Are Universal Human Rights Truly Universal? Measuring Human Rights Perceptions

• In Event: Poster Session: LGBTQI+ Power and Politics & Human Rights
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Human Rights

Abstract

Public opinion toward human rights is central to theoretical models of how human rights are promoted and practices change over time. Citizen perceptions of human rights conditions can shape individual motivations to participate in political action and the broader receptiveness of the mass public to activists’ mobilization strategies. While the universality of human rights is increasingly challenged, owing to the Eurocentrism of their development, evolution, and application, the universality debate remains unresolved empirically. In this paper, we develop a new measurement strategy and offer original evidence on the universality of human rights among citizens across countries. More specifically, we ask whether citizens in the United States and India – large democracies with important variation economic development, geopolitical histories, and state respect for human rights – hold competing views on the meaning of human rights. To do so, we first develop a Bayesian Aldrich-McKelvey scaling approach to inductively assess citizen perceptions of support for human rights across a globally representative set of countries. Second, we rely on text analysis of open-ended questions to identify any systematic cross-national differences in perceptions of human rights. This paper thus aims to advance important debates on the international human rights regime, Eurocentrism, and public opinion.

Authors

• Mitushi Mukherjee, Purdue University

• Tyler Girard, Purdue University