H-Diplo | RJISSF Roundtable 16-35 on Snyder, Human Rights for Pragmatists115 min read

Human rights are vital to making modernity work. This is a central claim in Jack Snyder’s book. It is featured more than once in its opening parts. In his closing, Snyder makes another audacious claim, when he writes, “Over the past centuries, liberal democratic states have been by far the best realists” (241). The book’s project is suspended between these claims. It drives its ambition. Snyder places human rights in a large-scale historical framework that goes against the more granular and time-specific works that have emerged in recent years within the field of human rights history.[1] That is a welcome challenge to this field of research, but also one that contains certain risks.

 
 
 
 
 
 

H-Diplo | Robert Jervis International Security Studies Forum

Roundtable Review 16-35 

Jack Snyder. Human Rights for Pragmatists: Social Power in Modern Times. Princeton University Press, 2022. ISBN: 9780691231549.

28 April 2025 | PDF: https://issforum.org/to/jrt16-35 | Website: rjissf.org | Twitter: @HDiplo

Editor: Diane Labrosse
Commissioning Editor: Daniel R. Hart
Production Editor: Christopher Ball
Pre-Production Copy Editor: Bethany S. Keenan

 

Introduction by Steven L.B. Jensen, The Danish Institute for Human Rights 2

Review by Clifford Bob, Duquesne University. 7

Review by Melissa K. Byrnes, Southwestern University. 17

Review by Ann Marie Clark, Purdue University. 23

Review by Eileen Doherty-Sil, University of Pennsylvania. 30

Review by Debbie Sharnak, Rowan University. 38

Response by Jack L. Snyder, Columbia University. 41

 

Human rights are vital to making modernity work. This is a central claim in Jack Snyder’s book. It is featured more than once in its opening parts. In his closing, Snyder makes another audacious claim, when he writes, “Over the past centuries, liberal democratic states have been by far the best realists” (241). The book’s project is suspended between these claims. It drives its ambition. Snyder places human rights in a large-scale historical framework that goes against the more granular and time-specific works that have emerged in recent years within the field of human rights history.[1] That is a welcome challenge to this field of research, but also one that contains certain risks.

Snyder’s book is wide-reaching, ambitious and calls for a response. It is not a straightforward exercise to integrate pragmatism “in a social power theory of the role of human rights in making modernity work” (x). It immediately raises questions such as: what constitutes pragmatism? Who can rightfully define pragmatism in any given situation when the geographical context is global in reach? Furthermore, human rights actors do plenty of strategizing, and their varied approaches are by no means unfamiliar with the value of pragmatism.[2] These actors are not stuck in some version of groundhog idealism, and pragmatism cannot rightfully claim that it differs by standing on neutral ground. It is a political approach. These factors do not make the case for human rights pragmatism less important. It only makes how it is approached more important.

A key question is therefore: can an academic work that centers pragmatism in a social-power theory of human rights reflect the richness of existing human rights work, which is worldwide in nature, and make the case for pragmatism in a truly compelling manner? That has been the scholarly ambition. It is also what the reviewers of this roundtable grapple with in their responses. Read together, they impressively capture the breadth and richness of Snyder’s book and provide the book and its author with the informed and critical engagement that it deserves.

In her review, Debbie Sharnak writes that Snyder succeeds in using his long-standing expertise “to question existing practices” and reevaluate central assumptions, but that the book is vaguer when it comes to “offering prescriptive ways forward.” Writing from the perspective of a scholar who specializes in Latin America, Sharnak argues that one is forced to reckon with the “costs of a pragmatic approach.” She emphasizes Snyder’s critical evaluation, which is related to transitional justice claims about ensuring judicial accountability to deter future violence and secure peace. Among other measures, Snyder calls for governments to utilize amnesties to reduce the risk of immediate atrocities and to allow time for coalitions for peace to be built. Sharnak explains that this approach is certainly pragmatic but that it also forces a larger question about the longer-term impacts of “delayed justice in society and the ongoing effect on victims.”

Latin America represents a laboratory of varied approaches that complicates our understanding of which broader accountability mechanisms will work to secure the best outcomes. An engagement with how history, memory, and memorialization keep issues alive and can come back to haunt societies many decades later is also required. As Sharnak writes, “victims’ right to know the truth about the disappearances of loved ones remains an urgent consideration and should not be ignored within a pragmatic framework for understanding political transitions.” She finds Snyder’s questioning of some of the transitional justice claims particularly important but argues that it should also lead us “to think about longer frameworks of evaluation and the enduring rights of victim groups.” In that way, Sharnak’s review serves as a reminder that pragmatism is not merely juxtaposed against idealism, which would make the argumentative landscape simpler, but that it may also find itself juxtaposed against fundamental questions about truth and justice that invariably complicate how pragmatism is approached.

Ann Marie Clark underscores the fact that Snyder built his analysis on a solid body of literature on democratization, democratic institutions, political transitions, and domestic political constituencies, and proceeds with an “energetic translation of political science findings into a guide for how to develop domestic, rights-respecting institutions.” She also highlights the significance of his granting of importance to “the mutual and complementary importance of both political (civil) and economic rights.” It is noteworthy that Snyder’s pragmatic approach includes a strategy that gives due attention to economic fairness and social equality as critical and under-explored factors in the politics of democratization. This point reminds us that pragmatic can also mean progressive, which is worth remembering.

Clark’s review is more critical in its discussion of how the book engages with the range of human rights actors. She finds that “Snyder’s repeated generalizations that human rights advocates are not sufficiently pragmatic seems unfair” explaining that other relevant research points in a different direction. Clark’s review offers a concise tour through the roles of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), states, global and regional intergovernmental institutions, and religious movements in human rights work and poses a challenge to Snyder’s approach and interpretation. It leads her to recommend a more nuanced engagement with NGOs as human rights actors, including on how they strategize and how they engage with politics more broadly. Clark argues that if the call for civil society mobilization with a more pragmatic human rights approach is to be forcefully made, it requires more clarification of the strengths and weaknesses of NGOs.

In her review, Eileen Doherty-Sil discusses three concrete lessons from the book, namely (i) the importance of dominant coalitions, (ii) the danger of human rights backlash due to an over-reliance on “counter-productive” naming and shaming strategies, and (iii) the key role that “hot button grievances” —as Snyder call them—can play in coalition building. On the latter point, Doherty-Sil engages with Snyder’s call “to prioritize the struggle against corruption and inequality” (12). She highlights Snyder’s critique that human rights activists have too often embraced an “unconvincingly apolitical façade” and overlooked the “historical lessons of pragmatic progressive reform.” She argues that a greater focus on corruption could serve as a unifying issue that could help build alliances and mobilize public support domestically and internationally. It could also be used to direct a much-needed challenge towards international financial institutions.

This leads Doherty-Sil to engage with Snyder’s take on liberalism. She highlights Snyder’s critique of the failure of neoliberalism and the related “branding disaster” of liberalism but finds his call for a greater emphasis on economic justice and social welfare too “underdeveloped.” Snyder’s strong emphasis on the argument that liberalism carries the human rights project forward faces certain challenges when there are deep disagreements about what a “liberal international order” entails and who it benefits and when, as Snyder acknowledges, liberalism may lack persuasion when inequality and corruption exists in some liberal democracies at levels comparable to illiberal societies. As Doherty-Sil summarizes, to what extent “liberalism itself is a liability in international rights discourse” must be interrogated. With illiberalism on the rise, Doherty-Sil emphasizes Snyder’s important reminder that “normative persuasion is a competitive game and that liberalism is no longer the only game in town.”

In her review, Melissa K. Byrnes addresses some of the historical underpinnings that must be explicated clearly when linking liberalism closely to a framework where modernity centrally features human rights. She acknowledges that the crux of the book makes the case for mobilizing “a grassroots social movement, backed by a plurality group in society and aligned with a pragmatic, progressive political party” (124) However, when this is linked to transhistorical questions about the nature of international order, the approach requires a deeper critical grounding. Hence, the way in which Snyder’s discipline of International Relations engages with the discipline of history and historical knowledge itself is important.

As Byrnes explains: “Acknowledging the damage wrought by imperial systems and reckoning with the way they continue to shape material conditions and structures of power is a vital component of the house-cleaning required to make the liberal rights agenda compelling once again.” Byrnes offers the following critique: “Many of the historical narratives of liberal expansion that are described in the book accept uncritically some of the Eurocentric frameworks put forward in the imperial vision for rights.” Her review is a reminder that the more granular and highly varied works from the recent human rights historiography help avoid such pitfalls and play an integral role for the cross-disciplinary field of human rights research.[3]

In his review, Clifford Bob finds that Snyder persuasively shows “that liberals need to rethink their assumptions and their means in promoting rights abroad.” It becomes more challenging when human rights actors must decide how to navigate the broader political landscape where actors approach human rights from different vantage points. As Bob asks, “With which movements and parties should human rights NGOs join?” These broader political actors put forward opposing claims about what constitutes human rights standards and argue support for their positions in international treaties, constitutions, and other domestic human rights instruments.

