The Humanitarian God in the Political Marketplace

Realist critiques have understandably faulted the human rights project for being both too ambitiously utopian on the one hand, and too compromisingly modest on the other. Starting from this basic challenge to the moral and practical appeal of human rights, this article examines two recent responses. Stephen Hopgood, in Endtimes for Human Rights, argues that international human rights has come to serve a pernicious, American neo-liberalism, and thus ought to be abandoned in favor of local self-determination. Alison Brysk, in Speaking Rights to Power, accepts that human rights activists must compete to win an audience in a pluralist political marketplace, and offers practical advice for doing this as effectively as possible. While a pragmatic refocus in the face of lost utopia may lead Hopgood to reject the value of international human rights altogether, Brysk seeks to salvage what she can, in the hope of promoting more modest and incremental improvements.