Governing Relationships: The New Architecture in Global Human Rights Governance
| Date | 01 January 2015 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0305829814562016 |
| Author | Tom Pegram |
| Published date | 01 January 2015 |
| Subject Matter | Forum: Global Governance in the Interregnum |
Millennium: Journal of
International Studies
2015, Vol. 43(2) 618 –639
© The Author(s) 2014
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DOI: 10.1177/0305829814562016
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MILLENNIUM
Journal of International Studies
1. John Vincent, Human Rights and International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1986).
Governing Relationships: The
New Architecture in Global
Human Rights Governance
Tom Pegram
University College London, UK
Abstract
The global human rights regime has undergone extraordinary expansion in the last thirty years. It is
particularly notable for its profusion of state and non-state actors and levels of formal articulation.
This article seeks to make legible the human rights governance architecture from the global to the
local level, within an issue-specific domain. Orchestration theory is employed as a general mode of
governance, with application across political units and political levels. Orchestration applies when a
focal actor enlists and supports third-party actors to address the target indirectly in pursuit of shared
governance objectives. Using the UN Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture (OPCAT)
as an example, the article explores the authority relationship across two central political units (the
orchestrator and intermediary), with a focus on how this new global human rights architecture may
offer a way of bridging the steps separating international instruments from practices on the ground.
Keywords
Global governance, international organisation, architecture, human rights
Introduction
The international human rights regime has undergone extraordinary expansion in the last
thirty years, evident in an increasingly sophisticated framework of treaties, networks,
institutions, and ambitious standards. Now widely regarded as a core component of inter-
state and transnational global affairs, few international relations (IR) scholars anticipated
the contemporary reach of human rights.1 The transformative potential of an increasingly
Corresponding author:
Tom Pegram, Department of Political Science, University College London, London, WC1E 6BT, UK.
Email: t.pegram@ucl.ac.uk
562016MIL0010.1177/0305829814562016Millennium: Journal of International StudiesPegram
research-article2014
Forum: Global Governance in the Interregnum
Pegram 619
2. Par Engstrom, ‘The Effectiveness of International and Regional Human Rights Regimes’,
in The International Studies Encyclopaedia, ed. Robert A. Denemark (Oxford: Blackwell
Publishing, 2010).
3. Thomas G. Weiss and Rorden Wilkinson, ‘Rethinking Global Governance? Complexity,
Authority, Power, Change’, International Studies Quarterly 58, no. 1 (2014): 207–15.
4. Frank Biermann, Philipp Pattberg and Harro van Asselt, ‘The Fragmentation of Global
Governance Architectures: A Framework for Analysis’, Global Environmental Politics 9, no.
4 (2009): 15.
5. David G. Victor and Kal Raustiala, ‘The Regime Complex for Plant Genetic Resources’,
International Organization 32, no. 2 (2004): 147–54. I follow Stephen Krasner’s definition
of regimes. See Stephen D. Krasner, International Regimes (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1983), 2.
6. Michael Zürn and Benjamin Faude, ‘On Fragmentation, Differentiation, and Coordination’,
Global Environmental Politics 13, no. 3 (2013): 119–30.
7. Emilie Hafner-Burton, ‘A Social Science of Human Rights’, Journal of Peace Research 51,
no. 2 (2014): 273–86.
intrusive human rights architecture should not be underestimated. However, concerns
persist regarding the disjuncture between human rights system rules and practices on the
ground. This ‘compliance gap’ is exacerbated by the relative absence of implementation
arrangements authorised to enforce a global human rights governance agenda.
The terms of this debate in IR reflect the limitations of a discipline which has only
recently extended its gaze beyond interstate relations. IR scholars have struggled
to accommodate multiple scales of actors, authority structures, and societal conditions
into their explanatory frameworks. As such, human rights scholarship has only lately
engaged with key empirical questions on governance in this issue-area.2 A more problem-
oriented scholarship on international organisations (IGOs) and global governance offers
a promising point of departure for evaluating the interactions and effects of increasingly
dense IGO ecologies in the area of human rights.3
Global governance scholarship has begun to explore these trends broadly, using the
concept of ‘governance architecture’, defined as ‘the overarching system of public and
private institutions that are valid or active in a given issue area in world politics’.4 In
analysing the presence or (more often) the absence of integrated global architecture –
incorporating regimes, institutions and their component agents, structures norms and
procedures – scholars have generated significant insights into the impact of institutional
complexes, overlaps and interlinkages, on governance outcomes across diverse issue-
areas.5 This scholarship has made important advances in terms of explicating architectures,
making legible what may at first glance seem to be quite incoherent and disparate
elements. However, much less is known about the actual effects of global architectures, with
the jury still out on the relative merits of integration versus fragmentation and, crucially,
when and why global structures matter for closing compliance gaps on the ground.6
This concern is particularly acute in the domain of global human rights governance.
As this study highlights, the global human rights architecture is highly articulated,
notable for its profusion of non-state actors and levels of formal linkages across levels
of governance. A large rationalist literature on the mechanics of the human rights
architecture suggests that differential structural configurations can generate powerful
instrumental effects on state behaviour and governance outcomes.7 However, other
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