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|  | | Democratic Imperialism
Once you accept that democracy and human rights are universally desirable and that they should be implemented and respected everywhere, the question remains how you can promote this universal respect. It is not because you accept universality that everyone accepts it. How can you turn the norm into a fact? How do you universalise democracy and human rights? And what are the actions you can take and the instruments you can use?
This volume expounds a political philosophy which it applies in several key branches of politology, including international law, legislation, international monitoring, regional and global protection mechanisms, education, and seminally, democracy and human rights.
| |  | | Homo Democraticus
The subject of the book - the universal value of human rights and democracy - is highly topical in view of the “democratic imperialism” of the current US-government. While leaving aside the problem of the acceptability of war as a means to promote democracy (e.g. the second Gulf War), the book focusses on a philosophical, moral and pragmatical defence of the universal application of democracy and human rights. Only if this defence is successful can the discussion on the means and tactics of democratic imperialism begin.
The originality of the book is its defence of the universal value of both democracy and human rights. Whereas the defence of the universality of human rights has a long tradition, there is as yet almost no literature on the universal desirability of democracy. The defence is partly philosophical, ethical, political, legal and practical. It draws on the history of philosophy and ethics, as well as on political science.
The book is directed at a general public interested in geo-politics and in the state of democracy back home. Politicians, lawyers, journalists and students may find it i | |  | | Making Human Rights Real
Here in a nutshell readers may find a description of the most important characteristics of human rights, and a clear and concise discussion of the problem of making human rights real and not just hypothetical while preserving respect as well for national sovereignty in the face of globalization and cultural imperialism.
The most important characteristics of human rights are enumerated in a clear and concise discussion that analyzes the problem of making human rights real, and not just hypothetical, worldwide.
Building on definitions of human rights used by the United Nations and other international bodies, and without being sidetracked by nettlesome discussions of specific troubling cases of rights abuses, the author describes the main characteristics of the system of human rights. He focuses on universality, interdependence, differences between types of rights, absolute or limited rights, the subjects |
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