The literature on human rights, in the context of international politics, generally divides into two very different forms: There is work done on the distinctly normative questions of what human rights are and how they can be justified, and there is the more empirical work that examines the mechanisms of human rights promotion, enforcement, and so on. It is surprisingly rare that the two forms meet, other than in classroom texts.

The Liberal Project and Human Rights is an example of the first type of work. This is a large book with wide ambitions: John Charvet and Elisa Kaczynska-Nay want to define a particular, expansive definition of liberalism, examine its origins and implications, and defend it from a variety of different critics, ranging from “communitarians” to non-Western religious traditionalists. The authors state up front that although their definition of liberalism is broad, they believe that liberalism presents “universal ‘truths’ [that] sufficiently reflective persons in non-Western cultures” can and will endorse (p. 20). Their book is not, then, a neutral description of a philosophical position but a defense of liberalism and human rights—a passionate and entirely partisan defense. After a careful and very useful review of the origins of liberalism, they present their own view of what a philosophy of international human rights should look like, explore its implications, and consider various counterarguments.

The first part of the book defines liberalism and charts its development as a philosophy. Focusing more on Hugo Grotius than, say, John Locke, Charvet and Kaczynska-Nay are decidedly more interested in liberalism's international implications than in domestic ones. This is especially evident in a complex and interesting discussion of the “Westphalian” state and the place of liberalism in the development of modern international society. They thus tie together the spread of the modern state system and the spread of human rights ideals, as the former “provided the socio-political structure within which individuals could come to think of each other as free and equal voluntary co-operators” (p. 41).

Subsequent chapters explore the implications of various rights ideals, such as the right to self-determination, the right to development assistance, and women's rights. The authors seek to demonstrate that these rights categories—as well as the more “conventional” categories of civil and political rights, and economic, social, and cultural rights—have philosophical coherence and legitimacy. They also advocate, ultimately, for the Kantian ideal of a world of liberal states through democratic transformation, although when considering how to bring this about, they focus on uncontroversial steps such as having current liberal states set a good example, and dodge the touchy subject of actually transforming recalcitrant states through coercive means.

Human Rights Matters fits into the second category of work. Julie Mertus is concerned with understanding what is possible and practical in the promotion of human rights, through the mechanism of national human rights institutions (NHRIs). Mertus sees human rights as having come “full circle;” starting out as a domestic issue for states and their citizens, then becoming a matter of international concern, and now returning to local roots through NHRIs. She seems to feel that these local institutions are more vibrant and important instruments of human rights promotion than international institutions. She asks, in particular, how local context affects the origins, shape, performance, and future potential of NHRIs, and this examination of local context is a substantial part of her narrative. She is clear in stating that although the “door was opened” for the proliferation of NHRIs through international action on rights, the local context is the key determining factor in what NHRIs decide to do and how they go about doing it.

Mertus's methodology is straightforward. She presents five case studies of NHRIs, examining the effect of local political and economic conditions on their development and assessing their effectiveness and importance. It is interesting that she chooses to analyze only European NHRIs, explaining that studies of NHRIs are too often written by Western scholars assessing the performance of institutions in “other” contexts. The author has an important point. It initially seems odd to read an assessment of human rights promotion in, say, Denmark, a country that presents neither a pressing human rights crisis nor a particularly “tough case.” On reflection, however, it seems a mistake to ignore the lessons of any country merely because it is not in crisis. Comparison with other countries with greater problems—Northern Ireland and Bosnia-Herzegovina, for example—allows for lessons to be drawn that one might not see by comparing institutions in more varied contexts.

The case studies allow Mertus to reach some important conclusions about local context and the success of NHRIs. She notes, for example, that “best practice standards on NHRI development … [stress] the vital necessity of meaningful and sustained stakeholder participation in the establishment process” (p. 138) and that NHRIs thrive when citizens have increasing “rights literacy” (p. 139). At the same time, she is aware that governments sometimes will cynically create NHRIs as a public relations stunt, when they have no real intention of improving their rights record. This made me wonder whether the creation of effective NHRIs is a cause or a result of a deeper societal commitment to human rights promotion and enforcement. Mertus is ultimately more interested in looking at the issues that NHRIs take up and why than in how well they advocate for those issues—although she certainly does address the second question, and some of her examples do illuminate the larger societal context and how that impacts the creation of NHRIs.

