The argument against this cultural relativism weaves together three strands.

The first
demonstrates that those advancing the exceptionalist claim do not genuinely and legitimately
represent those on whose behalf that claim is made. The second shows that huma rights are
grounded not in a regional culture but in modern transcultural social, econonmic, and scientific
developments. And the third maintains that individual rights are not the enemy of the common
good, social responsibility, and community but rather contribute to the emergence of new,
multilayered, and voluntary affiliations that can supplement those long imposed by tradition,
territory, and genetics.
Cultural theorists 'critique the existing human rights corpus as culturally exclusive in some
respects and, therefore, view parts of it as illegitimate or, at the very least, irrelevant in nonwestern societies... they do not believe that a genuine universal human rights truth can be
constructed from any one single culture.' (Mutua, 2002:43)

One particularly productive research program associated with the normative turn in IR, which
connected with a central preoccupation of internationalists over several centuries, was the
relationship between ethics and foreign policy (Keal (ed.), 1992; Dunne and Wheeler (eds.),
1998; Smith and Light (eds.),2001).The dilemmas that were addressed in this literature reflected
the stark tension that existed in world politics between the dominant sovereignty-based order and
the growing aspiration for all peoples to have their basic human rights protected (Dunne and
McDonald, 2013, p.4).
International human rights law is largely restricted to the (mis)use of state power against citizens,
but in the political struggles for democracy, human dignity, and social justice where human rights
play a crucial role, no such restriction obtains. Goodhart, 190
We thus should expect to find international legal universality both backed by preponderant
political power and reflecting deeper ethical, moral, or religious values. It certainly is not
coincidental that most of the worlds leading military and economic powers strongly support
internationally recognized human rights. (Donnelly, 2013, p. 96)
Conceptually universal human rights may be so few in number or specified at such a high level
of abstraction that they are of little practical consequence (Donnelly, 2007, p. 283).
argue that internationally recognized human rights have become very much like a new
international standard of civilization. (Donnelly, 1998, p. 14).
Civilization Human rights offered a new inclusive standard that emphasized what is shared by
and owed to everyone (Donnelly, 1998, p. 14).
As the theory of human rights has been arguing, the universa As this essay has shown, liberal
internationalism has a long history; a history in which heroic struggles for universal human rights

stand side by side with self-interested interventions designed to embolden the status of colonial
great powers (Dunne and McDonald, 2013, p.14).
We have already encountered three ways in which human rights are universal (in the sense of
applying across a class). 1) Virtually all states consider internationally recognized human rights
to be a firmly established part of international law and politics. 2) Virtually all cultures, regions,
and leading worldviews participate in an overlapping consensus on these internationally
recognized human rights. 3) Th is consensus rests on the contemporary universality of the
standard threats to human dignity posed by modern markets and modern states. I will call these
international legal universality, overlapping consensus universality, and functional universality.
(Donnelly, 2013, p. 94)
Human rights today remain the only proven effective means to assure human dignity in societies
dominated by markets and states. (Donnelly, 2013, p. 97)
A list of rights reflects a contingent response to historically specific conditions. (Donnelly, 2013,
p. 97)

All rights have limits. (Logically, there can be at most one absolute rightunless we implausibly
assume that rights never conflict with one another.) (Donnelly, 2013, p. 102).
Humanitarianism provides an alternative architecture for liberal internationalists seeking to
manage a complex but increasingly interdependent international arena. These include, but are not
limited to, the challenges of delivering universal rights while preserving cultural difference, the
circumstances of the use of force to protect suffering others, the extent to which concerns with
order are prioritized over concerns with justice and the challenges of mediating between the
concerns of domestic populations and those of (vulnerable) outsiders (Dunne and McDonald,
2013, p.13).

The classic standard of civilization (largely unintentionally) outlined a path for non-Western
states to become recognized as sovereign equals and thus obtain the protections of (Western)
international law (Donnelly, 1998, p. 8).
Power remained closely correlated with advanced civilization and continued to provide
immense international advantages. Formal legal status, however, was becoming more equalat
least for internationally recognized states (Donnelly, 1998, p. 9).

The link to the classic standard of civilization was to the underlying idea of universal rights
rather than extraterritorial discrimination in favour of aliens. The preliminary efforts of the
interwar minorities regime to bring the standard of civilization back home were dramatically
expanded in substance and applied universally (Donnelly, 1998, p. 14).

International human rights appeal to a Lockean or liberal progressivist understanding of

civilization and a social contract conception of the state as an instrument to realize the rights of
its citizens (Donnelly, 1998, p. 14).
Therefore, as west European states in the 1980s and 1990s increasingly emphasized human rights
in their foreign policies, they operated from a moral high ground (Donnelly, 1998, p. 15).
After the initial outrage subsided, and repression in China once more became routinized,
international sanctions unravelled. Even the United States, Chinas harshest critic, has not been
willing to make major economic, political or strategic sacrifices to press human rights concerns;
and Chinese appeals to sovereignty have had considerable impact (Donnelly, 1998, p. 17-18).
Human rights are not an alternative to power politics or the international law of sovereign
equality. They do, however, impose supplementary constraints on the freedom of action of states.
The reality of these constraints, and the importance of asserting the relevance of standards of
international justice, are no less important than their limits. (Donnelly, 1998, p. 18).
Nevertheless, human rights represent a progressive late twentieth-century expression of the
important idea that international legitimacy and full membership in international society must
rest in part on standards of just, humane or civilized behavior (Donnelly, 1998, p. 21).
I defend what I call functional, international legal, and overlapping consensus universality. But I
argue that what I call anthropological and ontological universality are empirically,
philosophically, or politically indefensible (Donnelly, 2007, p. 281).
I have been an active participant in these debates for a quarter century, arguing for a form of
universalism that also allows substantial space for important (second order) claims of relativism
(Jack Donnelly, Human Rights and Human Dignity: An Analytic Critique of Non-West- ern
Human Rights Conceptions, 76 AM. POL. SCIENCE REV. 30316 (1982)).
Here, however, I give somewhat more emphasis to the limits of the universal (Donnelly, 2007, p.
282).