Bob argues in detail with Snyder’s chapter on “Regulating the Marketplace of Ideas” from a freedom-of-speech and freedom-of-the-press perspective. It is an excellent example of the challenge that the book poses to human rights thinking. When reading the chapter and the review in comparison, one realizes how pragmatism and idealism are moving targets and the extent to which they sit with the eye of the beholder (and at times just becomes secondary to the substantive argument being made). Snyder’s arguments and proposals to protect democracy are timely and relevant, as is Bob’s critique of the unintended consequences that they might entail. Both write from positions of firm principle and beliefs that happens to oppose each other. The reader will learn from reading both and may clarify or refine her or his own thinking in the process.

This exchange, like those with the other reviewers, illustrates very well the value of an engaged Roundtable such as this one.

 

Contributors:

Jack L. Snyder is the Robert and Renée Belfer Professor of International Relations in the Political Science department and the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University. His books include From Voting to Violence: Democratization and Nationalist Conflict (Norton Books, 2000) and Religion and International Relations Theory (Columbia University Press, 2011).

Steven L. B. Jensen, PhD, is a Senior Researcher at The Danish Institute for Human Rights. He is the author of the prizewinning The Making of International Human Rights: The 1960s, Decolonization and the Reconstruction of Global Values (Cambridge University Press, 2016) and co-editor of Histories of Global Inequality. New Perspectives (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). He has published extensively on the history of human rights, international organization and decolonization, and on global health. He is currently working on a history of social and economic rights in twentieth century international politics.

Clifford Bob, PhD, JD, is Professor and Chair of Political Science and the Raymond J. Kelley Endowed Chair of International Relations, at Duquesne University. Among his publications are The Marketing of Rebellion: Insurgents, Media and International Activism (Cambridge University Press, 2005), winner of the International Studies Association Book of the Year award; The Global Right Wing and the Clash of World Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2012), co-winner of the International Studies Association Book of the Decade award; and Rights as Weapons: Instruments of Conflict, Tools of Power (Princeton University Press, 2019). He is working on a book tentatively titled The Fear Industrial Complex: Scaring America for Power and Profit. His research interests include state-society relations, transnational politics, and human rights in the digital age, particularly threats to free expression from censorship and propaganda by liberal states.

Melissa K. Byrnes is Professor of History at Southwestern University. She is the author of Making Space: Neighbors, Officials, and North African Migrants in the Suburbs of Paris and Lyon (University of Nebraska Press, 2023) and coeditor with Margaret Andersen of Fertility, Family, and Social Welfare between France and Empire: The Colonial Politics of Population (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023). She has published articles in Cold War History, French Politics, Culture & Society, French Cultural Studies, French History and Civilization, and The World History Bulletin. Since 2016, she has also been a regular contributor to the Lawyers, Guns & Money blog.

Ann Marie Clark is Professor of Political Science at Purdue University. As a US Fulbright Scholar in 2021, she held the Fulbright Canada Research Chair in Human Rights and Social Justice at the University of Ottawa. Her most recent book is Demands of Justice: The Creation of a Global Human Rights Practice (Cambridge University Press, 2022). Her research has focused on the development of international human rights norms and the role of NGOs in global politics. Her current research centers on human rights defenders in domestic and global contexts.

Eileen Doherty-Sil is a Senior Lecturer in Political Science and Faculty Director of the Core & Africa General Program at the Joseph H. Lauder Institute of Management & International Studies at the University of Pennsylvania; she is also a Faculty Affiliate at Perry World House. At the Lauder Institute, she is part of the leadership team focusing on interdisciplinary curricular development in support of the university’s joint-degree MBA-MA program in International Studies. Her latest publication is “The Promise of Comparative Area Studies for the Study of Human Rights” in Ariel I. Ahram, Patrick Köllner, and Rudra Sil, eds., Advancing Comparative Area Studies: Analytical Heterogeneity and Organizational Challenges (forthcoming, Oxford University Press).

Debbie Sharnak is Assistant Professor of History and International Studies at Rowan University. Her first book is Of Light and Struggle: Social Justice, Human Rights, and Accountability in Uruguay (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023), and she is also the co-editor of Uruguay in Transnational Perspective (Routledge, 2023). She is currently working on a book manuscript about transnational Jewish networks and their responses to the Southern Cone dictatorships.

Liberal democracies face major economic, political, and foreign-policy challenges. Most troublingly, the individual rights that distinguish them have come under threat at home, and the human rights they promote overseas have come into question. Jack Snyder’s Human Rights for Pragmatists: Social Power in Modern Times diagnoses the problems, synthesizes the literature on liberalism and human rights, and prescribes methods to reinvigorate the rights project. The book is impressively wide-ranging, linking economic, social, institutional, and cultural developments. Snyder organizes an enormous amount of scholarly research, including his own seminal work, into a cohesive “social power theory of the role of human rights in making modernity work” (x). The theory successfully challenges dominant views of rights’ development, particularly the “spiral model” that highlights pressure on repressive governments from liberal states and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).[4] He portrays these tactics and related theories as “idealistic” (3), and out of touch with unpromising realities in many target states. Simultaneously, he critiques the libertarian strand of liberalism, for giving too little weight to “civic cooperation” (9) and causing most of liberalism’s internal problems.

For all his critiques, however, Snyder supports liberal internationalism. He argues that liberalism is the best means of achieving stable, modern societies (8); that only liberal, rights-abiding states have escaped the “middle-income trap” (4); that “democracies do not fight each other” (105);[5] that liberals must therefore work against authoritarianism abroad (124); and that, at home, they need to counter both “nationalist populism” (70) and “pseudo-liberal libertarian[ism]” (239) to save democracy and prove liberalism’s virtues (122). In contrast to idealists, however, Snyder counsels a more patient, tailored, “pragmatist” approach, one which is sensitive to history, culture, and psychology as it works to realize the “liberal design for world order” (240). He makes convincing arguments to show that some of his alternative tactics are superior to conventional approaches. However, some of his key prescriptions, particularly those focusing on fundamental principles of liberalism—freedoms of speech and press—are misguided, have the potential to undermine human rights, and illustrate larger problems in the argument.

Snyder is persuasive in showing that liberals need to rethink their assumptions and their means in promoting human rights abroad. His theory rests on the sensible hypothesis that without social and institutional preconditions for rights, activist efforts to push them are likely to fail. Seeking to impose rights on traditional societies will be difficult because rights cannot thrive in societies whose “mode of production” (6) is based on personalism and patronage. Even when favoritism gives way to “impersonal rules of equal treatment” (3) in more modern societies, rights movements can only take hold if they appeal not only to the weak groups who might benefit most, but more importantly to the “dominant political coalition” (4). Even then, rights promoters need to create impartial institutions and a culture of rights, grounded in the belief structure of the majority (5). Snyder’s sequential structural theory contrasts with constructivist approaches that suggest that rights have intrinsic, “persistent power” and that external pressure can generate beneficent “norms cascades” and rights spirals among states.[6]

In the book’s empirical chapters, Snyder compares the competing theories using his research and that of others. For post-conflict situations, he shows that amnesties for still-powerful rights violators are more likely to lead to societal peace than trials or truth commissions. He presents evidence that post-transition elections fail if they occur too early, before political parties, state bureaucracies and other institutions are established. For the activist and academic concept of “shaming,” Snyder argues, through a cogent synthesis of historical, psychological, and political scholarship, that the tactic often triggers backlash (189-211). Overall, Snyder shows that today’s most frequently used rights strategies—international opprobrium, penalties, sanctions, and military interventions—seldom work well and may backfire.

In a chapter on China’s rising power, Snyder for the most part proposes moderate policies. These ideas stand in contrast to Western and especially American approaches, marked by denunciations, sanctions, tariffs, and the Tik-Tok ban law. Snyder calls for creating “social proof” of human rights’ benefits by improving the “allure of bourgeois culture,” the “functioning of the liberal economic order,” and the “liberal model of progressive change” (121-123). Yet Snyder simultaneously suggests that pragmatists should highlight more “explosive” issues, such as “atrocities” against Han Chinese in the Great Leap Forward and the Tiananmen Square massacre (124). In addition, Snyder calls for the human rights movement to adopt a global anti-corruption campaign that would indirectly target the Chinese Communist Party. “A big part of the battle would be to highlight” China’s “violations of due process,” compared to liberal states’ “law-based anti-corruption efforts” (124). It is unclear, however, how either of these ideas differs from the shaming strategies that Snyder convincingly criticizes as counterproductive.

