SEEING DOUBLE: Human Rights Impact through Qualitative and Quantitative Eyes

SEEING DOUBLE Human Rights Impact through Qualitative and Quantitative Eyes M. Rodwan Abouharb and David Cingranelli. 2007. Human Rights and Structural Adjustment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 290 pp.

Clifford Bob. 2005. The Marketing of Rebellion: Insurgents, Media, and International Activism. New York: Cambridge University Press, 237 pp.

Sonia Cardenas. 2007. Conflict and Compliance: State Responses to International Human Rights Pressure. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 188 pp.

Shareen Hertel. 2007. Unexpected Power: Conflict and Change among Transnational Activists. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 159 pp.

Stephen Hopgood. 2006. Keepers of the Flame: Understanding Amnesty International. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 249 pp.

Todd Landman. 2005. Protecting Human Rights: A Comparative Study. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 231 pp.

Sally Engle Merry. 2006. Human Rights and Gender Violence: Translating International Law into Local Justice. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 269 pp.

Darius Rejali. 2007. Torture and Democracy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 849 pp.

I. Introduction

OVER the course of the past two decades the idiom of human rights has spread like wildfire across international policy arenas, reshaping the way statespersons, journalists, and scholars speak about international relations,1 international law,2 trade,3 development assistance,4 media reporting,5 and postconflict justice.6 The budgets of nongovernmental human rights groups are mounting, and the list of human rights training courses grows longer by the year.7 Rich countries increasingly include human rights machineries within their foreign policy bureaucracies, 8 and human rights agencies at the UN and in regional bodies are being reconfigured and strengthened.

Public support for human rights within the industrialized North is also widespread. In the United States, for example, a 2005 Gallup survey found 86 percent in favor of "promoting and defending human rights in other countries."9 A survey of American and West European "opinion leaders" that same year suggested that Amnesty International's reputation was stronger than that of many leading corporations.10 Figure 1 shows a handful of these successes, demonstrating an increase in mainstream media use of the term "human rights," growth in the number of international human rights governance organizations (igos), and increased reliance on human rights-related trade conditionality.11

The pace and extent of this rights revolution is remarkable.12 Until the mid-1970s human rights activists were routinely excluded from global policy circles. Today the discourse on finance,...