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Books by Tom Pegram

National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs) – human rights commissions and ombudsmen – have gained... more National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs) – human rights commissions and ombudsmen – have gained recognition as a possible missing link in the transmission and implementation of international human rights norms at the domestic level. They are also increasingly accepted as important participants in global and regional forums where international norms are produced. By collecting innovative work from experts spanning international law, political science, sociology and human rights practice, this book critically examines the significance of this relatively new class of organizations. It focuses, in particular, on the prospects of these institutions to effectuate state compliance and social change. Consideration is given to the role of NHRIs in delegitimizing – though sometimes legitimizing – governments' poor human rights records and in mobilizing – though sometimes demobilizing – civil society actors. The volume underscores the broader implications of such cross-cutting research for scholarship and practice in the fields of human rights and global affairs in general.

Papers by Tom Pegram

This article employs the Regulator-Intermediary-Target (RIT) framework to explore one of the risk... more This article employs the Regulator-Intermediary-Target (RIT) framework to explore one of the risks identified therein: the potential for intermediation to provide alternative channels for capture. To mitigate this problem, I advance a novel form of regulatory management: regulatory stewardship. Regulatory stewardship involves intermediaries themselves monitoring the performance of one another. I explore the implications of stewardship by examining a new generation of human rights treaty innovation: the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture (OPCAT) and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). These instruments differentially formalize relations among intermediaries. I use their contrasting experience to identify three factors central to effective regulatory stewardship: (1) the task environment; (2) the enabling quality of rule frameworks; and (3) the approaches adopted by potential stewards in practice. The study substantiates the importance of regulatory stewardship within RIT arrangements, particularly where targets are strongly motivated to resist implementation.

The performance of global governance regimes across issue areas is increasingly beset by what sch... more The performance of global governance regimes across issue areas is increasingly beset by what scholars have termed the “governance dilemma” (Keohane 2001). As noted in Gridlock (Hale, Held and Young 2013), second-order trends, brought on by deepening global interdependence are combining to undermine international cooperation where it is needed most. The governance dilemma is particularly acute in a human rights domain characterized more by distributive costs than easily resolved cooperation problems. Drawing on the introduction to this book, the chapter surveys the current state of human rights scholarship and practice through an exploration of four potential pathways “through” or even “beyond” gridlock in the human rights domain, with particular attention to: (1) autonomous and adaptive institutions, and (2) plurality and diversity of actors and agencies around common goals/norms. In so doing, it highlights how human rights governance is emblematic of certain exit options from gridlock, especially mobilization of willing and able transgovernmental and transnational networks of non-state actors. This includes both civil society actors, as well as networks of national human rights institutions (NHRIs) and other official regulatory bodies, which have received growing attention of late. The chapter begins with an outline of governance arrangements in the human rights domain, including a survey of the many challenges human rights governance confronts. It then evaluates the extent to which the pathways out of gridlock identified in this project are evident in human rights governance and with what effect. The chapter concludes by reflecting on what the analysis means for advancing human rights policy objectives and overcoming multilateral gridlock more generally.

The United Nations promoted a novel idea in the 1990s: National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs)... more The United Nations promoted a novel idea in the 1990s: National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs). Their codification in the Paris Principles and subsequent UN General Assembly endorsement precipitated a global norm cascade. We demonstrate that NHRIs have spread rapidly. Furthermore, we document that structures established after UN endorsement had just as many institutional safeguards as earlier NHRIs. What explains this compliance pull? A transgovernmental NHRI network operating a system of independent monitoring of NHRIs is an important part of the explanation. We examine how this network has interacted with the UN system to create incentives for governments to strengthen NHRIs.

Governance, 2015

Global governance is not working. The rapid development of economic globalisation and deepening i... more Global governance is not working. The rapid development of economic globalisation and deepening interdependence of cross-border activity belie the relative absence of governance

Thinking Beyond Sectors for Sustainable Development, 2015

The Lancet. Global health, Jan 27, 2015

The more overtly coercive dimensions of human rights enforcement have emerged front and center in... more The more overtly coercive dimensions of human rights enforcement have emerged front and center in contemporary debates on the appropriate response of the international community to massive human rights violations. Movement towards politically legitimating humanitarian intervention based on collective action – including the use of force – is embodied in the principle of “Responsibility to Protect” or RtoP, and associated efforts to redefine threats to international peace and security that have pushed human rights compliance onto the agenda of the UN Security Council (UNSC). This development reflects three broad trends that inform and, in turn, are informed by RtoP: (1) the broadening of interpretations of threats to international peace and security, including mass atrocities; (2) the reality of constant renegotiations of state sovereignty in matters of human rights, and the legitimate form and scope of international intervention in the domestic affairs of sovereign countries; and (3) the increased acceptability of the use of force for a broad range of policy objectives and associated beliefs in the utility of coercive/military power.

