Projecting Liberalism into a Realist World: David P. Forsythe and the Political Science of Human Rights

Abstract

Using a claim from David Fosythe in his Human Rights and International Relations, this paper discusses the ways in which the empirical political science of human rights has explored how human rights have projected liberalism into a realist world. It extends Forsythe's notion of realism to the domestic level and shows how scholarship in the field since the 1980s has sought to examine the ways that power and self-interest can be constrained through institutions and norms of the kind articulated through an appeal to human rights. The discussion shows that findings in the literature largely confirms Forsythe's fundamental insight. The human rights project is not impossible in a realist world; rather it interacts with the realist world in ways that mean we will always and everywhere see great variation in the promotion and protection of human rights. And this variation is due to the presence of different institutional arrangements, structural constraints and the behavior of powerful states that at times is in alignment with the broad aims of the human rights movement.

Keywords: liberialism, realism, human rights, empirical political science, institutions

JEL Classification: K33, C50, F33, F34, H10, H11