Human Rights and Democracy: Expanding or Contracting
Author(s)
Arat, Zehra F.
Abstract
This paper expands on the literature which has established that the U.S. and other Western societies have followed and promoted a Lockean model of democracy that emphasizes property rights, civil liberties, representative government, and limited state, without much commitment to social and economic rights. Thus, wherever this model has prevailed, neither democracy nor human rights has been fully realized, and the transformation of “authoritarian” political systems into liberal democracies has not necessarily led the new “democratic” governments to observe or protect human rights. I contend that contemporary Western interpretations of human rights and democracy are too narrow, fall short of even satisfying Lockean understanding of these terms, and further that the rhetoric currently employed in debates pertaining to human rights and democracy tends to diminish the scope of both terms.