This paper examines some of the key underlying norms that inform contemporary debate on RtoP. In the process, it also highlights some of the broader implications of a trend towards securitizing human rights. It begins by historically tracing the role of the UN Security Council (UNSC) and General Assembly (UNGA) in situating human rights within the framework of threats to international peace and security. Notwithstanding the primary responsibility of the Council in matters of international peace and security, this paper is intended to act as a corrective to a discussion which, with some notable exceptions, often underspecifies or neglects altogether the role of the UNGA in this arena.

Secondly, despite precedent within UN structures for framing massive violations of human rights as a threat to international peace and security, the more coercive dimensions of human rights enforcement has prompted significant pushback by certain groups of states previously willing to endorse the 2005 World Summit Outcome document. The paper proceeds to unpack some of these contentious dynamics by focusing on first order principles of legitimacy and jurisdiction within and outside UN structures.

Thirdly, current debate surrounding implementation has increasingly focused on RtoP as a doctrine of prevention as much as enforcement under the rubric of the ‘Three Pillar System’ devised by the UN Secretary General in his 2009 report to the UNGA: (1) the protection responsibilities of the State; (2) international assistance and capacity-building; and (3) timely and decisive response. This has raised questions regarding the relative emphasis between the pillars, particularly concerning the specific responsibilities that may be entailed for prevention and enforcement. This debate is being conducted in the context of contemporary developments that are testing the relevance of RtoP to diverse situational crises and the notable reluctance of the Security Council to apply RtoP to ongoing crisis situations. Observers, such as Nicholas Wheeler, criticized the 2005 World Summit Outcome document for failing to address two fundamental questions: what should happen if the UNSC is unable or unwilling to authorize the use of force to prevent or end a humanitarian tragedy? And second, how could better implementation of this norm save strangers in the future? Issues of legitimacy, authority, and implementation raised by these questions and explored in this paper remain of central concern. The UNSC and UNGA historical record of activity in the area of human rights enforcement provides valuable historical context to a fuller understanding of the contours of this contemporary debate.

The global human rights regime has undergone extraordinary expansion in the last thirty years. It... more 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 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.

To reach agreement, international negotiators often compromise by introducing flexibility in lang... more To reach agreement, international negotiators often compromise by introducing flexibility in language: they make controversial provisions vague, or add options and caveats. Does flexibility in agreement language influence subsequent state behavior? If so, do states follow both firm and flexible language somewhat, as negotiators hope? Or do governments respond strategically, increasing their energies on firmly specified tasks, and reducing their efforts on flexibly specified ones? Testing claims about agreement language is challenging, because states often reserve flexible language for controversial provisions. To make causal claims, we study an unusually drafted agreement, in which states had almost no opportunity to water down controversial provisions. We examine the influence of the 1991 Paris Principles on the Design of National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs), using an original dataset of 22 institutional safeguards of NHRIs in 107 countries, and case studies. We find that variations in agreement language can have large effects on state behavior, even when the entire agreement is non-binding. Both democracies and authoritarian states followed the Principles’ firm terms closely. However, authoritarian states either ignored or reduced their efforts on flexibly specified tasks. If flexibly specifying a task is no different from omitting it altogether, as our data suggest, the costs of compromise are much larger than previously believed.

The United Nations remains the principal international governmental organisation (IGO) for promot... more The United Nations remains the principal international governmental organisation (IGO) for promoting human rights. However, serious concerns focus on persistent “compliance gaps” between human rights standards and domestic practice. In response and against a backdrop of growing regime complexity, UN human rights agencies have increasingly sought to bypass states by coordinating new forms of non-state and private authority. IR scholarship has captured this governance arrangement using the concept of orchestration, defined as when an international organisation enlists and supports intermediary actors to address target actors in pursuit of IGO governance goals (Abbott & Snidal 2014). This paper explores the implications of orchestration for human rights governance by analyzing National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs) in the context of an established global human rights regime and its dedicated orchestrator: the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. I use the experience of NHRIs to further refine the concepts of managing versus bypassing states to capture how intermediaries are affected by and respond to new opportunities within IGO structures. The paper identifies the conditions under which orchestration may be particularly well-suited to a human rights governance function. It further examines what the analysis means for international organisations more generally.

