Using data for 93 countries from 1972 through 2001 in cross-national analysis, this study compares the relative economic strength of a country's middle-class with its civil liberties performance and its history of domestic and external conflict. For purposes of this analysis, the relative strength of a country's middle-class is determined by multiplying the square root of a country's gross domestic product per capita by the percentage of income distributed to the middle 60 % of the population (middle class income share). Comparisons between this measure of per capita income distributed (PCID) and several other indicators show the strength of the relationship between PCID and civil liberties performance and domestic and external conflict. In the same manner, comparisons are made for the middle class income share (MCIS) alone. The countries are also divided by level of PCID into 3 world classes of 31 countries each for additional comparisons. In tests using bivariate correlations, the relationships between PCID and MCIS are statistically significant with better civil liberties performance and fewer internal conflicts. With multivariate regression the relationship between PCID and civil liberties performance is statistically significant but not for PCID and internal conflict. As expected, in both correlations and regression between PCID and external conflict, variables related to power dominate. However, when the countries are divided into world classes by level of PCID, the eleven countries with the highest level of PCID have had no internal or external conflict since 1972. Moreover, there is no within group conflict for countries in either the upper or middle classes of countries based on their level of PCID. The between group conflict does include democracies.

This dissertation engages with and contributes to a growing literature on procedural approaches in theorizing, monitoring and adjudicating social and economic rights, with reference to new governance literature. It analyzes a move in social and economic rights away from the generation and monitoring of substantive norms by treaty monitors, judges, and scholars, and toward processes designed to generate accountable, participatory, non-uniform, iterative responses to rights broadly conceived. The first paper explores the emphasis on new governance style proceduralism in the adjudication of these rights. The second focuses on the right to health and considers how collaborations among criminal justice, public health, and community actors can be informed by the new proceduralism in state responses to non-disclosure of HIV-status in sexual relationships. The third and final article argues that the use of new governance style proceduralism for rationalizing the distribution of publicly-funded health care resources in Canada dovetails with the emergent focus on process in human rights to open space for more meaningful human rights scrutiny. Each of the three papers concludes with a discussion of the limits of these emerging approaches.