Page 222 - Contemporary Political Sociology Globalization Politics and Power

208 Globalization and Democracy

the fact that it had been abolished or disavowed in every other state in
the world (Roper v Simmons, US, 551. 2005).
Human rights are democratic, then, insofar as the domestic procedures
by which states make and judge law are followed in the way international
human rights agreements come to be binding within their territories.
Human rights activists try to get states to the point of ratifying (if they
are resistant) and then genuinely respecting international human rights
agreements by bringing pressure on them from within, supported by
International Non - Governmental Organizations and Inter - Governmental
Organizations, and often also by NGOs in other states, that put pressure
on their own governments to put pressure on recalcitrant states. Occa-
sionally using economic sanctions – as in the international pressure on
South Africa to end apartheid – this constellation of actors generally tries

to persuade state officials into accepting the validity and legitimacy of
human rights norms, to shame them over their state ’ s human rights
record, and to try to get them to change it (Keck and Sikkink, 1998 ; Risse
et al., 1999 ).
An interesting recent example of such pressure is the Poor People ’ s
Economic Human Rights Campaign, through which poor and homeless
people in the US have been trying to make their government accountable
for meeting their basic needs as citizens, raising issues of welfare reform
nationally, through marches and petitions, and at the same time at the
international level, at the UN Human Rights Commission and the Inter -
American Commission of Organization for American States. This example
is particularly interesting because it confi rms Margaret Somers ’ view that
human rights will become increasingly relevant in the West as citizens
become more distant from states as the last guarantor of material security.
She argues that the marketization of social insurance is now so advanced
in the US that poor people are effectively stateless: excluded from the civil
sphere, citizenship rights are meaningless to them (Somers, 2008 ). Poor
people in the US are, in part, trying to get their state to ratify the
International Convention on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights so
that they will have legal leverage in the US courts. They are also using
the language of human rights to give their cause moral leverage where
national citizenship no longer seems to mean much. Finally, they are
seeking to build common cause with representatives of other grassroots
organizations around the world, arguing that, given the US infl uence over
global governance, welfare reforms introduced by President Clinton in
1996 could be a model for dismantling government ’ s welfare obligations
around the world (Smith, 2008 : 160 – 7; Lister, 2004 : 162).