In her conclusion, Mertus states that NHRIs can “bridge the disconnect between abstract and seemingly unobtainable human rights standards at the international level and practical national-level action” (p. 129). In this, her book provides a useful companion to that of Charvet and Kaczynska-Nay, who remain at a fairly abstract level of theorizing about rights. That said, there remains a gap between the books that seems indicative of the larger disconnect between philosophical and practical books on human rights. The Liberal Project, for example, notably ignores practical politics in its definition of human rights, even though it appeals several times to international documents when defining what those rights are. Yet, international documents produced at the United Nations are notoriously the products of political negotiation, rather than the results of pure moral reasoning. This complicates the book's basic argument. A work interested in a philosophical definition of rights is probably making a mistake if it considers human rights documents as anything more than suggestive of what rights we ought to have. Charvet and Kaczynska-Nay also make some idealistic but hard-to-demonstrate statements, for example that there is “a wide consensus today that states ought to follow an ethical foreign policy” (p. 266). It would be nice if this were so, but it is at best a statement that could use some backing up or further definition.

The Liberal Project, as a book that advocates as well as describes, is full of high-minded prescriptions for the future. For example, the authors support full recognition of a “right to development” (and, more significantly, development assistance), but how are we to overcome the political difficulties of actually implementing such a right, or even just getting those states that would bear the cost of it to accept it? The messy part of the human rights enterprise, it would seem, lies in the actual implementation of rights, as the various half-hearted attempts by the UN over the years would demonstrate. It is certainly true, as the authors point out, that reasonable proposals have been advanced for the implementation of a “right to development”; without a consideration of the difficulty of actually getting states to go along with such high-minded ideals, however, we are left in the realm of ideals and not implementation.

Of course, implementation (or, at least, advancement) of human rights norms in a world of sovereign states remains the basic issue stymieing those who really believe in the moral importance of rights and the necessity of spreading representative government and respect for the individual. Reading through Mertus's carefully drawn and detailed case studies, it is hard to come away with an optimistic view of the effectiveness of NHRIs. Many have good intentions, and they take up important issues, but their record is spotty (particularly in countries like Bosnia-Herzegovina, where they are most needed) and highly dependent on the local context. The Czech “Office of the Public Defender of Rights” is a good example. Although Mertus concludes her section on this office with an essentially upbeat assessment, there are still some serious limitations. The Czech public remains “apathetic” regarding human rights, the defender's office rarely has more than “moral authority” at its disposal, and the office, for example, could do little but make recommendations for legal changes even in a serious case such as forced sterilization of Roma hospital patients. Even the German Institute for Human Rights, which the author sees as “highly successful,” has severe limitations, for example, on its ability to hear individual cases. And this is in a country where there is strong awareness of the concept of human rights and a very supportive historical context. NHRIs clearly have great potential for filtering rights ideals through the reality of local context, but that potential is still unrealized. I came away from Human Rights Matters thinking that the potential is also disappointingly limited.

Taken together, these books suggest the challenge of bridging the gap between moral ideals and political reality. It is not too difficult, as Charvet and Kaczynska-Nay demonstrate, to come up with a convincing defense of human rights, and there remains a large (if potentially too large) list of rights that can be derived from basic liberal premises. But does “implementation” of human rights mean that states must convert themselves into liberal democracies with recognizably Western rights guaranteed by the state? Or are different cultures able to find their own way to a culture-specific set of rights that we can nonetheless see as legitimate in a wider context? The Liberal Project suggests one path, promoting an expansive and universally palatable form of liberalism; Human Rights Matters suggests another, centered on local political action and education. Whether these paths can be merged or whether there may be other and better paths toward the enhancement of human rights remain questions of pressing theoretical and practical importance.