Human Rights Futures

For the first time in one collected volume, mainstream and critical human rights scholars together examine the empirical and normative debates around the future of human rights. They ask what makes human rights effective, what strategies will enhance the chances of compliance, what blocks progress, and whether the hope for human rights is entirely misplaced in a rapidly transforming world. Human Rights Futures sees the world as at a crucial juncture. The project for globalizing rights will either continue to be embedded or will fall backward into a maelstrom of nationalist backlash, religious resurgence and faltering Western power. Each chapter talks directly to the others in an interactive dialogue, providing a theoretical and methodological framework for a clear research agenda for the next decade. Scholars, graduate students and practitioners of political science, history, sociology, law and development will find much to both challenge and provoke them in this innovative book.

1. Introduction: human rights: past, present and future Stephen Hopgood, Jack Snyder and Leslie Vinjamuri; 2. Human rights data, processes, and outcomes: how recent research points to a better future Geoffrey Dancy and Kathryn Sikkink; 3. Human rights and human welfare: looking for a 'dark side' to international human rights law Beth A. Simmons and Anton Strezhnev; 4. Empowering rights through mass movements, religion, and reform parties Jack Snyder; 5. Human rights backlash Leslie Vinjamuri; 6. Human rights in areas of limited statehood: from the spiral model to localization and translation Thomas Risse; 7. Grounding the backlash: regional security treaties, counternorms and human rights in Eurasia Alexander Cooley and Matthew Schaaf; 8. Governing religion as right Elizabeth Shakman Hurd; 9. The vernacularization of women's human rights Sally Engle Merry and Peggy Levitt; 10. Re-framing human rights advocacy: the rise of economic rights Shareen Hertel; 11. Human rights and the crisis of liberalism Samuel Moyn; 12. Human rights on the road to nowhere Stephen Hopgood; 13. Conclusion: human rights futures Stephen Hopgood, Jack Snyder and Leslie Vinjamuri.

Stephen Hopgood is Professor of International Relations at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and author of Keepers of the Flame: Understanding Amnesty International (2006), which won the American Political Science Association Best Book in Human Rights Award in 2007, and The Endtimes of Human Rights (2013).
Jack Snyder is the Robert and Renée Belfer Professor of International Relations in the Political Science Department and the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University, New York. His books include Ranking the World: Grading States as a Tool of Global Governance (with Alexander Cooley, Cambridge, 2015).
Leslie Vinjamuri is an Associate Professor of International Relations, and Director of the Centre on Conflict, Rights and Justice at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Recent works include 'The Distant Promise of a Negotiated Justice' in Daedalus, Volume 146, Issue 1, Winter 2017.