Human Rights Bureaucrats: Human Rights Advocates in Right-wing Populist Brazil

• In Event: Human Rights on and at the Margins

Abstract

Mistrust and suspicion vis-à-vis the state and what it does and does not do for citizens have contributed to creating narratives that impede the understanding of what happens within the state apparatus, particularly with regards to human rights work. The (now) controversial term ‘deep state’, for instance, has been traced back to Babul (2017) on the atrocities committed in Turkey by a form of shadow state that implicated the bureaucracy. However, what if within the state apparatus one were to find human rights advocates? What if the deep state were comprised by civil servants who uphold the ideas and values of human rights and who struggle to promote those within the state machinery? From Donald Trump to Edward Snowden, the so-called deep state has been presented as undemocratic and anti-citizen’s interests (Abramson, 2017; Maurizi, 2017). Against that background, this paper will unveil the invisible work of civil servants who are human rights advocates within the state apparatus. In doing so, it aims to explore the validity of adopting the construct and category of ‘human rights bureaucrats’ in human rights research.

Data collection and fieldwork were focused on the case of Brazil and its federal bureaucracy. As Brazil embarks on a populist right-wing federal government, one that was elected on a platform against human rights, this paper also addresses the challenges and potential prosecution faced by those advocates, as well as the consequences that their marginalization within the state machinery may bring to Brazil’s engagement with human rights norms and international human rights organizations.

In international relations theory, Constructivism has pointed to the role of ideas and values beyond interests and rational choice. When Sikkink (1991) proposed to explain the different degrees of success of Brazil’s and Argentina’s development projects in the 1950s, she argued that it was not possible to explain policy outcomes solely on the basis of inferred interests. For her, an understanding of the ideas and beliefs held by actors was also an important part of the explanation. In her recent book, Sikkink (2017) argues that human rights values and ideas are not exclusive to the North and shows how diplomats from the South, as early as the 1940s, were taking the lead in proposing new international human rights norms and instruments.

Nonetheless, the constructivist literature on the norm lifecycle has mostly focused on the role played by civil society agents and transnational networks in the promotion of human rights norms (Keck and Sikkink, 2014). The “boomerang model” used to explain the dynamics of norm adoption and compliance touches upon the state only as a receiver of the outcomes of the works of transnational advocacy networks and local civil society (Risse and Sikkink, 1999). Hence, there is an open question about whether the state bureaucracy may also be comprised by individuals who, given their values, produce intra-state pressure that consolidates the boomerang effect, therefore helping in the adoption and endurance of state commitments to international human rights norms.

In order to explore the empirical validity of adopting the concept of ‘human rights bureaucrats’ in human rights theory and research, a survey and in-depth interviews were conducted with Brazilian federal workers who served or who are still engaged with institutions or initiatives that either self-proclaim to do human rights policies or that work with human rights in a more indirect and yet still relevant way. Conclusions will be presented both in terms of contributions to human rights research and to the wider debate surrounding the implications of an elected right-wing populist government in Brazil.

Bibliography

Abramson, A. (2017). “President Trump's Allies Keep Talking About the 'Deep State.' What's That?”, retrieved from http://time.com/4692178/donald-trump-deep-state-breitbart-barack-obama/

Babül, E. (2017). Bureaucratic intimacies: translating human rights in Turkey. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press.

Keck, M. E., Sikkink, K. (2014). Activists beyond borders: Advocacy networks in international politics. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Maurizi, S. (2017) “Edward Snowden: ‘Poisoning people who are long out of their service is contemptible’", retrieved from https://www.repubblica.it/esteri/2018/03/19/news/snowden_how_the_deep_state_shapes_presidents_-191619170/

Risse, T., Sikkink, K. (1999). “The socialization of international human rights norms into domestic practices: introduction” In Risse, T., Ropp, S. C., and Sikkink, K. (Eds.). (1999). The power of human rights: International norms and domestic change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Sikkink, K. (1991). Ideas and institutions: developmentalism in Brazil and Argentina, Cornell studies in political economy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press

Sikkink, K. (2017). Evidence for hope: making human rights work in the 21st century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Author

• Michelle Morais de Sa e Silva, The University of Oklahoma