The Human Rights Project and the Limits of Cosmopolitan Rights

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3384/de-ethica.2001-8819.25914

Keywords:

human rights, cosmopolitanism, backlash, neoliberalism, global governance

Abstract

This essay argues for a critical reconsideration of cosmopolitan human rights and of the post-Cold War Human Rights Project. It begins by contextualizing cosmopolitan rights in their historical and ideological context, showing that they are deeply complicit in a broader regime of neoliberal global governance, helping to justify and to depoliticize new modalities of coercive conditionality that characterize that regime. It shows how specific features of cosmopolitan rights contribute directly to this form of indirect rule and opines that present indifference or hostility toward human rights can and should be understood in part as a product of this complicity and of the wider failures of neoliberal global governance. The essay concludes with some reflections on the study of backlash against human rights amidst the real threat of rising ethno-nationalism and fascistic politics.

References

Anghie, Antony. ”The Evolution of International Law: Colonial and Postcolonial Realities.” Third World Quarterly 27, no. 5 (2006/07/01 2006): 739-53.

Bakan, Abigail B., and Tasmeen Abu-Laban, eds. Human Rights and the United Nations: Paradox and

Promise. New York: Routledge, 2025.

Bartholomew, Amy, and Jennifer Breakspear. ”Human Rights as Swords of Empire?”. Socialist Register 40 (2004): 125-45.

Bates, Genevieve. ”Backlash and Beyond: Three Perspectives on the Politics of International Justice.” Oxford University Press UK, 2024.

Baxi, Upendra. The Future of Human Rights. 3 ed. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008.

Beitz, Charles R. The Idea of Human Rights. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Benhabib, Seyla. ”Another Cosmopolitanism.” In Another Cosmopolitanism, edited by Robert Post, 13-80. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Berman, Sheri, and Maria Snegovaya. ”Populism and the Decline of Social Democracy.” Journal of Democracy 30, no. 1 (2019): 5-19.

Bhambra, Gurminder K., and Robbie Shilliam. ”Introduction: 'Silence' and Human Rights.” Chap. Introduction In Silencing Human Rights: Critical Engagements with a Contested Project, edited by Gurminder K. Bhambra and Robbie Shilliam, 1-15. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.

Blyth, Mark. Great Transformations: Economic Ideas and Institutional Change in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. doi:DOI: 10.1017/CBO9781139087230.

Cheah, Pheng. ”Given Culture: Rethinking Cosmopolitical Freedom in Transnationalism.” In Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling Beyond the Nation, edited by Pheng Cheah and Bruce Robbins, 290-328: U of Minnesota Press, 1998.

———. Inhuman Conditions. Harvard University Press, 2009.

de Gouges, Olympe. ”The Rights of Woman.” https://olympedegouges.eu/, 1791.

Douzinas, Costas. Human Rights and Empire: The Political Philosophy of Cosmopolitanism. New York: Routledge-Cavendish, 2007.

Fine, Robert. ”Cosmopolitanism and Human Rights: Radicalism in a Global Age.” Metaphilosophy 40, no. 1 (2009): 8-23.

Forst, Rainer. The Right to Justification: Elements of a Constructivist Theory of Justice. Translated by Jeffrey Flynn. New York: Columbia University Press, 2012. 2007.

Friedman, Milton. Capitalism and Freedom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982.

Fukuyama, Francis. The End of History and the Last Man. New York: Free Press, 1992.

Goldstein, Judith, and Robert O Keohane. ”Ideas and Foreign Policy: An Analytical Framework.” Chap. 1 In Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions, and Political Change, 3-30. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2019.

Goodale, Mark. Reinventing Human Rights. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2022.

Goodhart, Michael. ”Forget Cosmopolitanism! The Future of Human Rights Is Global.” OpenGlobalRights (2020). Published electronically 6 November 2020. https://www.openglobalrights.org/forget-cosmopolitanism-the-future-of-human-rights-is-local/.

———. ”The Future of Human Rights Is Local ”. Chap. 3 In Human Rights at the Intersections: Transformation through Local, Global, and Cosmopolitan Challenges, edited by Anthony Tirado Chase, Pardis Mahdavi, Hussein Banai and Sofia Gruskin, 33-42. London: Bloomsbury/I.B. Tauris, 2023.

———. Injustice: Political Theory for the Real World. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018.

