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Being a Realist about Human Rights

Being a realist about human rights requires a sober understanding of the dynamics of power. Yet conventional realist accounts of power, which relegate human rights to the margins of world politics, misunderstand power’s complexities. Rights revolutions have transformed world politics, not the least by driving the shift from empires to a universal state system. This chapter explains this more complex relationship between rights and power, drawing on recent theories of ‘protean power’, where it emerges from innovation under conditions of uncertainty. Uncertainty is ubiquitous in world politics, but is accentuated by meaning indeterminacy and institutional complexity, conditions that are inherent to the politics of rights. The chapter concludes by illustrating this argument with a critique of recent accounts of the post-1945 politics of human rights.