The Power of Human Rights: International Norms and Domestic Change

by Thomas Risse (Editor), Stephen C. Ropp (Editor), Kathryn Sikkink (Editor)

This book celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of the United Nation's passage of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by showing how global human rights norms have influenced national government practices in eleven different countries around the world. Transnational human rights pressures and policies have made a significant difference in bringing about improvements in human rights practices in diverse countries around the world. The book describes a model of socialization processes that can be broadly applied to other processes and policy areas where global ideas have an impact on domestic affairs.

Genres: Politics, International Relations, Nonfiction, Political Science

336 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

See also work published as Thomas Risse-Kappen

Thomas Risse (formerly Risse-Kappen) is a Berlin-based international relations scholar. He currently acts as chair for “transnational relations, foreign- and security policy” at the Otto-Suhr Institute for Political Science at Freie Universität Berlin. Furthermore, he has several engagements in German and international research networks, he also heads the PhD program of the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin.

Reviews

[Brad · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book in 2008 and I still think about it most weeks. Actually I think its title misleads potential readers; it’s much more about the process of normative influence over wide scale behavioural change than just human rights, which, if I recall, was more of a case study from which the other insights emerged (or perhaps it went the other way—I admit some details are now foggy).