———. ”Liberal Pragmatism and Liberal Fantasy in the Era of Backlash Politics.” Political Science Quarterly 138, no. 4 (2023): 549-62.

———. ”Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World. By Samuel Moyn. Cambridge, Ma: Harvard University Press, 2018. 296p. $29.95 Cloth.” Perspectives on Politics 16, no. 4 (2018): 1160-62.

Gowan, Peter S. ”Neoliberal Cosmopolitanism.” New Left Review 11, no. September / October (2001): 79-93.

Habermas, Jürgen. Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy. Translated by William Rehg. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996.

Halldenius, Lena. ”On the Use and Abuse of History in Philosophy of Human Rights.” Chap. 1 In Discursive Framings of Human Rights: Negotiating Agency and Victimhood, edited by Karen-Margrethe Simonsen and Jonas Ross Kjærgård, 11-25. Abingdon, UK: Birbeck Law Press (Taylor and Francis), 2017.

Helfer, Laurence R, and Anne E Showalter. ”Opposing International Justice: Kenya’s Integrated Backlash Strategy against the Icc.” International Criminal Law Review 17, no. 1 (2017): 1-46.

Hendrickson, David C. ”The Renovation of American Foreign Policy.” Foreign Aff. 71, no. 2 (Spring 1991): 48-63.

Hopgood, Stephen. The Endtimes of Human Rights Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013.

———. ”Human Rights: Past Their Sell-by Date.” Opendemocracy.net (18 June 2013 2013).

Hopgood, Stephen, Jack Synder, and Leslie Vinjamuri. ”Introduction: Human Rights Past, Present, and Future.” Chap. 1 In Human Rights Futures, edited by Stephen Hopgood, Jack Snyder and Leslie Vinjamuri, 1-23. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.

Ishay, Micheline R. The History of Human Rights: From Ancient Times to the Globalization Era. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2004.

Jensen, Steven L. B. The Making of International Human Rights: The 1960s, Decolonization, and the Reconstruction of Global Values. [in English] Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016.

Kant, Immanuel. Kant's Political Writings. Translated by H.B. Nisbet. Edited by Hans Reiss. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970.

Klein, Naomi. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. New York: Metropolitan Books (Henry Holt and Company), 2007.

Kundnani, Hans. ”What Is the Liberal International Order?,” In ”Liberal International Order Project,” Liberal International Order Project, no. 17 (April)(2017): 1-10.

Lauren, Paul Gordon. The Evolution of International Human Rights: Visions Seen. 3 ed. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011. 1998.

Madhok, Sumi. Vernacular Rights Cultures: The Politics of Origins, Human Rights, and Gendered Struggles for Justice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. doi:DOI: 10.1017/9781108961844.

Madsen, Mikael Rask. ”Two-Level Politics and the Backlash against International Courts: Evidence from the Politicisation of the European Court of Human Rights.” The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 22, no. 4 (2020): 728-38.

Madsen, Mikael Rask, Pola Cebulak, and Micha Wiebusch. ”Backlash against International Courts: Explaining the Forms and Patterns of Resistance to International Courts.” International Journal of Law in Context 14, no. 2 (2018): 197-220.

Malcomson, Scott L. ”The Varieties of Cosmopolitan Experience.” In Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling Beyond the Nation, edited by Pheng Cheah and Bruce Robbins, 233-45: U of Minnesota Press, 1998.

Maldonado-Torres, Nelson. ”On the Coloniality of Human Rights.” Revista Crítica de Ciências Sociais, no. 114 (2017).

Maritain, Jacques. The Rights of Man and Natural Law. London: Centenary Press, 1944.

Mearsheimer, John J. ”Bound to Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Liberal International Order.” International security 43, no. 4 (2019): 7-50.

Mehta, Uday Singh. Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth-Century British Liberal Thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.

Mignolo, Walter D. ”Who Speaks for the “Human” in Human Rights?”. Cadernos de Estudos Culturais 3, no. 5 (2011): 157-73.

Moka-Mubelo, Willy. ”A Cosmopolitan Human Rights Regime.” Chap. 7 In Reconciling Law and Morality in Human Rights Discourse, 169-99: Springer, 2017.

Moyn, Samuel. Human Rights and the Uses of History. New York: Verso Books, 2014.

———. The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History. Cambridge, MA: Belknap (Harvard), 2010.

———. Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018.

Mudge, Stephanie L. Leftism Reinvented: Western Parties from Socialism to Neoliberalism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018.