Human Rights Quarterly, Jan 1, 2010

This article examines the proliferation of national human rights institutions (NHRIs) and seeks t... more This article examines the proliferation of national human rights institutions (NHRIs) and seeks to explain the drivers of this institutional innovation across contrasting political regimes. This article suggests that the NHRI phenomenon can be attributed to increasingly sophisticated international organizational platforms and three distinct, but complementary, mechanisms of diffusion: (1) coercion, (2) acculturation, and (3) persuasion. The article argues that a powerful international process of diffusion is at work and NHRIs are no longer the exclusive preserve of liberal democratic regimes. Instead NHRIs have diffused to a wide range of political systems, subjecting these human rights institutions to new and often competing demands and expectations.

Formal human rights institutions can provide powerful venues for affecting the outcome of politic... more Formal human rights institutions can provide powerful venues for affecting the outcome of political processes and influencing their activity is of increasing importance to politicians and human rights activists alike. However, the actual performance of new human rights institutions in holding state actors to account, especially in new democracies, has often disappointed scholars and civil society observers. The stakes are high, above all for those who have suffered rights violations at the hands of government and security forces, yet find they have little recourse to justice. Contrary to much of the conventional wisdom, the chapter finds that instances of NHRI success and failure are attributable not so much to formal rules but rather to those informal institutions and networks that overlay, supplement and sometimes supersede their formal counterparts. Local human rights frameworks may rest upon formal institutions, but a growing body of scholarship shows that it is the less visible world of informal institutions that is often decisive in determining the effects of these formal institutions upon human rights politics and outcomes. The chapter draws on political accountability scholarship to demonstrate how formal rules must contend with variable relations and modes of access across accountability domains. In so doing, the it also places a spotlight on individual agents located within formal structures. It empirically investigates how effective organizational leadership may harness informal institutions – such as clientelism, decision-making norms and interpersonal networks – to advance or oppose a human rights agenda. By mapping similarities and differences in the trajectory of NHRIs, detecting causal patterns and sequences important to gauging current – as well as, potentially, future – performance and effects of NHRIs.

Human rights ombudsmen operating throughout Latin America – or National Human Rights Institutions... more Human rights ombudsmen operating throughout Latin America – or National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs) – provide a novel lens to explore the role of domestic human rights actors in the application and implementation of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) paradigm. NHRIs in Bolivia, Colombia, Guatemala and Peru have all begun pioneering conflict resolution mandates, and these cases, plus Mexico, form the bulk of the empirical material. Ongoing armed conflict in Colombia presents manifold political, institutional and social obstacles to an institution mandated to protect and promote human rights, but lacking in coercive powers. Challenges of a different order confront ombudsmen operating in variably unstable political regimes displaying persistent low-intensity violence. The chapter frames the ombudsmen’s R2P prevention activities by focusing on their contribution to information-exchange, generating publicity, shifting incentives, establishing focal points for coordination, and, in particular, the development of early warning systems. Drawing on the documented response of ombudsmen to conflict and massive violations of rights, the chapter goes on to assess their potential role in mediation efforts, monitoring conflict situations, protection of vulnerable individuals and groups, and investigating and prosecuting criminal acts. The chapter reflects not only on the strengths, but also limitations, of these potential R2P agents in political systems defined by political conflict, power asymmetries, and weak rule of law.

The Peruvian Defensoría del Pueblo, or human rights ombudsman, offers a compelling subject for an... more The Peruvian Defensoría del Pueblo, or human rights ombudsman, offers a compelling subject for analysis. Emerging in 1996 under the leadership of Jorge Santistevan (1996-2000) amid a process of institutional deconstruction, it nevertheless became, practically, the sole democratic state agent of accountability. Following a democratic re-transition in 2001, the Defensoría, led by (interim) Defensor Walter Albán until 2005 and subsequently by Beatriz Merino, has continued to assert its presence on the public stage in a restored, if fragile, democratic context. Adapting to a radically altered institutional context over its lifespan, the Defensoría remains a key institutional actor in Peru, described recently as holding ‘a solid political position not only in public life in general, but also with regard to the respect that it commands from other state institutions’.

