The power of “universal human rights”: Results and implications

The conclusion summarizes that coercion and strategic learning can account for why the United States has introduced “extraterritorial human rights safeguards” to constrain its counterterrorism policies. In none of the cases was moral persuasion the decisive mechanism behind the introduction of safeguards – even if moral considerations provided important motivation for some actors, including individual policymakers, to intervene and engage in policy debates. With a view to the findings’ theoretical implications, the conclusion argues that the findings suggest that cosmopolitanism and realpolitik exercise constraint on one another and that the cases are evidence of complex accountability relationships beyond the state. It also suggests that the book’s subject is a case of norm specification through applicatory norm contestation inasmuch as contestation has specified the meaning of “universal human rights”. Finally, the conclusion argues that the emergence of extraterritorial safeguards in the United States covered in the book is part of a broader empirical trend. It points out very clearly that not all safeguards that have emerged are necessarily effective. Nonetheless, it argues that the trend is still evidence of the diffusion of a norm that states should protect the human rights of foreigners abroad.