Is there a human right to democracy?

My dissertation asks whether there is a human right to democracy. This is a difficult question, not least because there is no consensus about either what democracy requires or how to interpret human rights. The introduction aims to alleviate these sources of confusion about the question itself, in addition to presenting the main arguments in favor of a human right to democracy, and my rationale to focus more narrowly on a question of toleration. The main discussions are organized around the idea that if democratic peoples should tolerate undemocratic peoples, then a human right to democracy does not exist. Part 1 uses discussions about corporate agency and the conditions of corporate responsibility to argue that a group's capacity for responsible collective agency depends on four things: its ability to form collective intentions, an internal culture that orients the formation of personal intentions to act in accordance with those collective intentions, agents authorized to act (vicariously) for the group, and an effective internal practice of public accountability. I also suggest reasons why it is sometimes appropriate for a collective entity to authorize the agents acting on its behalf to use coercion.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Linguistics and Philosophy

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2006

Author dc:creator

• Abdul-Matin, Karim (Ishmawil Karim)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Joshua Cohen.

• Linguistics and Philosophy.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/39142

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/39142