Books

In this innovative study Jean Grugel and Nicola Piper aim to link theories of liberal global governance and rights-based development in a way that explores how rights can be made real.

The authors analyze the scope and effectiveness of rights-based governance in attaching a rights framework to emerging governance regimes and discourses as well as their utility for claiming rights in practice. In exploring how the architecture and instruments of global governance provide new spaces for political activism, as well as obstacles, the central argument highlights the importance of claiming rights. However, making claims first requires that issues such as poverty, workplace conditions or social exclusion are conceptualized, in a collective way, as rights violations. In order to be effective on the ground, rights must go beyond the purely legal domain, inherent in conceptions of liberal global governance as the ‘the rule of law’ or ‘good governance’ and must inform state policies.

Moving away from the traditional focus on elites, states and global institutions, this book explores and analyzes how liberal global governance is really affecting ordinary people and how this is often an obstacle to development, citizenship, voice and inclusion. To demonstrate this, case studies represent some of the most marginalized groups of people in Asia and Latin America: children and foreign workers. By taking a ‘bottom up’ perspective, this study marks a shift from a vision of liberal global governance as a way to manage ordinary people, to one which posits global governance as a potential opportunity structure for political activism as well as a space of regulation.

This book will be of interest to students and researchers of politics, sociology, political geography, development studies and migration studies.