The social science of human rights: The need for a 'second image reversed'?

• Main Author: Regilme, Salvador Santino F.
• Format: text
• Published: Animo Repository 2014
• Subjects: Human rights; Human rights and globalization; International law and human rights; Human Rights Law
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/faculty_research/8692
• Institution: De La Salle University

What are the causes of state- initiated human rights violations? Are intra-national factors alone causally responsible for the emergence of human rights crises in the developing world? This article critically examines contemporary social science literature on the causes of human rights compliance and violations, particularly in the fields of international relations and comparative politics. It underscores the finding that the current research agenda on human right has yet to fully recognize the causal constitutive agenda on links between transnational and domestic factors in generating variations in states' level of com­pliance. The main goal bf the piper is to analytically explore the pos­sibilities of generating social scientific research that recognizes the interactive causal dynamics among extra-national and domestic vari­ables as they jointly produce cross-national variations in the quality of a state's compliance with human rights norms. Based on a critical analysis of the current scholarship in human rights research, the-pap.er offers several pathways ·. the academy must traverse in order to enhance our understanding of the causal underpinnings of human rights violations in the global South.