The anti-corruption proposal is indicative of several interesting, if speculative, ideas that Snyder suggests. But it is not clear whether human rights professionals would want to focus their limited resources on corruption, a concept which is notoriously hard to define and highly political, rather than sticking with more easily identifiable violations of basic rights. More ambitiously, Snyder calls on human rights pragmatists to pair with mass movements and political parties to advance their agendas (126-43). Doing so, however, risks sullying human rights with negotiation, bargaining, and compromise. These practices are necessary for politics. But even human rights pragmatists might balk at losing their autonomy and compromising their moralistic “brands,” which confer legitimacy to criticize, lobby, and persuade all parties to conflict.[7]

There is another problem with Snyder’s proposal. With which movements and parties should human rights NGOs join? Human rights are vague concepts even when they are embodied in international law. Activists and states portray diverse, even contrary goals, as “human rights.”[8] In conflicts over LGBTQ rights, reproductive rights, gun rights, and more, opposing sides claim support in human rights treaties, domestic bills of rights, and constitutions.[9] Snyder’s chapter on female genital mutilation (FGM) hints at the dilemma. FGM is in some ways an easy case to examine. This is not because the practice will be easy to end, although Snyder’s synthesis of the literature suggests some promising strategies (224-30). Rather, FGM is easy to discuss because it is so widely abhorred across the political spectrum, even if, as Yael Tamir argues, it is because doing so allows liberal societies to celebrate their “special virtues.”[10] Yet what are human rights pragmatists to make of analogous practices that are growing in frequency in the West? These include pharmacological and surgical interventions in the name of transgenderism—puberty blockers, hysterectomies, double mastectomies, penectomies among physically healthy young people—despite little scientific proof of their safety or efficacy.[11] Should these interventions, which are more radical than most forms of FGM, be guaranteed as part of sexual and transgender rights? Or should they be seen as violations of the bodily integrity of children and adults, some of whom may be psychologically troubled? When transwomen enter women’s spaces and sports competitions, are these victories for trans rights or defeats for women’s rights? Snyder’s pragmatist approach cannot answer these questions.

Still, Snyder’s general advice to heed local context, avoid legalism and moralism, and be wary of one-size-fits-all approaches makes sense. It might even dampen the crusading spirit that has often led US leaders to use liberal arguments to justify their frequent war-making.[12] Just as important, Snyder argues that policymakers should create incentives for non-liberal or transitional states to join the liberal order, primarily by fixing today’s troubled liberal democracies. But who are these far-seeing pragmatists? It is not clear. Both liberal states and NGOs have strong incentives to continue suboptimal or even fruitless tactics overseas because they yield short-term advantages internally: they catch media attention, demonstrate virtue, attract votes, and fuel fundraising.[13] Academic pragmatists, however, will learn much from Snyder’s well-argued, contrarian views.

A more significant problem is that Snyder’s proposals to improve liberal states threaten to subvert their most unique and exemplary traits. Consider the freedoms of speech and of the press. Snyder claims that “ever since the invention of the printing press, mass media and mass politics have come together to produce a combustible mixture” of “misinformation, political polarization, and the hijacking of discourse by hate speech” and “demagogues” (147-48). But obviously there has been enormous progress since 1440, not least because of the “combustible mixture” of ideas and free thinking made possible by advances in communication technologies and the rise of democracy. Yet Snyder argues that “contemporary pathologies of social media are a new form of an old problem” (148). Governing elites in much of today’s democratic world voice similar views. In 2022, former President Barack Obama professed to being “pretty close to a First Amendment absolutist” but then urged the US to reverse decades of First Amendment law by suppressing expression that “engages in hate speech, encourages violence, or poses a threat to public safety.”[14]

Snyder also criticizes “free-speech absolutism,” which he defines as the belief, especially among Americans, that “unfettered competition in the marketplace of ideas automatically increases the chance that truth and wisdom will prevail in public debate” (144). In his view, free speech absolutism creates “considerable likelihood that a nominally free but weakly institutionalized media marketplace will be hijacked on the supply side by elite propaganda, hate speech, self-serving narratives of identity groups and parochial interest groups, demagogic populism, and ‘bread and circus’ media distractions, and distorted on the demand side by the narrow preferences of consumers for opinion-confirming news and pure entertainment” (149).

Yet there are already many significant limits on speech in liberal democracies. In the US, where the First Amendment makes it the world leader in free speech, courts have long recognized forms of speech that may be restricted, including incitement, fraud, harassment, and defamation. Snyder dismisses these as “extremely limited, traditional exceptions” (148). It is true that US courts apply a strict scrutiny test in determining the legality of such restrictions, because they recognize the centrality of speech, particularly political speech, to the country’s Constitutional system. Under this test, government may limit speech when it “directly, demonstrably, and imminently causes certain specific, objectively ascertainable serious harms.”[15] Private platforms impose even stricter “terms of use.” How is this “free speech absolutism” (144)?

Nonetheless, some leaders of the democratic world now claim that speech is too free and therefore dangerous. According to Obama, “toxic information” has played a big role in the US’s supposed “democratic backsliding.”[16] In 2024, with the European Union facing political pressure from Euro-skeptic political parties, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen stated that “disinformation and misinformation, followed closely by polarization within our societies” is the “top concern for the next two years.”[17] On that basis, democratic governments now rationalize censorship, often of unwanted challenges to their orthodoxies, errors, propaganda, and lies. They do so more vigorously today than in past decades because the Internet and especially social media make it possible, at least in theory, for a greater number of dissenting voices to be heard than ever before. This possibility poses a profound threat, not only to authoritarian rulers, but also to centrist elites in liberal states. Believing “there is no alternative” to their policies and benefitting from the policies themselves, they slap critical viewpoints with vague and subjective labels—”disinformation,” “misinformation,” “mal-information,” “fake news,” “hate speech,” and the like—then censor them.[18] They attack time-tested principles of free speech as newly dangerous “absolutism”—just as powerholders have done throughout history. They blame free speech, rather than their own policy failings, for the rise of movements they denigrate with vague and highly politicized terms such as “illiberal” and “populist.”

Snyder argues that the “constitutionally protected right to unfettered freedom of speech stoked a viral myth” of a stolen election, “inciting an insurrection at the US Capitol” (ix). Yet there is continuing debate about how to characterize the events of January 6, 2021, and whether freedom of speech is to blame for it.[19] He is critical of those who asserted a “God-given right not to wear a mask in a pandemic” (9), even though the efficacy of masking remains uncertain.[20] And he warns against the view of some Americans who supposedly believe that they should “have instant, unfiltered, global access to an audience of millions, regardless of how ill-founded, incoherent, and misleading those opinions might be” (172)—even though the US has never confined free speech to the intelligentsia, whose scientific paradigms and “fighting faiths” have so frequently proven wrong.[21] The original research that Snyder conducted with Tamar Mitts to test the “liberal folk theory” of free speech does not go beyond a plausibility probe, with Snyder stating that the analysis is “purely descriptive, and we do not make any causal claims about our findings” (155).

Snyder’s proposed “cure” for the marketplace of ideas of John Milton, John Stuart Mill, and the United States is rights-reducing—and worse than the “disease” of free speech.[22] Nor does he analyze other important reasons that liberal thinkers uphold a broad freedom of speech, including its centrality to individual self-realization and autonomy (243).[23] He calls for “regulation of media’s commanding heights and the policing of routine speech to small audiences” by a “diverse mix of highly professional journalists and editors” (171-72). The regulators would “exercise editorial judgment on newsfeeds” (172) and other forms of speech. They would take “charge of the dissemination of news and opinion on each of the major internet platforms” and be “back[ed] up with arms-length regulatory oversight” by the state (171). They would be “empowered to exercise professional judgment about . . . practices governing debate among diverse views” (145) and would evaluate “the social media content of figures of major public interest based on normal journalistic criteria of newsworthiness” (172). It is not clear whether they would be permitted to banish certain figures from major platforms, as happened to the sitting US President in early 2021, despite condemnation by other democratic leaders, even those with whom he was often at odds.[24] Citizens would be enjoined to give “a degree of informed deference to the professional expertise of journalists and scientists” (10), and doubtless to the officials overseeing the scheme.

Snyder claims that his proposal does not amount to censorship. It would merely “shape the forums in which speech is conducted” (171) and create “firmly institutionalized mainstream media systems” (172), all for “socially beneficial consequences” (145). The regulators might allow “peripheral enclaves of contrarian speech and information” to remain on “obscure extremist sites” (171-172). To this reviewer, however, Snyder’s prescriptions call to mind George Orwell’s 1984, in which the Ministry of Truth “shaped” speech and thought among party members, even while allowing a small but contingent measure of freedom among the “proles.”[25]

In his chapter on China, Snyder extols “an unfettered, independent investigative local media” to place a check on state power and corruption (117). If China requires free speech and a free press, it is not clear why liberal states should abandon or curtail them. Snyder’s argument seems to be that such changes are necessary to save democracy from the supposed dangers of populism at home and authoritarianism abroad. In this quest, speech and press freedoms appear to be dispensable. Yet to this reviewer such views undermine what makes liberal states unique. Nor would the harm be confined to speech alone. As Frederick Douglas warned:

No right was deemed by the fathers of the Government more sacred than the right of speech. It was in their eyes…the great moral renovator of society and government…. Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one’s thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist….It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.[26]

In the US, Snyder’s proposals would require a wholesale re-writing of the First Amendment, which nowhere suggests putting “highly professional journalists and editors” in charge of speech or imposing “arm’s-length government regulation” (146) over the press. The vagueness of these terms is breathtaking and would create enormous possibilities for abuse by the powerful. From a pragmatic standpoint, Snyder’s proposals also have problems. Where, for instance, could one find journalists and bureaucrats who would reliably sift truth from falsehood? The rest of Snyder’s book, with its stress on spoilers, mass movements, party politics, and self-interested majority populations, shows that “pragmatic” philosopher kings do not exist, least of all in government or journalism.

