Donnelly, Jack. “The Relative Universality of Human Rights” HRQ 29 (2007): 281-306

Thesis:
    “I defend what I call functional, international, legal, and overlapping consensus universality. But I argue that what I call anthropological and ontological universality are empirically, philosophically or politically indefensible. I also emphasize that universal human rights, properly understood, leave considerable space for national, regional, cultural particularity and other forms of diversity and relativity” (281).


Thirty years deep into this field, Donnelly provides a rigorous examination of basic tenets through a sociological-legal framework; the list of secondary sources offered in the footnotes alone is worthwhile. He begins by distinguishing conceptual and substantive universality. The former, he argues, are implied in the idea of human rights itself. Conceptual universality points to rights that “one has simply because one is human,” and that these rights are universally applicable to all humans (282). This universality, however, does not answer central questions: 1) are there such rights? 2) what are they?  These latter questions are central to contemporary human rights debates, especially when the rights in question are those specified by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and make up substantive universality.

Either frame of universality, Donnelly continues, relies on sovereign nation-states to defend/ protect human rights. Although there are “internationally recognized human rights” and “norm creation has been internationalized,” this does not mean there is a universal enforcement of such rights. That is still left of sovereign states.

In his most polemic sections, Donnelly rejects that human rights have always been defended (historical universality) and that every civilization can trace human rights norms in their own cultural practices/ history (anthropological universality).

    “Such claims tot historical or anthropological universality confuse values such as justice, fairness, and humanity need with practices that aim to realize those values. Rights––entitlements that ground claims with a special force––are a particular kind of social practice. Human rights––equal and inalienable entitlements of all individuals that may be exercised against state and society––are a distinctive way to seek to realized social values such as justice…” (284).
Donnelly explicitly locates the creation of human rights as a concept and practice in the seventeenth century. Before that, he argues, all societies––especially Western––had no such working concept. Donnelly goes through a small genealogy of the pre-modern and even early-modern bases for individual rights. “Divine commandment, natural law, tradition, or contingent political arrangements,” not human rights, shaped both the conceptions and daily functioning of an individual within society. Finally, and quite astutely, Donnelly argues that although claims for anthropological universality are rooted in desires to demonstrate cultural sensitivity and coevalness, “they misunderstand and misrepresent the foundations and functioning of the societies in question by anachronistically imposing an alien analytical framework” (286).

Functional Universality:
    Although locating the first iteration of human rights in Locke’s Second Treatise on Government, Donnelly argues that “the socio-cultural “modernity” of these ideas and practices…not their cultural “Westernness” deserves emphasis” (287). Here, Donnelly begins to become more of a historical materialist. The rapid expansion of capitalist markets and their penetration into traditional societal structures ruptured “systems of mutual support and obligation.” The increasing fragmentation of social structures and the atomization of lives left individuals “to face a growing range of increasingly unbuffered economic and political threats to their interests and dignity. New “standard threats” to human dignity provoked new remedial responses” (287). Donnelly makes the obvious next step to state that, “the spread of modern markets and states has globalized the same threats to human dignity experienced in Europe” (287). Human rights, for Donnelly, represent the best response mechanism to deal with such pressures; they are not, however, the only avenue available. Thus, “although historically contingent and relative, this functional universality fully merits the label universal––for us, today” (288).

International Legal Universality:
     Here Donnelly is political scientist in full, although brief, flight. Basically, human rights, as articulated in the Universal Declaration and in subsequent conventions, have become widely recognized and accepted. Although no universal mechanism of enforcement exists, hence the continued reliance on sovereign states, “protecting internationally recognized human rights is increasingly seen as a precondition to full political legitimacy.” Donnelly points to Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe and China as examples. Again, like function universality, such acceptance is contingent and is not guaranteed to last.

Overlapping Consensus Universality:
    Borrowing from John Rawls’ distinction between comprehensive religious and philosophical doctrines from “political conceptions of justice, which address only the political structure of society, defined (as far as possible) independent of any particular comprehensive doctrine” (289). Consequently, although there may be many religious or philosophical conceptions present in a given society, there exists the possibility that an “overlapping consensus” of a political conception of justice may be reached (289).

The rest of the paper is dedicated to defending against or critiquing other positions. I, however, found most helpful and informative the framework laid out above and the extensive footnotes. Moreover, this article has also helped me realize how ‘interdisciplinary’ human rights debates are and must be; I am both excited and appropriately nervous about driving toward ‘expertise’ in this field.