Transnational human rights NGOs have long argued that every individual is entitled to certain human rights regardless of his or her nationality or personal background. They consider human rights to be a universal principle of justice that every state has to grant to its citizens. Often in conjunction with state actors, they hence criticize those states that in their view fail to meet their international human rights obligations. This paper aims at exploring the effects of such calls for justice on the behaviour of powerful states, commonly known for their ability to resist any interference into their internal affairs. In particular, it asks if, and if yes, under what conditions international and, most notably, transnational human rights criticism is able to prompt great powers to bring about positive change, i.e. to change their behaviour towards compliance with relevant human rights norms.
Starting from the English School assumption that a great power requires recognition by others in order to be granted certain privileges in the international system, it is argued that great powers are not completely immune to such criticism and can thus hardly afford to increase their repressive behaviour in response to it. Rather, under certain conditions to be discussed in the paper they are inclined to change their human rights conduct to be able to effectively perform its international leadership claims. Using the example of U.S. human rights policies in its “war on terror”, a preliminary case study will be run in the second part of the paper in order to demonstrate the plausibility of the argument.
