Post-UDHR human-rights activism narrowed from economic to civil rights in tandem with neoliberalism

Evidence

When a distinctive and powerful version of human rights began to be advocated by NGOs and the US state thirty years after the adoption of the UDHR, earlier attempts to enshrine rights to housing, food, education and medical care were supplanted by a narrow focus on civil and political rights. This version of human rights became hegemonic alongside neoliberal assaults on both the welfare state and postcolonial attempts to restructure the international economy in the interests of global equality. Human rights became the dominant ideology of a period marked by the demise of revolutionary utopias and socialist politics, succinctly encapsulated by Thatcher’s insistence that ‘there is no alternative’. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 13

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s work on human-rights discourse and the post-Cold War ideological settlement; pairs with readings on the political uses of rights language. — connects to: Human rights NGOs absorbed the neoliberal civil-society-versus-coercive-state dichotomy — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 60; Neoliberals actively shaped the postwar human rights discourse that later legitimized markets — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 40; Neoliberals reframed human rights as instruments of market submission — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 120 (+7 more)
• SEED: An essay angle: the historical coincidence between the ‘discovery’ of human rights by NGOs/state and the rolling back of economic rights as a shared causal field rather than a coincidence.

Broader Connections

• Modern human rights NGOs narrowed their agenda to civil liberties under neoliberal ascendancy #corroborates (0.95) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 148
• Human rights NGOs absorbed the neoliberal civil-society-versus-coercive-state dichotomy #expands (0.85) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 60
• Human rights NGOs reinforced the neoliberal split between violent politics and peaceful markets #expands (0.82)
• Neoliberals actively shaped the postwar human rights discourse that later legitimized markets #corroborates (0.80) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 40
• Neoliberals reframed human rights as instruments of market submission #expands (0.80) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 120
• Neoliberalism converged with human rights activism around shared political aims. #corroborates (0.80) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 36
• Neoliberals framed human rights as a tool to enforce global standards protecting private capital #expands (0.78)
• The UDHR’s flexible social rights language proved compatible with neoliberal poverty management #qualifies (0.75) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 64
• Human rights law and neoliberal economics converge to regulate conduct by quantifying freedom #complicates (0.72)