Consider the US, a best case for upholding free speech and a free press, yet one in which censorship and propaganda still often prevail, causing great harm. In the 1950s, the mainstream media joined with Senator Joseph McCarthy to ruin the lives of thousands of ordinary Americans who were exercising their rights to freedom of opinion. In the 1960s, the “best and the brightest” led the country into the Vietnam War, abetted by a supine press.[27] In the 1970s, the media may have had its greatest glories, with publication of the Pentagon Papers and investigation of the Watergate scandal, but these involved sharp breaks from the cozy media-government relations of the day. In the 1980s, the Washington news corps reverted to form as the Reagan administration plotted and covered up the Iran-Contra scandal.[28] In the 1990s, most of the press cheered as NATO bombed Serbia in violation of international law.[29] In the early 2000s, the prestige media, led by the New York Times, naively reported US government statements and lies as truth, helping to make the Iraq war possible.[30] Starting in 2016, the media’s “commanding heights” such as the Times, Washington Post, and NPR hyped unfounded Russiagate rumors propagated by the Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and some US intelligence agencies.[31] In the 2020s, these same pillars of the press uncritically reported official pronouncements on the origins of COVID, social distancing, and broader lockdown measures. When independent scientists from Harvard, Stanford, and Oxford universities questioned untested lockdown measures, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci and the government bureaucracy engineered a “quick and devastating published take down” of valid dissenting views and hypotheses.[32] It has taken years for US officials and the media to admit that COVID could well have had a lab origin, that six feet of social distancing and masking had little if any scientific basis, and that lockdowns were imposed with minimal consideration of the harms to society as a whole, especially children.[33]

On the most momentous issues of recent decades, officials on the left and the right in the US and other states have repeatedly erred or lied, with mainstream media amplifying the distortions. The price paid in lives and money has been enormous, as the foreign and domestic policy disasters discussed previously should make clear. Of course, it is true that the mainstream media does at times uphold traditional journalistic standards—but this is only when it takes an adversarial stance toward state and societal powerholders. Ordinary citizens sometimes denounce their governments, spurn “informed deference to… professional expertise” (10), convey falsehoods, and engage in vitriolic debate—but their influence pales beside that of officialdom and its media courtiers.

Snyder pays little heed to this history in his proposals to “institutionalize” freedoms of speech and the press. Indeed, he calls state regulation of media and speech a “proven measure” (171). This apparently alludes to the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Fairness Doctrine. From 1949–1987, it required the small number of radio and television networks of the time, which received licenses to use the scarce broadcast spectrum, to provide balanced news coverage. Snyder holds that “forc[ing] all Americans to get common exposure to reasonable news coverage” prevented “hermetic discourse bubbles” and “partisan polarization” (151). Given the history outlined above, this view is far from persuasive. In any case, in 1987 the FCC ended the Fairness Doctrine when the choice of media widened with the advent of cable television (and now the Internet), allowing people to judge for themselves from an exploding set of news sources, rather than being force-fed “reasonable” news. Similarly, one can question Snyder’s description of Wikipedia as a “reliable” source of information (151). Its co-founder, Larry Sanger, has stated that “no encyclopedia, to my knowledge, has been as biased” and that Wikipedia now gives a “reliably establishment point of view on pretty much everything.”[34]

Unfortunately, this capture of Wikipedia is indicative of efforts in many ostensibly liberal countries to attack and reduce speech and press freedoms. Brazil’s Supreme Court has repeatedly removed journalists and politicians, including sitting Congressmen from the Internet for their conservative political viewpoints and criticisms of the court, fining and jailing some.[35] The European Union’s Digital Services Act forces tech companies to police vaguely defined “hate” and “disinformation” online, or face enormous fines.[36] France has banned all pro-Palestinian demonstrations in the wake of Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attacks on Israel.[37] In the US, federal officials have worked with “disinformation experts” at Stanford and the University of Washington to pressure Internet companies to remove social media posts and media articles, many of them true, related to COVID, election integrity, and Hunter Biden’s laptop.[38] The Canadian Parliament is currently considering the Online Harms Act. This draconian bill would make those who are found guilty of a “hate crime,” which is vaguely defined to include speech “likely to foment detestation or vilification” of certain groups, liable to lengthy prison terms, and it would allow punishments even if a possible hate crime was merely feared in the future.[39] In the US, the House recently passed the Antisemitism Awareness Act that defines antisemitism to include a range of speech that is critical of Israel or the right of the Jewish people to self-determination. However unpopular they may be, these views are clearly protected speech in the US.[40]

Far from saving liberalism, these elite betrayals of its traditional core values shift liberal states toward authoritarianism, rather than moving autocratic and transitional states toward liberalism.[41] What is called for is more, not less, free speech; a thriving realm of independent media; and perhaps even the occasional populist elected by the people. As Justice Robert Jackson wrote in 1945:

[I]t cannot be the duty, because it is not the right, of the state to protect the public against false doctrine. The very purpose of the First Amendment is to foreclose public authority from assuming a guardianship of the public mind through regulating the press, speech, and religion. In this field, every person must be his own watchman for truth, because the forefathers did not trust any government to separate the true from the false for us.[42]

I have focused on Snyder’s proposals for “Regulating the Marketplace of Ideas” not only because the freedoms of speech and press are so fundamental to liberalism. In addition, I have done so because Snyder places great emphasis on “updat[ing]” press and speech freedoms to “reinvent the rest of the human rights regime” (244) and “restor[e] the health of the liberal order” (211). If his book’s most developed proposal for doing so is flawed, the entire proposal comes into question. The book’s more empirical sections are worth reading for their alternatives to dominant approaches. But Snyder’s faith in technocratic elites and his arguments for curtailing freedoms of speech and the press undermine the case for liberal social engineering abroad and, if implemented at home, would undermine liberalism itself.

We live, according to Jack Snyder, at a moment of equipoise, “wavering at the threshold to expanding rights and democracy or backsliding into repression” (88-90). After a brief, overly optimistic moment of “liberal near-hegemony and great ambitions for the global human rights movement” (2), not only do many rising world and regional powers proclaim their allegiance to illiberalism, but leading liberal democratic states are suffering major populist challenges. With Human Rights for Pragmatists, Snyder hopes to tip the scales by marshalling an impressive synthesis of empirically-backed best practices to push for advancing rights in our world.<

Snyder’s pragmatism is laudably neither cynical nor a ploy to forsake grander goals. To be pragmatic, in his view, is simply to

apply outcome-oriented criteria for judging the appropriateness of tactics for advancing human rights, taking into account short-term considerations of power and interest as well as longer-term effects on the power of pro-rights coalitions and the institutional entrenchment of a rights-based system (3).

One of the greatest problems in our world is that, despite its apparent successes, “the contemporary rights movement’s vision of global society got small… the movement has become the secular church of a professionalized liberal elite, whose rhetoric fails to mesh with the idiom of its global clientele,” and whose practitioners consider themselves to be “moralistic, uncompromising, and above politics” (126). In contrast, the organizing principle of Human Rights for Pragmatists is that “[v]ictories for rights have always fused power, self-interest, and principle” (1). Pragmatic supporters of human rights, then, must embrace politics, and a set of historical lessons, in order to make progress.

Rights and modernity are intertwined in Snyder’s historical narrative. “The most basic anchor for a pragmatic theory of human rights,” he asserts, “is the insight that sustaining successful modernity has so far been impossible without them” (33). He offers a stripped-down definition of modernity as “as an enduring social order that produces self-sustaining economic growth based on scientific and technological progress” (34). Politically, this entails an evolution from “personalistic patronage based on loyalty and the implied threat of violent repression of opposition” (36) to “modern systems of impersonal rules and accountable governments” (35).[43] China, Snyder acknowledges, has been offered as a possible counter-model, though he devotes an entire chapter to a reasonable explanation of how its system is less durable than it appears (109-125). Snyder insists that a pragmatic approach must work through sovereign, territorial states as the “the primary vehicle for recognizing and guaranteeing rights” through a process of reform “likely to cause less chaos than starting over from stateless anarchy” (41, 43). Transnational activism in the name of universalist principles matters less than stable democratic powers that are able to “sustain liberal international economic and security institutions that incentivize and socialize rising powers to adopt liberal norms and practices” (44). It is less clear what must be done when that system and the powers associated with it are as shaky as they are at the current moment.

