Human rights, democracy, and development

In the past decade, development, democracy, and human rights have become hegemonic political ideals. Regimes that do not at least claim to pursue rapid and sustained economic growth ('development'), popular political participation ('democracy'), and respect for the rights of their citizens ('human rights') place their national and international legitimacy at risk. Without denying important practical and theoretical linkages, this article focuses on tensions between the logics of human rights, democracy, and development. In doing so, this article challenges the comfortable contemporary assumption that, as the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action (adopted by the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights) put it, '[d]emocracy, development and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms are interdependent and mutually reinforcing'.