Muthu, Sankar. Enlightenment against Empire. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003.

Namli, Elena. Human Rights as Ethics, Politics, and Law. Uppsala Studies in Social Ethics Uppsala, Sweden: Uppsala University 2014.

———. Legal Positivism, Politics, and Critical Ethics. New York: Bloomsbury, forthcoming, chs. 5&6

Nanda, Ved P. ”The “Good Governance” Concept Revisited.” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 603, no. 1 (2006): 269-83.

Nelson, Paul, and Ellen Dorsey. ”New Rights Advocacy in a Global Public Domain.” European Journal of International Relations 13, no. 2 (2007): 187-216.

Nye, Joseph S. ”What New World Order?”. Foreign Affairs 71, no. 2 (1992): 83-96.

Pagden, Anthony. ”Human Rights, Natural Rights, and Europe's Imperial Legacy.” Political Theory 31, no. 2 (April 2003): 171-99.

Peterson, V. Spike, and Laura Parisi. ”Are Women Human? It's Not an Academic Question.” Chap. 6 In Human Rights Fifty Years On: A Reappraisal, edited by Tony Evans, 132-60. Manchester, UK: Mancehster University Press, 1998.

Piketty, Thomas. Capital in the 21st Century. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013.

Posner, Eric. The Twilight of International Human Rights Law. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.

Rajagopal, Balakrishnan. International Law from Below : Development, Social Movements and Third World Resistance. [in English] Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Book.

Rawls, John. The Law of Peoples; with, 'the Idea of Public Reason Revisited'. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.

Raz, Joseph. ”Human Rights in the Emerging World Order.” Transnational Legal Theory 1, no. 1 (2010): 31-47.

———. ”Human Rights without Foundations.” Chap. 15 In The Philosophy of International Law, edited by Samantha Besson and John Tasioulas, 321-37. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Rieff, David. ”The Precarious Triumph of Human Rights.” The New York Times Magazine, August 8 1999, 36-41.

Rorty, Richard. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.

———. ”The Priority of Democracy to Philosophy.” Chap. 10 In The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, edited by Merrill D. Peterson and Robert C. Vaughn, 257-82. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

———. ”Response to Appiah.” In Globalizing Rights: The Oxford Amnesty Lectures 1999, edited by Matthew J. Gibney. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Rosecrance, Richard. ”A New Concert of Powers.” Foreign Aff. 71, no. 2 (Spring 1991): 64-82.

Sangiovanni, Andrea. Humanity without Dignity: Moral Equality, Respect, and Human Rights. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017.

Seliger, Martin. Ideology and Politics. London: Allen and Unwin, 1976.

Sellars, Kirsten. The Rise and Rise of Human Rights. Gloucestershire, UK: Sutton, 2002.

Shilliam, Robbie, and Gurminder Bhambra. ”Conclusion: Human Rights in Contemporary Global Perspective.” Chap. Conclusion In Silencing Human Rights: Critical Engagements with a Contested Project, edited by Gurminder K. Bhambra and Robbie Shilliam, 242-50. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.

Smith, Jackie. Social Movements for Global Democracy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008.

Smith, Jackie, Michael Goodhart, Patrick Manning, and John Markoff, eds. Social Movements and World-System Transformation New York: Routledge, 2017.

Stanley, Jason. How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them. New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2020.

Tesón, Fernando R. ”The Liberal Case for Humanitarian Intervention.” Chap. 3 In Humanitarian Intervention: Ethical, Legal, and Political Dilemmas, edited by J.L. Holzgrefe and Robert O. Keohane, 93-129. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Toscano, Alberto. Late Fascism: Race, Capitalism and the Politics of Crisis. London: Verso Books, 2023.

UN General Assembly. ”Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action.” New York: The United Nations, 1993.

Weiss, Thomas G. ”Governance, Good Governance and Global Governance: Conceptual and Actual Challenges.” Third world quarterly 21, no. 5 (2000): 795-814.

Whyte, Jessica. The Morals of the Market: Human Rights and the Rise of Neoliberalism. Verso Books, 2019.

Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of of Men and a Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Edited by Sylvana Tomaselli. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Downloads

Published

2025-05-26

How to Cite

Goodhart, M. (2025) “The Human Rights Project and the Limits of Cosmopolitan Rights ”, De Ethica, 9(1), pp. 4–25. doi: 10.3384/de-ethica.2001-8819.25914.