GLOB.IDEALIZATION MOND.IDÉALISATION - Faculty of Social ...

121 | Mond.Idéalisation
James Wellstead | Universal Human Rights
In terms of both communitarian and cosmopolitan approaches, the
increasing trend which prioritizes the individual, and not the state, as a
provider of required services also challenges the ability of the state to enforce
some universal rights. The fickle flows of finance or the impact of economic
crises demonstrate the challenge of universal rights enforcement by the state
(and for individuals) when focused upon controlling an economic
environment and not rights enforcement.
Networks and Norms
Building on the difficulty to ground human rights in a singular moral theory,
there has been support to search for what John Rawls refers to as an
‘overlapping consensus’ on a political conception of justice. 68 The hope is to
move the concept of rights out of the realm of morals and into political
theory which allows conceptions of rights to flourish in a “‘post-modern’
world adverse to unassailable foundations.” While moral theorists do not
generally support such an approach, 69
this political foundation has arguably
begun to dominate the de facto foundation and enforcement of universal
human rights through globalization’s established and emerging networks.
During this time, a diverse number of actors outside of nation-states
and international agencies have been actively promoting these various
68 Donnelly 40.
69 Apel notes that the novel challenges of globalization – like the inevitable ecological crisis –
do not represent the interests of virtual discourse partners, such as members of the next
generations of third world poor, and thus weaken attempts for an overlapping consensus
(Apel 2000: 142).