing’
and
‘
p
olitico
-
economically
’
grounded, to
argue for a more politicised and openly cont
radiction
-
seeking
(rather than ‘technical’ and ‘coherent’) approach to
rights and
democracy promotion.
I advance this
(
theoretical
ly motivated but practica
lly consequential)
argument
specifically in
the context EU
’s human rights and
democracy promotion
policies
, although
the theoretical
claims advanced here arguably apply beyond the actions of this specific actor
.
Introduction
H
uman
rights have been on
the agenda
of most major western states since the early 1990s.
The
rise of
human rights values
in
aid policies and inter
national organisations’ activities
in
recent decades
has been well documented
by a number of commentators i
n international
studies, dev
elopment
studies
and international law.
1
A broad consensus, it is argued, now
exists on the value and content of human rights promotion and many donor states take human
rights promotion to be central to their development and good governance agenda. Yet, w
hat is
less often noted is that human rights policies have been closely associated with another
agenda in most donors’ frameworks: their policies have also made reference to democracy
3
promotion and assistance aims. The US was the first to launch the democr
acy promotion
agenda as a key part of its foreign policy strategy but, since the mid
-
1990s, many others have
followed its lead. Notably, during the last decade especially, the EU has been seeking to
carve out distinct room for itself in this policy field.
Other international organisations, such as
the UN, and a multiplicity of NGO actors have also sought a role for themselves in the
expanding democracy promotion industry, which has been seen as a field of action closely
associated with, but yet in key aspec
ts distinct, from human rights advocacy. Indeed, the
democracy promotion field has gained greater confidence in recent years as there have been
increasing calls for donors to put the ‘D’ back into their ‘governance, human rights and
democracy’ aid work.
2
This piece
seeks to examine the curious, and rather more complex than expected, interaction
between the democracy promotion and human rights agendas. The article
has a two
-
fold aim.
First, it seeks to engender a better understanding of the role of human ri
ghts promotion as
part of democracy promotion. The two agendas have been seen as conjoined by most major
actors, yet some
commentators
with
in the donor community as well as within recipient states
have criticised the
notion that they are
agendas that are
e
asily compatible.
I examine here the
plausibility and meaning of this latter claim.
Second, it is the aim here to engender a better
understanding of what human rights promotion means for how we understand democracy
promotion practice. It has recentl
y been
claimed that two distinct perspectives
–
narrow
‘political’ and wider ‘developmental’
–
perspectives can be taken on democracy promotion in
the community of experts.
3
I seek here to understand what t
he role of human rights promotion
is in
shaping these two
perspectives.
4
I analyse both of the above questions with very specific analytical framework in mind. It is an
analytical framework that places emphasis specifically on the
‘
politico
-
economic
underpinnings
’
of human rights and democracy promotion. Often t
hese agendas are
understood as purely ‘political’
–
a trend which takes its lead from the tendency to conform to
a liberal framework of thought in understanding the content of both rights and democracy.
H
ere
the self
-
evidence of
such an u
nderstanding is ch
allenged; the aim, instead, is to
explicitly reveal
the underlying politico
-
eco
nomic underpinnings
of the human rights and
democracy aid
policies. In so doi
ng, I adopt an understanding of models of democracy as
‘
politico
-
economic
’ in nature,
and specifical
ly
analyse them in relation to
the position on
the
relationship of
rights and democracy developed by
Samuel
Bowles
and Herbert Gintis
.
4
Drawing on their work on rights and democracy, it
is argued here that ‘clashes of rights’
prov
ides a central aspect to t
he idea of
democracy and its politico
-
economic foundations
. Far
from liberal rights being central to democratisation, it is the clashes of rights which is
considered central to democratisation. This argument, if plausible, has consequences for the
kinds of
rights democracy promoters advance and see as compatible with democracy
enhancement. Democracy promotion agencies, such as the EU, tend to
see all rights
promotion
as contributing
to
wards the
agenda of
‘liberal democracy’
. I argue here that
depending on h
ow democracy and rights are conceptualised, and how their politico
-
economic
context is understood, we gain
a wildly
differing set of perspectives on human rights and
democracy promotion. We can see that far from advocating a consistent model, the
democracy
promoters
,
inadvertently in part,
advocate clashing sets of rights.
This
is an interesting insight which
can be read in
either a
positive
or
a negative way
. It can
be read positively in the sense that we can come to acknowledge that dealing with clashin
g
rights has always been at the heart of democratisation and is a source of the radical potential
5
of democracy to change societies and their socio
-
economic inequalities.
5
Yet, it can also be
read in a negativ
e sense
: it could be argued that
in
democracy pr
omotion discourse and
practice
at present
this radical potential of clashing sets of rights is by and large ignored,
instrumentalised, and de
-
radicalised because of the calls for ‘consistency’ of and
‘depoliticised’ conception of rights.
I examine rights a
nd democracy promotion here in the
context of EU democracy promotion to clarify these trends.
It is argued that in current
democracy promotion
by the EU
a rather conservative set of understandings of rights and
their role in politico
-
economic struggles dom
inates, although much potential also exists in
developing these agendas in the direction of more pluralistic
,
contested and politico
-
economically radical rights
and hence democracy promotion
agendas.