Translating and editing human rights norms: the politics of implementation of human rights treaties

ENRIQUE PERUZZOTTI

Workshop; Transnational Advocacy Networks: reflecting on 15 years of evolving theory and practice; 2015

Brown University

Is there any life for transnational advocacy networks and institutions once global human rights norms become internalized? What happens to the diffusion of international human rights norms once the final stage of the spiral model is completed? Does the socialization of human rights norms bring to an end the dynamic between global and domestic activists and institutions? These are some of the questions that this chapter seeks to address. It will do so by analyzing different scenarios drawn from the Latin American context after democratization. The success of the regional wave of democratization resulted, to borrow Kathryn Sikkink's expression, in an impressive continental human rights 'norm and justice cascade' that profoundly altered the contextual conditions under which advocacy networks operate (Sikkink 2011). A central claim of this chapter is that the successful socialization of human rights norms does not bring to an end the interaction between domestic and global activism and institutions yet nevertheless it profoundly transforms it. The end result is the emergence of a novel scenario for the unfolding of human rights politics and of patterns of politicization that differ those that were predominant under authoritarian rule.