BRITAIN AND THE CREATION OF THE UNITED NATIONS

ABSTRACT: In this preliminary analysis of postwar British policy toward the formation of a UN human rights regime, based on recently published documents, we find strong support for “republican liberal” theory. The core of British policy—support for rhetorical commitments but not for mandatory enforcement—remained essentially unchanged from 1945 through 1953, and that position reflected a broadly acceptable compromise position within the British government—a position that incorporated the considerations central to republican liberal theory. Four empirical findings are decisive: First, decision-makers draw a fundamental distinction between rhetorical commitments and enforcement mechanisms such as compulsory jurisdiction and individual petition. Second, the British government, arguably like nearly all other Western governments, viewed human rights regimes most fundamentally as devices to stabilize emerging and potentially unstable democracies against totalitarian threats that can eventually lead to tyranny and war. Third, established democracies like Britain tended to be ambivalent or opposed to effective international enforcement, because—as republican liberal theory argues—in a strictly self-interested sense they benefit less from domestic stabilization. Britain supported such commitments to the extent they believe that strengthening neighboring democracies enhanced the “democratic peace ” by reducing the number of potentially aggressive non-democracies and by bolstering alliances among democratic states—both phenomena predicted by “republican liberal ” theory—but, unlike transitional democracies like France, it did not view such regimes as contributing to domestic democratic consolidation. Fourth, other complex factors at the core of existing historical analyses, such as contingency, individual political personalities, and bureaucratic politics, played a secondary or epiphenomenal role. Before citing, please check at www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~moravcs or contact the authors a