The Political Economy of Human Rights Enforcement: Moral and Intellectual Leadership in the Context of Global Hegemony

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Palgrave Macmillan, May 30, 2008 - Political Science - 280 pages
In academic and non-academic debates the practice of human rights enforcement is usually reduced to the intentions, interests and capabilities of agents - particularly the United States and other Western states. Whether seen as a policy adopted to promote national interest or an imperialist device used by the West, the practice of human rights enforcement is discussed in isolation from the structure of the late-modern Global Political Economy. This book develops a structural approach to post-Cold war military humanitarianism and demonstrates the nature of reciprocal causal relations between the global capitalist economy and the practice of human rights enforcement. It provides an historical analysis of the notion of individual rights and their relationship with capitalism and demonstrates that today the actors engaged in human rights enforcement - whether for selfish or humanitarian reasons - unintentionally provide global capital with a Gramscian quality of moral leadership thereby contributing to its hegemony.

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Contents

The Existing Analyses of Human Rights
25
The War on Terror
51
Ideology and the History of Human Rights Enforcement
72
Copyright

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About the author (2008)

IVAN MANOKHA is Head of Masters in International Affairs, Institut d'Etudes Politiques, France. His research interests include the historical development of the concept of human rights and its relationship with capitalism, the Just War Theory, humanitarian intervention in the late-modern global political economy, and business ethics.

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