What comes first, democracy or human rights?

What is it about?

Minimalists about human rights hold that a state can have political legitimacy if it protects a basic list of rights and democratic rights do not have to be on that list. In this paper, I consider two arguments from Benhabib against the minimalist view. The first is that a political community cannot be said to have self-determination, which minimalists take to be the value at the heart of legitimacy, without democracy. The second is that even the human rights protections minimalists take to legitimize institutions cannot be had without democracy. These rights can only be adequately interpreted and specified for any social context if the interpretations and specifications result from democratic processes. Here, I bring out some important problems with these arguments and so conclude that they do not represent a robust case for rejecting minimalism

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Why is it important?

Resolving whether a state is legitimate and why it is or is not legitimate are a central question in political criticism and an important intellectual tool in political activism. The argument of the paper is important in the debate on the relationship between human rights and democracy as grounds for legitimacy. It makes space for the idea that a state can be legitimate without being fully democratic, but cannot be legitimate without upholding a basic list of human rights.

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