Economic Rights: Conceptual, Measurement, and Policy Issues

by Shareen Hertel , Lanse Minkler

• ISBN13: 9780521690829
• ISBN10: 052169082X
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-08-13
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This edited volume offers new scholarship on economic rights by leading scholars in the fields of economics, law, and political science. It analyzes the central features of economic rights: their conceptual, measurement, and policy dimensions. In its introduction, the book provides a new conceptualization of economic rights based on a three-pronged definition: the right to a decent standard of living, the right to work, and the right to basic income support for people who cannot work. Subsequent chapters correct existing conceptual mistakes in the literature, provide new measurement techniques with country rankings, and analyze policy implementation at the international, regional, national, and local levels. While it forms a cohesive whole, the book is nevertheless rich in contending perspectives.

Table of Contents

Contributors	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xv
Economic Rights: The Terrain	p. 1
Concepts
The West and Economic Rights	p. 37
Needs-Based Approach to Social and Economic Rights	p. 56
Economic Rights in the Knowledge Economy: An Instrumental Justification	p. 76
"None So Poor That He Is Compelled to Sell Himself": Democracy, Subsistence, and Basic Income	p. 94
Benchmarking the Right to Work	p. 115
Measurement
The Status of Efforts to Monitor Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights	p. 143
Measuring the Progressive Realization of Economic and Social Rights	p. 165
Economic Rights, Human Development Effort, and Institutions	p. 182
Measuring Government Effort to Respect Economic and Social Human Rights: A Peer Benchmark	p. 214
Government Respect for Women's Economic Rights: A Cross-National Analysis, 1981-2003	p. 233
Policy Issues
Economic Rights and Extraterritorial Obligations	p. 267
International Obligations for Economic and Social Rights: The Case of the Millennium Development Goal Eight	p. 284
The United States and International Economic Rights: Law, Social Reality, and Political Choice	p. 310
Public Policy and Economic Rights in Ghana and Uganda	p. 325
Human Rights as Instruments of Emancipation and Economic Development	p. 345
Worker Rights and Economic Development: The Cases of Occupational Safety and Health and Child Labor	p. 363
Universal Declaration of Human Rights	p. 379
International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights	p. 385
Index	p. 395
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