Snyder emphasizes the role of social power in forging effective coalitions. Pragmatists must be ready to bargain, to identify constituencies with shared interests (even when they do not have shared motivations), and to shore up institutions and ideologies that can support rights (49, 51, 57). Transitions to a rights-based order require functional steps that are “sustainable in the short run,” even before a robust system exists to defend those rights (81). To fend off populism, pragmatists need to avoid identity-based coalition building, particularly along ethnic lines, and make compromises when needed in order to foster a return to peace, which is a “virtual precondition for rights and justice” (59, 73). Snyder critiques the habits of a number of rights activists, such as tribunals, truth commissions, and a rush for post-conflict elections, as prone to destabilization and backlash. Snyder devotes another chapter to a persuasive critique of shaming practices as counterproductive (189-211), easily trumped by illiberal rejoinders, and liable to “degenerate into dysfunction” (190, 193, 197). Instead, “human rights liberals need to keep the axis of struggle focused on equal rights and public goods instead of cultural identity and patronage favoritism” (71), all while “creating the social preconditions for empowering core constituencies that benefit from and strengthen inclusive institutions and ideologies” (108).

Pragmatists must therefore have patience and trust in larger structural developments. True progress on human rights “depends on far broader trends of socioeconomic context, political coalition possibilities, and cultural modes of discourse about norms that govern social relations” (143). Snyder’s historical analysis emphasizes that there are no real shortcuts to rights-based societies, rather a steady evolution of institutions, norms, and increased access to social, material, and political security. Nowhere is this clearer than in his discussion of “culturally entrenched, highly decentralized social practices that sustain endemic abuses of women and children” (212). In these contexts, any rush is likely to provoke backlash. Pragmatists need to “focus on community empowerment, consensus building, and collective decision-making” (227) and be aware that “processes of change that are multidimensional and staged over time” (229). Snyder emphasizes that a “well-functioning marketplace of ideas” is a prerequisite for advancing a rights agenda (144). In the place of “free-speech absolutism” (144), which ironically can produce stronger censorship, activists need to work for “independent, well-resourced, professional journalism, supported by arms-length government regulation” (145) to nurture “free expression to produce socially beneficial consequences” (171).

The crux of Human Rights for Pragmatists is in its case for mobilizing “a grassroots social movement, backed by a plurality group in society and aligned with a pragmatic, progressive political party” (127). Each of the core strategies that Snyder outlines serves the purpose of cultivating powerful coalitions in favor of rights. Above all, he urges activists to undertake a serious process of vernacularization, one that produces not only a surface translation of rights rhetoric, but also engages local contexts and traditions in meaningful ways. In addition to overcoming a distaste for politics, pragmatists should also be attentive to the ways that cultural and even religious traditions can be powerful supports for inclusion and expanding rights (137). Snyder also champions anticorruption as a pressing rights issue with “mass appeal…pretty much everywhere” that “would finally give the contemporary human rights movement the basis for leading a mass global social movement” (124). Deep engagement with locals and with grassroots movements can disrupt opposition to rights as “the leading edge of an imperialist conspiracy” (6).

Snyder explains that resolving the current challenges to a rights-based order must come from the liberal states “that have created the international order that illiberal powers are exploiting for their rise” (11). Yet this idea fails to reckon with the histories of those same liberal powers who exploited the international order for their own rise to power. For all the careful discussions of modernity, modernizing processes, institutions, and developing state and social power, Human Rights for Pragmatists is blind to the histories of empire and imperial legacies, without which it is not possible to understand the modern world, much less the development of human rights as idea and practice.[44]

Any conception of modernization, industrialization, and the articulation of liberal ideologies is woefully circumscribed when it ignores that the Western power centers where these ideologies were first developed were deeply embedded within their global empires. Not only was economic modernization driven by imperial access to resources and reliance on cheap—often enslaved—labor, but the basic tenets of liberal thought were also implicitly coded as imperial ideologies. As Tyler Stovall has shown, the “white freedom” agenda was far from a paradoxical coexistence of visions for liberal rights with rampant racist policies; liberalism itself was racialized.[45]

More important for pragmatism, those imperial powers rapidly weaponized the rhetoric of rights—and even of antislavery—as both motive and justification for imperial rule. The rejection of global human rights systems by a variety of actors thus arises not only out of the mere discomfort of traditionalists when facing the modern world (35) but is often also rooted in a rational skepticism about the ways powerful entities have preached about the benefits of rights and civilization while stripping the colonized of their rights and their human dignity. To miss this dynamic is to set oneself up for failure. European powers were particularly interested in targeting women for purported rights reforms that served imperial interests.[46] This provides further explanation for why practices like female genital cutting are so difficult to address through a Western-dominated rights regime, something Snyder recognizes within the Kenyan independence movement (215). Acknowledging the damage wrought by imperial systems and reckoning with the way in which they continue to shape material conditions and structures of power is a vital component of the house-cleaning required to make the liberal rights agenda compelling once again.

Many of the historical narratives of liberal expansion that are described in the book accept uncritically some of the Eurocentric frameworks put forward in the imperial vision for rights. Chief among these is the habit of centering the work of white activists. Snyder’s emphasis on pragmatism within the abolition movement is an important corrective to counter-productive myths about this formative rights campaign (67-68, 131-132). Yet this version of the abolition story still limits the cast of characters to white, largely Anglophone, abolitionists. In addition to the countless individual and coordinated revolts by enslaved Africans, and the communities that some were able to forge at the margins of white imperial domains, it is a grave historical oversight to ignore the Haitian Revolution and the establishment of “the first antislavery, anti-colonial, and anti-racist state the world had ever seen.”[47] Even if a pragmatist were to quibble with the notion of Haitian success in establishing a truly abolitionist state in the midst of the imperial Atlantic, given the damages wrought by terrified and vengeful global powers that were intent on preserving their own slave systems, the contributions made by these Black actors to the history of rights is unquestionable. The Haitian experience holds important practical lessons about antiracism, expanding definitions of freedom, managing massive shifts in politics and socioeconomics, and facing the backlash of a hostile world system.[48]

Race itself barely gets a mention throughout the book. Snyder praises “America’s most effective icons of human rights progress”—including Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt as well as First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt—for being “ruthlessly pragmatic when they needed to be” (22), but ignores the recurrent pattern of US leaders who sacrificed racial justice to other priorities. Certainly, undoing systemic racism is a long game, requiring the sorts of massive social shifts that Snyder adeptly outlines for countering abuses of women and children. There is nothing pragmatic, however, about either ignoring endemic racism as one of the most persistent forces against expanding rights in our world or failing to account for the cost of repeatedly overlooking racial injustices. The tempering of antiracism that seems too radical to gain one set of potential coalition partners can easily end up losing another set of allies.

On these lines, Snyder might have expanded his argument on pragmatism’s potential collateral damage. He notes that “some principled objectives, such as protection of the rights of the weak and of minorities, may be jettisoned in the process of making the expedient compromises that are needed to forge a ruling coalition” (131) and later recommends that activists 

focus much more on core rights values that speak to the interests of the majority groups in a society…. Instead of addressing mainly the powerless and downtrodden, activists need to emphasize issues in which everyone is in the same boat of exploitation by abusive elites and extractive factions (245).

The idea that pragmatists must think carefully about what is winnable in a given context is indeed important. In his discussion of abuses that target women and children, Snyder qualifies this approach by affirming that “[a] pragmatist needs to think about how best to accumulate the building blocks for that move [away from abuses] and also what ameliorative measures might help in the meantime” (238). Reform-minded political parties in particular must “press for institutional changes that will help guarantee effective representation for groups whose rights are at risk” (132).

These tactics all support the notion that pragmatic rights activism is patient and keenly aware of the processes needed to ensure actual success. Yet examples of both gender- and race-based abuses reveal that non-elites can perpetuate certain forms of abuse and extraction even while a broad set of interest groups receive some relief. Liberal institutions, moreover, can enshrine systemic injustices. A pragmatic approach to human rights requires a clear-eyed reckoning with whom among the downtrodden might be repeatedly overlooked and how much further one might push ameliorative stopgaps while laying foundations for further rights expansions. For many of the reasons outlined above, the idea that any one group will have to wait for their rights and needs to be addressed can begin to sound cold, or even disingenuous, if the real costs are not explicitly acknowledged.

