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Chapter 2 Western Perspectives Jack Donnelly To talk intelligently about something as vast and varied as "the West" is virtually impossible, even on the relatively narrow topic of the place of human rights in dominant conceptions of political legitimacy. Politically, the West has been classically embodied in Sparta, Athens, and Rome, both the Republic and the Empire; the France of Louis IX, Francis I, Louis XIV, Robespierre, Napoleon, Louis Napoleon, the Third Republic, the Popular Front, Petain, and de Gaulle; the Germany of Emperor Frederick III, the Great Elector Frederick William, Frederick the Great, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Adolf Hitler, Willy Brandt, and Helmut Kohl; the England of Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, Oliver Cromwell, George III, Gladstone, Disraeli, Lloyd George, Chamberlain, Churchill, Thatcher, and Lady/Princess Diana; and the United States ofWashington,Jefferson,Jackson, Lincoln, Grant, Wilson, two Roosevelts, two Johnsons, several Kennedys, and various Bushes-not to mention Nixon, Carter, Reagan, and Clinton. The 'Western tradition" includes both Caligula and Marcus Aurelius, Francis of Assisi and Torquemada , Leopold II of Belgium and Albert Schweitzer,Jesus of Nazareth and the Holocaust-and just about everything in between. With such diversity-at which the preceding paragraph only hints-any account of the West must be highly selective. Declining the invitation to write this chapter probably would have been the sensible course. Having accepted, what I can offer are caricature highlights of a few widely shared features commonly encountered in contemporary discussions of legitimate governance. Linking the West and Human Rights My starting point is the orienting premise of this volume, namely, that the practices of human rights are embedded in complex and varied political processes. Human rights, rather than a timeless system of essential moral principles, are a set of social practices that regulate relations between, and help constitute citizens and states, in "modern" societies. As a matter of 32 Jack Donnelly historical fact, these practices, and the underlying idea of equal and inalienable rights held by all human beings, emerged first in the modern West.1 The West is also historically associated with the Atlantic slave trade, often-savage colonialism, religious persecution, virulent racism, absolute monarchy, predatory capitalism, global warfare of almost unthinkable destructiveness , fascism, Naziism, communist totalitarianism, the Holocaust, and a host of other evils and social ills. Many countries, groups, and individuals , both Western and non-Western, suffered, and continue to suffer, under burdens directly or indirectly attributable to such reprehensible Western practices. Nonetheless the association of the West with internationally recognized human rights is not only common but also essential to discussions of governance in contemporary international society. The West is the only region of the world in which political practice over the past half century has been largely consonant with, and in significant measure guided by, the extensive set of civil and political and economic, social, and cultural rights laid out in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 1966 International Human Rights Covenants.2 The West has also begun to come to grips with some of its more unsavory antihuman rights legacy. And, over the past decade, the Western vision of political legitimacy has come to dominate international discussions-because of the collapse of the leading alternatives; because of Western military, political, and economic power; but also because of the normative power of the idea of human rights as reflected in Western practice. This (initially Western) vision has become close to internationally hegemonic in the Gramscian sense of the term, which sees rule as based not simply on material power/force but also on control over ideas and at least quasi-voluntary acceptance of ruling norms and values. This chapter offers an ideal type account of the Western model of legitimate governance: the liberal democratic welfare state, as represented by the United States and the countries of the European Union that link the West and human rights unusually closely.3 My discussion is arranged around the concepts of order, welfare, and legitimacy. By "order" I mean dominant forms of constitutional organization , or structures of law and coercion; by "welfare," the dominant economic model, or structures of production and distribution; by "legitimacy," the dominant structure of legal and political norms.4 Table 1 summarizes my account. The following sections move through the two columns in the table. Although I happen to endorse much of the substance of the Western TABLE 1. The Western Model of Governance Order Welfare Legitimacy National Nation-state/Rechtstaat Welfare state Liberal democracy International (Society of) states Global markets Sovereignty [3...

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