Catherine Renshaw - Böcker

While the Asia Pacific region is one of the world’s largest by population size, it has long been known for having the least developed regional and national institutional mechanisms for protecting human rights, particularly compared to the well-developed systems in Europe, the Americas, and increasingly in Africa. Asia has the least uptake of human rights treaties of any region in the world, and serious human rights violations are documented as occurring in numerous countries in the region. Asia has also presented conceptual challenges to the universality of international human rights, for instance through arguments about 'Asian values' (the collective over the individual, the economic over the political, compromise over adjudication) being inconsistent with western notions of rights. At the same time, innovative human rights practices and protections have been developed in some jurisdictions, and increasingly at the transnational level. There is increasing scholarly and practitioner interest in human rights in the Asia and Pacific regions, driven in part by recent efforts by the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) to enhance human rights protections in those sub-regions. This edited collection makes a timely and distinctive contribution to the literature by bringing together the leading scholars in the field who have written across the gamut of thematic human rights issues in Asia and the Pacific. A particular strength of the collection is its inclusion of significant Asian and Pacific authors, who are sometimes under-represented in the mainstream legal debates. The work will be of interest to a scholarly and student audience in law (international, comparative Asian, public, constitutional, and human rights), as well as to readers in international relations, political science, Asian studies, and human rights.

In Human Rights and Participatory Politics in Southeast Asia, Catherine Renshaw recounts an extraordinary period of human rights institution-building in Southeast Asia. She begins her account in 2007, when the ten members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) signed the ASEAN charter, committing members for the first time to principles of human rights, democracy, and the rule of law. In 2009, the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights was established with a mandate to uphold internationally recognized human rights standards. In 2013, the ASEAN Human Rights Declaration was adopted as a framework for human rights cooperation in the region and a mechanisim for ASEAN community building. Renshaw explains why these developments emerged when they did and assesses the impact of these institutions in the first decade of their existence.In her examination of ASEAN, Renshaw asks how human rights can be implemented in and between states that are politically diverse-Vietnam and Laos are Communist; Brunei Darussalam is an Islamic sultanate; Myanmar is in transition from a military dictatorship; the Philippines and Indonesia are established multiparty democracies; while the remaining members are less easily defined. Renshaw cautions that ASEAN is limited in its ability to shape the practices of its members because it lacks a preponderance of democratic states. However, she concludes that, in the absence of a global legalized human rights order, the most significant practical advancements in the promotion of human rights have emerged from regional institutions such as the ASEAN.

Highlighting how the challenges raised by globalization - from environmental management to financial sector meltdowns - have encouraged the emergence of experts and networks as powerful actors in international governance, the contributions in this collection assess the methods and effectiveness of these new actors. Unlike other books that have focused on networks or experts, this volume brings these players together, showing how they interact and share the challenges of establishing legitimacy and justifying their power and influence. The collection shows how experts and networks function in different ways to address diverse problems across multiple borders. The reader is provided with a broader and deeper practical understanding of how informal authority actually operates, and of the nature of the relationship between different actors involved in policymaking. Through a range of case studies, the contributions in this collection explain how globalization is reshaping traditional forms of power and authority.

Highlighting how the challenges raised by globalization - from environmental management to financial sector meltdowns - have encouraged the emergence of experts and networks as powerful actors in international governance, the contributions in this collection assess the methods and effectiveness of these new actors. Unlike other books that have focused on networks or experts, this volume brings these players together, showing how they interact and share the challenges of establishing legitimacy and justifying their power and influence. The collection shows how experts and networks function in different ways to address diverse problems across multiple borders. The reader is provided with a broader and deeper practical understanding of how informal authority actually operates, and of the nature of the relationship between different actors involved in policymaking. Through a range of case studies, the contributions in this collection explain how globalization is reshaping traditional forms of power and authority.