Snyder’s narrative struggles to come to grips with the bounds of liberalism. He writes that liberalism is the guiding ideology of a modern world order that ensures individual rights, political stability, and economic prosperity (211). Yet, he acknowledges that liberalism has suffered serious setbacks and internal failures: “creating conditions that fostered economic inequality and mismanagement, disruptive cultural change, and a deficit of governmental accountability” (239). Liberalism must contend not only with illiberalism, but also with neoliberal “free-market fundamentalism” (66). Redeeming liberalism, Snyder argues, requires us to “shift its ideological priorities to increase emphasis on social welfare and economic justice as central to its mission” (66). This aligns closely with his emphasis on mobilizing grassroots social movements; historically, the demand for greater socioeconomic rights tracks the growing base of rights seekers. For all their books’ respective differences, it also dovetails with Samuel Moyn’s recent appeal to imagine an “altogether original” liberalism.[49] One must ask however, at what point will scholars have pushed so hard against liberalism’s constraints and contradictions that we find ourselves with something new? Pragmatists should accept that ideologies evolve and that eighteenth- and nineteenth-century ideals that have served (some of) us well must be pushed further—particularly to correct the current struggles with the socio-economic inequality, white supremacy, and environmental degradation that the liberal order itself has ushered along.

It is striking that major relevant subjects including antiracism, racism, socialism, imperialism, climate, and environment are all missing from the book’s index.[50] Obviously, no book can be about everything at once, but it seems out of step with the current moment to conceive of a pragmatic approach to rights that does not consider systemic racism or climate change. This is especially important for anyone looking to overcome the generational divides that have emerged as younger activists grow more confident in their critiques of capitalism, racism, and climate injustice.

Fortunately, most of the core tactics Snyder recommends still stand, and despite these critiques of its broader framing, Human Rights for Pragmatists is an effective guide to successful activism. Rights campaigns must indeed be pragmatic. An understanding of power, interest, and context are vital. Activists need to mobilize mass movements, fight corruption, support journalists, avoid shaming, and be aware that there are no shortcuts. Vernacularization and local resonance are thus paramount for supporting the rest of the pragmatist’s agenda. Above all, there must be a renewed vision of progress, one that will likely advance beyond liberalism into something more capacious and more just. Pragmatists too must still dream of a better world.

Early scholarly studies of human rights and political change sought first to show that human rights principles and protections, along with the work of human rights advocates, matter in politics.[51] In a welcome shift, and possibly as an indicator of a new phase in the literature, Jack Snyder’s new work, Human Rights for Pragmatists, does the reverse. Snyder makes the case for why and how politics matters for the realization of human rights. This is an insightful book. Snyder is right to declare that the full institutionalization of human rights, if it is to occur, will require deep engagement in messy, pragmatic politics. He supports his argument for political pragmatism with case studies and recommendations for political action rooted in the tradition of civic, domestic politics.

As Snyder pushes for a shift of emphasis to a pragmatic phase in human rights politics, he turns to the political science literature on democratization and democratic institutions for guidance. His distillation of that guidance is both refreshing and at times disconcerting. It is refreshing because he brings existing political science literature to bear on the practical institutional changes required to support human rights and the rule of law. To build his argument for a pragmatic political, economic, and social approach to sustaining human rights, Snyder marshals an astonishingly broad range of older and newer works on the dynamics of institutional change. The distinctive feature is that he mines the things we think we know about political change and brings them to his discussion of pragmatic approaches to human rights; for example, lessons drawn from studies of class conflict, authoritarianism in comparative perspective, establishment of peaceful order after civil war, social inequality, and mass movements. The processes needed to advance social and political support for human rights, according to Snyder, “depend on the creation of social power in the hands of groups that perceive an interest of their own in achieving it” (29). The prescription for instituting political ideals supported by group interests is refreshingly practical but still a great challenge. The disconcerting feature of the analysis is that, in making the case for pragmatism, it seems to dismiss the political skills and choices of human rights advocates that helped put human rights on the agenda, even though his case for a “sequencing” of political support for human rights recognizes and incorporates movement-style components consistent with the political playbook of human rights actors (4-6).

As a guide for political action, Snyder’s narrative largely rejects the principle-centered advocacy that early studies identified as a distinctive feature of human rights activism. A summary of the argument for the importance of principles is that to develop human rights norms and law, human rights advocates and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have relied on human rights principles, now largely translated into human rights law, as a primary source of legitimacy. Those principles, and the ability to build a global constituency based on such principles, have provided durable points of reference for reasoned arguments, new legal norms, and political leverage.[52]

In contrast, the formula Snyder promotes in Human Rights for Pragmatists is “power first, rights follow” (6), or alternatively, “politics leads and rights follow” (108). Snyder’s mantra of power followed by rights echoes a lesson from Simon Chesterman’s treatment of the United Nations’ post-conflict peacebuilding efforts.[53] Chesterman is persuasive in demonstrating that the establishment of political order is a prerequisite for effective democratic governance. However, Chesterman also identifies a tension inherent to the establishment of the foundations of democratic governance by way of a force-backed imposition of order, or what he calls “a form of benevolent autocracy.”[54] The tension posed by the idea of benevolent autocracy, Chesterman recognizes, is the problem of whether or not the transition “should itself be bound by the principles that it seeks to encourage.”[55] Snyder makes a thought-provoking case not for intervention, but for the pursuit of practical political and institutional arrangements, accomplished through and cognizant of all of the vicissitudes of a state-based political process, that will pave the way for human rights improvements. His is an incremental, long-term bid for change. To fully accomplish that, Snyder reminds us, would require a political strategy to root support for human rights among broader constituencies in domestic politics. The pragmatic part is the need to engage in the politics of bargaining and compromise.

For a consequentialist, compromises may be justified by results, and failure to compromise can be faulted for lack of desired results. Snyder suggests there are limits to pragmatism in the service of human rights. His is a consequentialism “guided by ethical goals” (30, 255 n. 36). Consistent with his previous work with Leslie Vinjamuri on human rights prosecutions,[56] he sees absolutist stances on human rights accountability in political transitions as potentially misguided and argues that, for example, with the right institutional conditions, amnesties for human rights violators may be politically desirable if they help to consolidate political transitions (94). This is a common theme in the domestic politics of transition.[57] To what degree the pursuit of political change should be governed by the ethics matching one’s ethical goals is still a question that merits discussion in the larger framework he presents. One hopes this book will engender more such discussion.

Snyder does not weigh in directly on the question of how human rights principles should guide political pragmatism. Although he nods briefly to philosophical pragmatism (30-31), in practice Snyder’s human rights pragmatism appears simple: do what can be done to create social and political arrangements that favor human rights. This approach is why “politics leads and rights follow” (108). However, Snyder does not reference a more focused debate among political theorists over pragmatism in human rights. According to David Luban, human rights pragmatism is the idea that “theory answers to practice rather than the other way around.”[58] Luban posits that much of human rights is already understood as relying on ongoing and developing practice. Still, he argues that a principled foundation is needed to guide pragmatic action on human rights. In the same way, discussion of how pragmatics should be guided would help Snyder to answer Chesterman’s question about what should bind the benevolent use of power. As it is, Snyder criticizes human rights actors for moralism and over-reliance on law as strategy, when those human rights principles place guardrails on power, requiring political practitioners to abide by equal, humane, and non-arbitrary treatment under the law. Does that mean setting aside any absolute adherence to human rights principles in political debates? Addressing this point of tension would make for a more satisfying treatment of pragmatism’s role, as well as the question of whether human rights politics is different from any other politics.

As noted above, it is refreshing to follow Snyder’s energetic translation of political science findings into a guide for how to develop domestic, rights-respecting institutions. Snyder draws upon a longstanding literature on democratization, political transitions, and domestic political constituencies. He reviews the classic comparative politics literature on democracy in Chapters 3 and 4; in Chapter 6 he discusses societal mobilization for human rights with reference to the literature on social and political movements. In doing so, he treads a line between appreciation of the norms and values of liberal governance, and accommodation of the political realities that diverge from those norms.

A second fresh aspect of Snyder’s argument is his discussion of the mutual and complementary importance of both political (civil) and economic rights (78). For a long time, leading human rights NGOs did not address the need for economic rights effectively, seeing the causal chain as too complex for their methods,[59] although the anti-poverty group Oxfam International and other development agencies began to tout the importance of civil and political rights as a basis for demanding economic rights in the 1990s.[60] Snyder interprets this interrelationship between political and economic rights as a beneficial feature that is underexploited in the politics of democratization, advocating a sequencing strategy stressing “economic fairness and social equality” based on equality before the law (78-79).

