Scholarly Contributions | Human Rights and Development

HUMAN RIGHTS AND DEMOCRACY

At a time when the dominant approach to democracy in many parts of the world was imposed from the outside, Professor Said contributed to the formation of a new framework for democracy that placed human rights, global cooperation, and locally driven approaches at the center. Inspired by people-powered movements for change across the Global South, he called for a new paradigm that rejects the idea that democracy is a purely Western concept and instead understands it as a process rooted in the hopes and dreams of a people. In particular, Said pointed to the power of a transnational conscience – the cry for human dignity – as a powerful force for democracy.

First writing on issues of human rights and democracy during the Cold War, Said observed that “military power as traditionally conceived is no longer a useful means of implementing policy.”¹ Instead, Said describes democracy as “an indigenous and delicate flower that only flourishes when deeply rooted in the dreams and hopes of the great majority of a nation.”² In a 1979 paper with Dr. Brady Tyson titled “Democracy as a Goal of American Foreign Policy,” Said writes that “while repressive regimes can be imposed by subversion, democracy cannot be successfully implanted from the outside, and certainly not by subversive means.”³ Indeed, many observers were surprised to witness the breakdown of authoritarian regimes during the 1960s and 70s, including Greece, Portugal, Spain, India, and Iran. Yet Said points out that these political events were not instigated by outside forces but were all “rooted, and found their power, in massive popular support, of the people.”⁴ While some scholars at the time equated Western institutional forms with the substance of democracy – concluding that “the Third World is not ready for democracy” – Said calls this a “shallow perspective” as ultimately, the form of democracy “is cast in the mold of the culture of a people.”⁵ He explains that “democracy is built upon participation, not institutions.”⁶ The substance of democracy “is a human society that has a sense of common goals, a sense of community, a process of participation in making decisions, and protective safeguards for dissenters,” while the form is based on the cultural context.⁷

Dr. Said’s call for locally driven, participatory democracy was thus a strong rejection of the dominant, Western-driven paradigm of democracy and capitalism. As a PhD student he and several professors at American University faced significant pressure during the McCarthy era to promote the dominant paradigm through their work. However, they held tight to their academic freedom and – with support from the administration of American University – did not allow the US government to interfere with their scholarship.⁸ Said asserted that the most powerful means for spreading democracy is not subversion, military aid, or even development aid. Rather, it is what he defined as the power of a transnational conscience. This transnational conscience is a “meeting of the best of East and West and of North and South.” It is not molded by the media nor created by intellectuals or the elite, “it is the cry for human dignity.”⁹ When fueled with the hope for change, it becomes a powerful force, for “once people have begun to hope, and to believe that freedom and justice are possible, the movement spreads.”¹⁰

By the end of the Cold War, Dr. Said further strengthened his call for a new paradigm of human rights and democracy, boldly stating: “we are the heirs of the old world order, but our legacy could be much greater if we were to become the architects of a new order founded upon human solidarity. In the new age of interdependence, the whole world needs the whole world.”¹¹ In an article with Dr. Tyson called, “Human Rights: A Forgotten Victim of the Cold War,” he calls attention to the ways in which the Cold War “undercut the efforts to promote full democracy, full humanism, and full human rights.”¹² Said argued that the two superpowers, the US and USSR, devalued the concept of democracy, while their capitalist and socialist visions of human rights failed. Yet their failure also “showed that civil, economic, social, cultural, and political rights are interrelated, interdependent, and equally important. Human rights are indivisible.”¹³ In the “great vacuum” that now exists within “the center of discussion of theories on human rights and democracy,” the world needs a new democratic paradigm that integrates a new set of global core values and an integrated view of human rights.¹⁴

