The central argument lies around the notion that human rights, development, and democracy all have major conceptual and practical linkages. Human rights’ implications for development, and development’s consequences on human rights, are mostly political, and they vary greatly depending on time, place, and policy. Human rights and democracy are two instances of this. The most evident requirement of international human rights principles is indeed democratic governance. “The will of the people must be the basis of government authority,” says Article 21 of the Universal Declaration. Ingenious popular demands for democracy and human rights have repeatedly been made on this account. Appeals to cultural relativism and country particularities haven’t entirely vanished from human rights debates. Despite China and its allies’ significant efforts on behalf of a strong cultural relativism, the World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna in 1993 overwhelmingly endorsed the universality of internationally recognized human rights, demonstrating the dramatic shift in dominant international attitudes.
Jack Donelly in his book, “Universal Human Rights in Theory and Practice” argue that human rights may be jeopardized if democracy and development are not properly understood and promoted. The link between legitimacy and economics – which is called development – is analogous to a universal, cross-cultural political law. Throughout history, most polities have used a divine gift, natural order, or tradition to justify hierarchical rule by those with higher “virtue”, defined by birth, age, gender, wealth, skill, or power. During the preceding half-century, most governments, instead of relying on a “higher” source, depended on “bottom-up” authorization from “the people.” Following World War II, human rights activists began to make demands for a comparable position.
Since the end of the Cold War, human rights have joined democracy and development to form a legitimizing trifecta. The widely accepted definition of democracy could be found in the Vienna Declaration’s proclamation, “Democracy is built on the freely expressed choice of the people to establish their own political, economic, social, and cultural systems, and their full engagement in all areas of their lives”. Nevertheless, democracy has been criticized as incompatible with good administration by Plato and Aristotle, and through Kant and Hegel. Whereas, from Aristotle through Machiavelli, Madison, and Kant, proponents of mixed or “republican” regimes counterbalanced the interests and rights of the many with the claims of the few to greater knowledge or morality. Liberal, socialist, and anti-colonial campaigns have only recently—in the last two centuries, and especially in the last sixty or seventy years—transformed mainstream notions of “the people,” delegitimizing nondemocratic government.
It’s the aim of equal political dignity for everyone that is. shared by democracy and human rights. Democracy bestows sovereign responsibility on the people, who are free to “create their own political, economic, social, and cultural institutions,” as stated in the Vienna Declaration. Human rights, on the other hand, seek to empower individuals while limiting the sovereign people and government. The necessity that everyone obtains specific commodities, services, and opportunities significantly limits the acceptable variety of political, economic, social, and cultural institutions and behaviors. Human rights are concerned with what rulers do, with how the people or any other group rules, rather than who should rule—which is surely a democratic response. Human rights are, in fact, deeply anti-democracy in many ways because it consistently resists the will of the people. The United States Supreme Court is frequently condemned as anti-democratic for this reason; one of the main goals of constitutional review is to ensure that the people’s sovereignty is not exercised in ways that undermine essential rights through their elected representatives.
Furthermore, in order to analyze the relationship between development and human rights, firstly development shall be defined as significant, long-term growth in per capita gross domestic product (GDP), as well as structural reform. More drastic challenges to expansionist understandings of development emphasize justice or social equity rather than merely “economic” mechanisms. The present climax of this trend is the United Nations Development Program’s (UNDP) notion of “sustainable human development”: “Human rights and sustainable human development are intimately connected” (UNDP 1998) solely via definitional legerdemain. “Sustainable human development” simply redefines human rights as a subset of development, alongside democracy, peace, and justice.
In addition, repression and the early stages of fast economic development and fundamental economic transformation have a significant historical link. The relationship’s causality, however, remains unknown. Most repression appears to be founded on contingent local political opportunities, issues, and challenges, as well as the unique interests of those conducting the oppressing, rather than being a necessity for certain “development” techniques. In recent decades, authoritarian governments in South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and China have achieved sustainable economic progress, mirroring Western Europe’s previous experience. The majority of developmental dictatorships, on the other hand, have been abject disasters. Even short-term growth is uncommon in Sub-Saharan Africa. Most Latin American and Asian military dictatorships and civilian oligarchies, as well as socialist party-state dictatorships, found short- and medium-term progress to be unsustainable. Those who are compelled to give up their rights and freedoms rarely gain development or at least long-term growth.
By constraining their functioning to a narrow, rights-defined sphere, human rights are necessary to civilize both democracy and markets. Only when the pursuit of profit is constrained by economic and social rights—when markets are incorporated into a welfare state—does a political economy deserve people’s respect.
Because of the unique balance they achieve between competing needs of democratic participation, market efficiency, and internationally recognized human rights, the liberal democratic welfare states of Western Europe, Japan, and North America are attractive examples for most of the rest of the world. Democracy and development, on the other hand, lose much of their appeal without a previous commitment to the entire spectrum of internationally recognized human rights. However, even for their own citizens, all true liberal democratic welfare governments fall short of attaining full human rights. Only such governments, however, are consistently dedicated to the entire spectrum of internationally recognized human rights. Only in such states can strong markets and democracies operate within the framework of human rights. Their marketplaces and democracies are only worthy of admiration because of such constraints. Hence, economic development will be pursued through rights-protective regimes.
Conclusively, the political discourse must include a specific sense of the substantive commitment to human dignity and human rights. There will be unnecessary conceptual and practical impediments in the implementation of policies that seek equal care and respect for all unless human rights are expressly kept at the center of the polities.