Although the distinction between principles and strategy is clear enough, Snyder’s repeated generalization that human rights advocates are not sufficiently pragmatic seems unfair. As Geoff Dancy argues, they are often quite pragmatic.[61] Even the early human rights advocates were impatient with idealist platitudes. As the designer of Amnesty International’s Urgent Action network in the United States from 1974-2006, a veteran of the Vietnam war, said bluntly about his work facilitating popular appeals in human rights emergencies, “I didn’t want to screw around with pretending things were being done when they weren’t.”[62]

Underlying this and similar anecdotes is the notion that human rights actors have long been working not only to lessen human rights violations, but also to alter the institutional incentives for the pursuit of political outcomes favorable to human rights, a strategy Snyder favors. On both sides of this question, the literature on NGOs as political actors is more nuanced than Snyder makes room for. Recognizing this might strengthen his argument because it would enhance the discussion about who can and should do what in the pragmatic politics of human rights. It is a broad literature, but three pertinent references stand out. First, in a treatment of humanitarian NGOs that is also relevant to the environment facing human rights NGOs, Jennifer Rubenstein has argued that NGOs are indeed “second-best” actors compared to governments, but they are also sometimes actors of “last resort,” which can pull them in many directions.[63] There are obvious reasons for the disparity, including differing access to resources and diplomatic channels. NGOs cannot always be optimally effective, but neither can governments. The division raises the intriguing question of what innovations differing political roles might permit in Snyder’s discussion of coalitions (126-143).

Snyder begins to answer this question, in an interesting section on how NGOs should strategize with mass political movements. He considers differences in types of actors and their priorities as he discusses the potential benefits of NGOs’ collaboration with other civil society actors (132-137). But he again cautions, perhaps needlessly given the history of human rights NGOs, that no one can take “a detour around politics” (140). It is also notable that except for a dismissal of international actors in comparison with states as human rights agents (42), Snyder devotes virtually no attention to the United Nations or other global or regional intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), many of which have dedicated human rights bodies. This is surprising since critics roundly fault IGOs for making high-stakes tradeoffs of principle for pragmatism.[64] It might be helpful for Snyder to explain why IGOs are largely excluded from the discussion of pragmatic politics.

Second, in a probing empirical study of large and small NGOs, Sarah Stroup and Wendy Wong argue that large, well-established NGOs may risk too little as they mature.[65] Seen through Snyder’s lens, risk aversion could mean either that large NGOs become too politically pragmatic, ultimately reducing their perceived legitimacy, or that fidelity to idealist principles reduces their ability to engage productively with other actors. How should NGOs exercise what power they may have, even if their power is a distant second to that of governments?

Third, Snyder emphasizes the importance of considering how mass religious movements can support human rights (137-140). He sees religion as an underappreciated source of social and political demand for rights-supporting institutions. This is a fascinating point, but it also seems to play down religious connections within the historic and present-day human rights movement. Elsewhere, Snyder indeed recognizes the role of progressive religious movements, but he also invokes Stephen Hopgood’s critique of human rights as a secular religion, “the secular church of a professionalized liberal elite,” as a contrast with such movements.[66] Instead, Snyder considers religion to be as a possible source of “local facilitating conditions” (140), if it can support a “positive dynamic between inclusive religion and inclusive politics” (139). Again, there is a tension here that could be more fully explored. It may be a tall order to ask for more, given Snyder’s already wide-ranging analysis, but a few loose ends related to NGOs’ strengths and weaknesses deserve more attention and clarification in Snyder’s call for civil society mobilization.

Although Snyder’s recognition of the importance of civil society and mass political movements to political change is welcome, the book is in need of more discussion of who is to be tasked with linking human rights ideas to political change at either the domestic or international level. NGOs are not the only actors in this regard, but they have tended to be primary agents of information sharing and the coordination of global and regional networks to address human rights issues.[67] One of the oldest and best-known global human rights NGOs, Amnesty International, is not mentioned. The omission is so striking that it merits justification. An equally prominent but later-emerging counterpart, Human Rights Watch, comes up frequently in the book, although mainly with reference to pieces by two distinguished former executive directors.[68] Principled symbolic activity on behalf of human rights has indeed been part of Amnesty International’s stock-in-trade, but its historic contributions have included more practical engagement: Amnesty International was a pioneer in engaging domestic public constituencies on human rights issues, lobbying at the United Nations, and exerting extensive influence on international human rights law.[69] Furthermore, its long history of annual reporting on human rights violations, along with that of the US State Department, has been an important data source for social science researchers.[70]

Finally, Snyder is especially critical of “naming and shaming,” an unfortunate phrase that refers to the rhetorical invocation of human rights misdeeds to raise pressure for human rights reform. He carefully argues that this tool is only effective under the right conditions. However, it is hard to see how to achieve legitimate monitoring and reporting on human rights problems without publicizing evidence about compliance with human rights principles. Monitoring is now well institutionalized and is conducted by governments, intergovernmental organizations, and NGOs. A pragmatist would certainly want to ensure the nonarbitrary application of accountability politics over the long term. Accordingly, if pragmatism trades off critique (or blame for human rights violations) in the short term, what is the threshold at which the tradeoff is finally settled and cashed in for a liberal order?

This is a provocative and important book that should be widely read by academics and policy makers. Snyder draws on a wide academic literature to formulate a new argument for how politics should be used to pursue, build, and sustain rights-respecting institutions. Human Rights for Pragmatists provides rich material that should foster a broad and constructive discussion of next steps in the political pursuit of human rights.

With Human Rights for Pragmatists, Jack Snyder draws on his extraordinary foundation of empirical knowledge, as well as scholarly work in History, International Relations (IR), and Comparative Politics, to emphasize that human rights is at its core a political project. In his words, “power and politics leads, rights follow” (4). His social-power model specifies five key conditions for human rights to take root: the prevailing mode of social organization is based on impersonal rules of equal treatment rather than repression and favoritism; rights are seen to serve the interests of a dominant coalition and not simply those of a marginalized group; strong, impartial institutions exist to implement and enforce rules; a locally persuasive ideology exists to underpin the normative changes; and the logic of sequencing is based on changes in social power and politics (3-6).

Snyder’s premise that human rights victories have “always fused power, self-interest, and principle” (1) is a stark challenge to a field that has traditionally emphasized the importance of norms-based change and international law.[71] Snyder argues that human rights activists have ignored the realities of power politics at their own peril. By embracing what he calls an “unconvincingly apolitical façade” (3), human rights activists have too often overlooked the historical lessons of pragmatic progressive reform, potentially undermining the success of not just human rights but the liberal project more broadly.

Undergirding the argument is Snyder’s premise that “modernity,” economic growth, and liberal civic rights are inextricably linked (34). Specifically, he argues that the

transition to liberal rights-based social order, one country at a time, is crucial to the long-term success of human rights as a global project. By definition, any country that enacts the full panoply of human rights is a liberal democracy. By empirical observation, the countries that perform best on almost all rights are in fact liberal democracies… [This requires a shift] from the traditional social order, based on coercion and favoritism, to the liberal modern one, based on rights, law, and democratic accountability (80).

Regardless of whether liberal democracy is indeed the single path to a sustainable rights-based order, Snyder’s pragmatic approach raises invaluable, and sometimes uncomfortable, issues for human rights activists. This review delves into the significance of three concrete lessons: the importance of dominant coalitions, the danger of human rights backlash, and the strategic role that what he calls “hot button grievances” can play in coalition-building (245). The review then raises questions about Snyder’s argument that liberal democratic transition is the sole path to a rights-based order and his suggestions for combatting what he calls liberalism’s “branding disaster” (66), suggesting instead that human rights scholars and practitioners would do well to engage more seriously with a broader range of discourses related to poverty, inequality, and socio-economic development.

First, Snyder rightly insists that in order for rights to thrive, they must be seen as being in the interests of a dominant coalition, not only of vulnerable and marginalized groups. At first glance, this seems to fly in the face of human rights-based approaches (HRBAs) to social change (e.g., HRBA to development, HRBA to health), which specify the importance of broad-based participation in program development along with strategies of social empowerment for marginalized groups.[72] There is of course no inherent contradiction between promoting the inclusion of vulnerable actors and considering the interests and perceptions of dominant groups. But to the extent that focusing on empowering vulnerable groups is seen as coming at the expense of the interests or status of mainstream actors, the prospects of sustainable reform are dim at best. In this regard, human rights advocates would benefit from paying more attention to the domestic politics of coalition building, including with state actors, civil society groups, and grassroots organizations. As Snyder emphasizes, for activists this requires more than partnering with local human rights groups; it also means forging alliances with mass social movements, reformist political actors, and religious groups (126-143). For human rights scholars, this means greater engagement with comparative politics literature on the dynamics of coalition-building and domestic political change.