At its most fundamental level this chapter seeks to understand the institutional development of the Defensoría in a country where democratic institutions have been tough to establish and even more difficult to sustain. To this end, the chapter builds upon the elaboration of a ‘primarily political’ causal mechanism by specifying the interplay and impact of formal and political dimensions of institutionalisation upon the Defensoría in Peru. Operating within one of the world’s most unstable electoral democracies, the experience of the Defensoría is also shown to reflect deeper ‘accountability gaps’ in Peru between democratic promise and the failure of the regime to meet pressing social needs and demands.

The chapter begins by with a contemporary review of the Peruvian Defensoría’s formal design features. This is followed by an evaluation of the office’s interaction with organised state and social actors. The third section analyses the Defensoría’s access to formal and informal accountability arenas within and outside state structures. The chapter concludes by reflecting on the implications of this study for understanding how accountability gaps shape institutional politics in Peru.

In: De Beco, G., E. Brems & W. Vandenhole (eds.), The Role of National Human Rights Institutions in the Promotion and Protection of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (Intersentia Press, 2013), Jun 28, 2013

Bolivia is a highly unequal society, displaying some of the worst living standards in South Ameri... more Bolivia is a highly unequal society, displaying some of the worst living standards in South America, and a political system which has historically excluded the majority of its citizens. In a country where democratic practice has often been fleeting, it is perhaps unsurprising that the focus has fallen predominantly on a procedural realm of political rights and core defensive civil liberties. However, economic, social and cultural rights (ESCRs) are increasingly gaining attention as a fragile democratic regime is tested by popular demands for the righting of widely perceived historic wrongs. Many of those popular demands centre on access to basic public goods and services. This paper addresses the contribution of the Bolivian Defensoría del Pueblo or human rights ombudsman to the protection and promotion of ESCRs. Activated in 1998, the Bolivian Defensoría has been recognised as arguably the most effective state actor in terms of advancing rights and active citizenship. In this paper, the ability of the Defensoría to achieve concrete ESCR gains is attributed to three key dimensions: (1) accessibility, especially to those most vulnerable groups in Bolivian society, (2) responsiveness to the day-to-day grievances of all Bolivian inhabitants, and (3) productive relations with other rights stakeholders, both state and non-state actors. In a social setting where the state has traditionally neglected representative democracy and done little to redress persistent human rights violations, the Defensoría has become a highly significant referent point for ESCR protection and promotion.

This article examines the contribution of the Peruvian human rights ombudsman towards upholding a... more This article examines the contribution of the Peruvian human rights ombudsman towards upholding a stable and enforceable rights framework, an important component of an inclusive democratic political regime. It argues that the human rights ombudsman may play a significant role in advancing social transformation through the articulation and facilitation of rights claims in an institutional terrain informed by the politically contested nature of formal rules.

Journal of Latin American Studies, Jan 1, 2008

This article examines the record of the Peruvian human rights ombudsman between 1996 and 2001, se... more This article examines the record of the Peruvian human rights ombudsman between 1996 and 2001, seeking to explain its relative effectiveness under conditions of semi-authoritarian government. It suggests that this can be attributed to three factors: (1) the robustness of the institution’s foundations; (2) the capacity of the first appointee and personnel, and; (3) the ability of the institution to build alliances which were able to enhance accountability. Drawing on O’Donnell’s theory of a new generation of horizontal accountability mechanisms – that is, appointed, as opposed to elected, institutions – it argues that the human rights ombudsman occupied a distinct position in the Peruvian political system during this period that allowed it to interconnect different actors and arenas of accountability.

Book Reviews by Tom Pegram

Journal of Latin American Studies, Aug 1, 2014

Governance, 2015

Thinking Beyond Sectors for Sustainable Development, 2015

The Lancet. Global health, Jan 27, 2015

Human Rights Quarterly, Jan 1, 2010

Journal of Latin American Studies, Jan 1, 2008

It is clear that the EHRC has struggled to overcome a series of political, institutional and cont... more It is clear that the EHRC has struggled to overcome a series of political, institutional and contextual obstacles to successful organisational development. Activities in recent months, point to the very real contribution the Commission can make to upholding equality and human rights frameworks. It is, however, an open question as to whether the EHRC – in light of professed government reform intentions – can consolidate steps toward overcoming its initial difficulties.