Fulfilling Social and Economic Rights [Paperback]

One of the most ambitious legacies of the 20th century was the universal commitment to ensure freedom from want as a human right. But to what extent are countries across the world living up to this commitment? This path breaking book develops an innovative, evidence-based index for comparing performance on education, food, health, work and housing across very differently situated countries and over time. It explores the factors influencing performance and provides empirical evidence to resolve some long standing controversies over the principle of progressive realization . By defying the boundaries of traditional research disciplines, this work fundamentally advances our knowledge about the status of and factors promoting social and economic rights fulfillment at the dawn of the 21st century.

List of Boxes
List of Tables
List of Figures
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: Measuring Social and Economic Rights: the SERF Index Approach
Chapter 3: Constructing the SERF Index: Progressive Realization and Aggregation
Chapter 4: Constructing the SERF Index: From Rights Enjoyment to Indicators
Chapter 5: A Global Picture of Social and Economic Rights Fulfillment
Chapter 6: What Matters for Strong Performance?
Chapter 7: Responding to Critics: Trade-Offs, Policy Choices, Historical
Chapter 8: Conclusions
Notes
Bibliography
About the Authors
Index

The Cold War debate in which the West stood for civil and political rights and the Soviet Union argued for economic and social rights was sterile and stillborn. It ignored the fundamental insight of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: human beings require both to live in dignity and flourish. Taking economic and social rights seriously will be as important for the survival of democracies in this century as safeguarding their heritage of civil and political rights. This book is an important and useful step in that direction. -- Anne-Marie Slaughterl#v