Rhetoric and Efficacy

More than ever before, human rights rhetoric is sweeping across the landscape of world pol-itics. The trend began in the 1970s, picked up speed after the Cold War ended in the late 1980s, and quickened again in the latter half of the 1990s. Despite this convergence of lan-guage, results are mixed, variable, and some-times illusive. In this special issue of Journal of Peace Research, scholars examine this increase in public human rights discourse and its cor-relation to the behavior of states in extending better protections to their citizens. While it is clear that human rights talk has grown in a variety of venues, from the media to interna-tional treaties, it is harder to discern how, precisely, this discursive surge has influenced the actions of states and their leaders. However, there do seem to be certain models of govern-ance that correlate to stronger human rights regimes, as scholars demonstrate here. In this special issue, Ramos, Ron & Thoms (2007) use new data to demonstrate increased usage of the term ‘human rights ’ by major Western media. The median use of the term by six of the world’s leading media outlets rose 95 % from 1986 to 2000, with some publi-cations showing far greater increases. Similarly