This study examines human rights in the North-South relations of three internationalist countries: Canada, the Netherlands, and Norway. It pays special attention to the integration of human rights in development aid policy, particularly the use of political conditionality. The theoretical framework examines the explanatory power of political Realism. A hypothesis linking policy assertiveness with the perceived costs to other national interests is tested by selecting Western states most likely to disprove Realist assumptions, and by choosing at least two Third World cases for each aid donor: one where economic, political and strategic interests are high, and another where the same interests are minimal or low. Three frameworks to (1) document human rights abuses; (2) evaluate national human rights performance; and (3) gauge foreign policy assertiveness serve as the methodological lenses to analyze Western statecraft and test the hypothesis. / Each donor's search for moral opportunity is visible in an emerging agenda to promote human rights and democratic development. However, if the resolve to defend human rights beyond national borders is gauged by a state's willingness to incur harm to other important national interests, then Canada, the Netherlands, and Norway are seldom disposed to let human rights trump more self-serving national interests. The potential for consistent and principled human rights statecraft is frequently undermined by Realism's cost-benefit rationality.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.41264 |
| Date | January 1992 |
| Creators | Gillies, David, 1952- |
| Contributors | Nayar, Baldev Raj (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Department of Political Science.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001358166, proquestno: NN91727, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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