Human rights represent a significant nexus between and among international relations, international law, and comparative politics. Since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, there has been a proliferation of international human rights treaties and an increased attention to human rights in the field of public international law. This collection of readings represents the very best scholarship in this area and shows how the theory, methods and analysis found in mainstream international relations and political science have been brought to bear on significant questions in international human rights.



Section I provides a set of readings that summarise the realist perspective in international relations, its main rivals, and the ways in which human rights challenge the predominance of realism in international relations. Section II sets out the vast literature on international regimes, which transcend the traditional divisions between and among international relations theory, international law, and new institutionalism in the international arena. Section III concentrates on the measurement of human rights. The readings here represent the debates, problems, and selected successes in this area of human rights literature. Section IV puts together readings on the ways in which international human rights norms become 'constructed', diffused across the globe and transcend the division between the international and national levels of politics. Section V brings together a selection of readings analysing the variation in human rights protection across the globe and that take into account different sets of international and domestic variables.