Said warned that the new world order could be one of an inevitable growing gap between the rich and poor, or “we may be on the verge of one of the most creative periods in human history.”¹⁵ Ultimately, he stressed, “democratic behavior is a learned behavior, acquired only by practice,” and one in which we all have the chance to be a part.¹⁶ In a 1996 article, he outlines a new vision of democracy with four components: dynamic stability, in which stability is not reactionary, stagnate, or “foolishly wedded to the status quo in the midst of profound, extraordinary changes”; indivisible rights, which underscores the widening and deepening understanding of all human rights, including economic well-being; inclusive justice, which includes ecological security and focuses on building common security and healthy global consensus and community; and cultural pluralism, which recognizes the cultural community as the principal source of human realization.¹⁷

Along with his theoretical contributions, Said was also always interested in the policy implications of a holistic human rights and democracy paradigm. On US foreign policy, he saw a clear role for American leadership to contribute to an ever-broadening concept of democracy, fueled by a transnational conscience that is “deeply rooted in the dreams of justice and freedom of all peoples, for all people.”¹⁸ In the late 1970s, he identified an opportunity for the US to join in building a sense of community that transcends the barriers of geography separating American affluence from Third World poverty. He finds that “the inclusion of democracy among American foreign policy goals requires a … generosity of spirit that transcends our traditional narrow liberalism.”¹⁹ Power “may be used for moral or immoral purposes”²⁰ – in other words, it need not be purely destructive.

By the 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union changed the focus of US foreign policy and the US “acquired more freedom of action over a larger area of the world,” Professor Said continued to see a role for the US in pursuing human rights and promoting participatory democracies – but through a conscious separation of foreign policy and human rights. He pointed out how US leaders were pursuing human rights for purely economic or political interests, often utilizing a “carrot and stick” approach to reprimand Global South countries for human rights violations. Said instead advocated for delinking human rights from politics and treating them “in a non-adversarial way so as to ensure that they do not become manipulated for the purpose of securing parochial political interests.”²¹ Including human rights as a component of US foreign policy has proven to be a failure and political embarrassment, he argued; “The United States should not go around the world monitoring human rights abuses and enforcing its own principles on other nations.”²² Rather, the US can pursue human rights through multilateral organizations such as the UN, track two diplomacy, back-channel communications, dialogue, and assisting people in developing civil society groups that advocate for their own human rights. Said explains, “quiet diplomacy is the only option that the United States should employ in responding to human rights violations around the world, as long as this diplomacy does not impose US principles on others.”²³ Said maintains that “democracy becomes a transnational idea when people believe strongly in it. It surpasses all borders and becomes a unifying concept. It is then when the United States can promote democracy and human rights.”²⁴

Dr. Said was also particularly focused on human rights and diplomacy in the Middle East and North Africa and vis a vis Islam. In a 2004 article titled “Let Us Be Democratic about Democracy,” he reiterated that “democracy is not a Western product. It is a global process of organizing political needs on an equal basis that must be deeply rooted in the dreams and hopes of the great majority of a nation to flourish.”²⁵ Further, he asserts that there is no fundamental incompatibility between Islam and democracy. The US could play a role in supporting human rights and facilitating democratization by supporting and engaging in substantive dialogues among people in the region, many of whom have been traumatized by years of brutal political oppression. The dialogues should ask, “what does democracy look like for us (form and substance)?” as well as “what kinds of solutions can Islam bring to affect participatory decision-making in the absence of authoritative guidance in social matters?”²⁶ Democracy in the region must be built on genuine local participation, Said asserts, and any dialogue must extend beyond the elites. “It would be a beautiful production, in which the people of the Middle East could play the starring roles.”²⁷

Throughout his work on human rights and democracy, Said returns to his vision of cooperative global politics and a global civilization. “Only through global cooperation can the world survive and become human,” he explains. However, “such cooperation is only possible if the world develops a greater fund of common values. Neither the West, nor anyone else, can continue to impose common values on the world. These values must be invented and developed through a consensus-making process. Such a process demands respect by and for all cultures and also demands the participation of all peoples.”²⁸

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