[governance] Rights in IG research

[Milton L Mueller]

These responses are somewhat perfunctory, but no time for much more....

-----Original Message-----
From: Parminder [mailto:parminder at itforchange.net]
>Lets go in two steps to reach right to development (a collective 
>right) from the 'negative rights' you subscribe to, through the 
> category of 'positive

First, I don't believe in "collective rights" and it is not difficult to prove logically that collective rights are incompatible with the notion of equal rights. It takes you back to the pre-modern notion of castes, estates, or classes, each with different privileges and claims. And of course, these collective claims, being unique to each group, must always clash against each other and lead to irreconcilable social conflict. People are part of dozens and perhaps hundreds of different groups and collectivities. All of them can organize to place demands on the state. Those are not rights, that's just politics and policy. What society needs to maintain justice are clear, common, equal rights assigned to individuals. That preserves and protects their ability to form and participate in collectivities as they please, and prevents one group from dominating or abusing another.

I think it was Cees Hamelinck who once said that you couldn't possibly protect religious minorities without some notion of collective rights. To me an obviously false assertion; we have protected religious and cultural minorities for centuries by assuring individuals freedom of association, freedom of expression and religion, all individual rights unrelated to a collectivity. Historically the notion of collective rights is as likely to be used to justify ethnic cleansing, social dominance of one group over another and even genocide as it is to protect minorities. Only way to avoid that is to appeal to a higher level, liberal notion of the individual rights of the people within the groups.

>First, tell me if you think 'right to education' as mention in the
>UDHR, and as applied in many developed countries justifying imprisonment of
>parents etc is considered by you as a (real) 'right' or not. 

A right to education is at least meaningful, but it is obviously an individual right. Or do you believe that one's right to education varies with one's race, culture, etc? While that might be more consistent with your collectivist bent, you can see where it would lead and the risk of abuse it creates. Aside from that, as Tapani pointed out these positive "rights" are contingent upon the ability and willingness of other people to provide the necessary resources, labor etc. "Moral assertions" as you put it, don't generate the resources necessary to deliver the goods. So while I believe that universal education is a Good Thing, and even that wealth redistribution is often justified to achieve it, I would not put education in the same category as the more basic "negative" rights. Note also that such positive rights require the state to define what is "education" and often (though not necessarily) to monopolize its delivery and crush minority religions and cultures in the process. But never mind that, you've made a moral assertion, so nothing immoral could ever come of it, eh?

>collective right - collective cultural rights - which all countries (not
>only developing ones) other than the US have agreed to, most recently in

I think so-called collective cultural rights are about 80% cultural and economic protectionism, and about 20% a legitimate attempt to carve out a role for publicly funded culture, which I don't view as being all that threatening, or threatened.

> Right to
>development (among a few other things) is a moral assertion - seeking
>insituional/legal applications - that default global institutional systems
>(as use of FoE for cultural domination, in above case) that are deemed
>neutral and good for all are often a form of (neo-imperialist?) domination
>and that that developing countries have a right to challenge such
>domination. 

No offense, but that sentence is too ungrammatical to respond to. But if I understand it, I would simply reply that you can challenge political domination without asserting a fictitious RTD -- and did you know that people have actually done it for centuries? 

> If you read the Right to development document you will find
>references to a 'new economic order' a couple of time. (a non-hegemonisitc
>'new Internet order' may be similarly demanded.) 

I don't need to read that document, I've read all the NWICO documents and am familiar with the "New Economic Order," The New World Information Order," and the "New World Information and Communication Order." and all the related aging 1970s-vintage ideology. 

"New Internet Order," eh? Wow, what an original idea! I hope you are impressed with what, after 30-40 years, those "new economic orders" produced. 

>The framework of RTD underpins efforts in global polity on development
>agendas in WTO, WIPO, NWICO, and why not, claims of perhaps a 'new Internet
>order'.

In the WTO, as we discussed before, the assertion of RTD has no connection to the legitimate attempt of developing countries to resist American and European efforts to open markets they can compete in (like IPR) and keep closed agriculture and immigration, where they were not competitive. Nor do you need it to bargain for better terms of trade. 

The WIPO development agenda has made accomplishments but I see no connection whatsoever between a RTD and those accomplishments. One does not have to assert a "right" to development to claim that royalty collection for MNCs should not be the only priority for WIPO. In other words, development is an objective, a goal of policy. When other claims or goals conflict with development, it is perfectly legitimate to assert development as a higher value. We can agree on that. No need to misdefine it as a human right. Development as policy objective involves a careful attempt to find policies that actually lead to development. (And once you do that you might actually discover that less state and more market is in needed in many situations. Horrors!)
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