Second, Snyder’s discussion of “backlash against naming and shaming” is a powerful—and potentially painful—challenge for human rights activists (189-211). He draws from the literature on social psychology to illuminate the limits of naming and shaming strategies, which for a long time have been seen as the core of the human rights methodology.[73] To be sure, there has been increasing recognition in the international human rights community that naming and shaming—or in the words of Aryeh Neier, “documenting and denouncing”[74]—works better for some issue areas than others, and that the strategy is particularly complicated when it involves cultural or religious values concerning issues such as women’s rights or sexual orientation and gender identity. Snyder goes farther, arguing that the strategy may not only be ineffective, but counterproductive, when shaming comes from outside groups rather than respected in-group actors. As he notes, “[s]haming and anger may have the benefit of mobilizing the shamer’s own activist base, but they tend to mobilize and lock in the target’s base, too…[B]oth sides nurture their ideologies of hostility and contempt” (208). This is consistent with Jonathan Symons’ and Dennis Altman’s investigation of external shaming strategies for sexual orientation and gender norms, which they argue may result not simply in resistance to external pressure, but the emergence and strengthening of “twin spirals” that socialize states and civil society actors into different positions.[75]

What makes Snyder’s backlash argument especially compelling is not simply the evidence he offers about the conditions under which shaming strategies do and do not work. It is also the alternatives he offers for “pragmatic practitioners” to consider, including relying more heavily on vernacularization strategies and local normative systems; using implicit persuasion through narratives and stories; and framing human rights compliance through the lens of technical advice instead of moral and legal imperatives (210). Another fruitful strategy to add to Snyder’s list can be found in the business and human rights community, which in addition to conducting naming and shaming campaigns, emphasizes human rights due diligence as a “knowing and showing” process. This entails a commitment by businesses to understanding the human rights impacts of a considered action and then to demonstrating how they will mitigate potential adverse impacts.[76] Knowing and showing strategies have the added benefit of moving human rights discussions toward a prevention frame, focusing on the mitigation of harm before it happens rather than on accountability for violations that have already occurred.

Third, Snyder suggests that activists should identify and mobilize around “hot button grievances” that will appeal to everyone (245). Corruption is one such issue and should be a human rights priority because it undermines every other kind of right; not only civil and political, but also economic, social, and cultural. Given the broad-based resonance of this issue with the public, corruption may also serve as a unifying issue at the international level, reminiscent of the way that “violence against women” emerged as a master frame in the 1990s to unite otherwise disparate groups of women’s rights activists.[77] Certainly, the issue is already recognized as critically important within the global human rights community,[78] but it has not been considered as an overarching issue that can facilitate building coalitions and mobilizing publics within and across borders. Furthermore, a targeted human rights focus on corruption can extend to international financial institutions and structures, a move that would ideally increase their overall legitimacy around the world.

These are a few of the powerful insights to be found throughout Snyder’s thought-provoking book. Also not to be missed is Snyder’s chapter on “Regulating the Marketplace of Ideas,” which is extraordinarily compelling (144-188). However, the underlying premise of the book—that liberalism is the defining feature of modernity (33-38)— runs counter to the views of those non-Western scholars and activists who are inclined to embrace non-liberal ideologies or contending visions of what liberalism and “modernity” entail. Snyder argues that “[v]irtually all societies that have been highly successful over a long period of economic development have moved quite far in the direction of the fully liberal model, both in formal arrangements and in effective rights for most segments of society” (38). With this premise, he argues that human rights are not likely to take root in states without the preconditions to make the transition from personalism and corruption to a system based on impersonal rules and institutions. This embrace of a modernity marked by impersonal rules and institutions harkens back to earlier theories of modernization, and it is worth thinking about what these assumptions imply for the pragmatic approach to promoting human rights.[79]

For Snyder, successful human rights mobilization depends not primarily on pressure from activists or human rights legalism, but rather “whether the great powers are stable democracies and whether those democracies can sustain liberal international economic and security institutions that incentivize and socialize rising powers to adopt liberal norms and practices” (44). To his credit, he recognizes that this is a tall order, given that liberalism itself is facing a “branding disaster” (66), which he attributes mainly to the consequences of the neoliberal free-market fundamentalism of the 1980s, as well as to the libertarian dimension of the human rights project, which manifests on the left as free-speech absolutism and on the right as antiregulation free-market fundamentalism. Indeed, there is plentiful evidence of the skepticism that exists in different regions of the world about core principles of a liberal international order. This includes in the West (as Snyder notes repeatedly throughout the book), evidenced most recently by the fact that nationalist right-wing parties made the most gains in the 2024 elections to the European Union (EU) parliament.[80] Furthermore, there is no consensus on what the “liberal international order” entails,[81] whether it implies a “US-led order”;[82] whether it is an oppressive world order;[83] or whether the benefits of a multipolar order are likely to be more compelling for countries in the Global South.[84]

Snyder offers two key strategies to respond to this skepticism. Although negative attitudes toward liberalism are likely rooted in something deeper than Snyder fully acknowledges, it is worth considering both strategies that he suggests as they relate to the continued promotion of a global human rights agenda. One concerns the substantive focus of human rights activists, while the other focuses on the nature of normative discourse.

First, in substantive terms, Snyder suggests briefly that the best way for the human rights community to address the liberalism/neoliberalism branding disaster is to put more emphasis on economic justice and social welfare, as articulated in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (66). This is an essential point, but one that remains underdeveloped in the book. Economic rights are discussed again only once more in the book, and this is in the context of sequencing, where Snyder calls for rights promotion and persuasion narratives which emphasize that “economic fairness and social equality can be achieved only if the broad mass of the people enjoys institutionalized political power and equality before the law” (78-79). This kind of framing implies that the adoption of civil and political rights represents a pre-condition for, and are needed to help bring about, economic and social justice. Yet as Philip Alston argues, the reverse logic also holds: civil and political rights violations are often rooted in poverty, and only in addressing poverty can solutions be developed for a whole array of civil and political rights violations, including police brutality, gender-based sexual violence, property theft, pre-trial detention, criminalizing homelessness, or electoral fraud and manipulation.[85]

Snyder acknowledges that his rights promotion narrative may not be particularly persuasive when inequality and corruption exist within some liberal democracies on levels comparable to illiberal societies (79). Thus, he calls for the rejection of “libertarians’ dogmatic aversion to economic regulation” (239) and the return to a system of embedded liberalism with politically regulated markets and democratic social welfare states at both the domestic and national levels. At the international economic level, he calls for an open-door policy based on an international system of embedded liberalism with well-functioning institutions like the World Trade Organization (WTO), which highlight the benefits of trade and incentivize other states to see the benefits of joining (21, 240). This call for a return to Bretton Woods style embedded liberalism is certainly a step forward from the disastrous economic and political effects of the neoliberalism of the 1980s.[86] Furthermore, these arguments echo much of what has been written, especially since the 2009 financial crisis, about the merits of regulating re-embedding markets through the reestablishment of social safety nets[87] and the need for more concerted measures to combat rising inequality.[88]

It is not clear, however, whether and how reducing inequality, poverty, and corruption in liberal capitalist democracies of the West would resonate with non-Western developing countries that remain concerned about international inequalities and about their lack of voice in international institutions.[89] And at the international level, there is no common vision of embedded liberalism, as evinced by the calls of some Global South countries for reform of the United Nations (UN) and the Bretton Woods institutions (World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund, World Bank), while at the same time exploring alternatives to existing international liberal institutions—including the BRICS+ forum,[90] de-dollarization initiatives, and broader South-South cooperation.[91]

Second, at the level of normative discourse, the persistent challenges of poverty and inequality have led some human rights scholars to explicitly reject liberalism as the foundation for rights. For example, Makau Mutua warns of the legitimacy dangers of treating liberal democracy as the “northern lights” of the global human rights regime, which he argues obscures the more compelling issues of economic justice in much of the world.[92] Especially throughout the Global South, it is difficult to deny the normative power of the famous adage, attributed to Senegal President Léopold Senghor, that “human rights starts with breakfast.”[93] This is a perspective that reinforces the challenge that China poses within the UN and in other international forums to promote alternative conceptions of human rights that prioritize socioeconomic rights, especially the “right to subsistence.”[94]

To the extent that the concept of liberalism itself is a liability in international rights discourse, the reasons must be interrogated, understood, and addressed. Here, Snyder’s discussion of vernacularization is important. For Snyder, vernacularization means conversations where rights are defined and discussed locally, while also connected to globally shared principles; this includes the content of rights as well as how they are discussed (68). He notes that dialogue is more fruitful, and rights persuasion is more effective, “if the conversation is two-way, if vernacular normative ideas of the community are taken into account, and if local notables are fully engaged as intermediaries in packaging global and local concepts in a form that works in local politics” (246, see also 68-70). This is no easy task, as Snyder is well aware; effective vernacularization strategies, he notes, require political acumen as well as cross-cultural rhetorical ability (69-70).

Snyder draws heavily on the work of Sally Engle Merry, whose work highlights the “two-way nature of change,” or the way that meanings of both rights and of culture can be transformed through vernacularization and dialogue.[95] But the book’s focus on democratic transition and modernity results in an emphasis on vernacularization as a strategy for persuasion and local transformation. Dialogue must not be thought of primarily as discursive or rhetorical persuasion, but rather as opportunities for those in more privileged or hegemonic positions to change their own views as a result of a deeper understanding of what James Scott refers to as metis, local knowledge as seen in long-standing local practices.[96] This implies a need to expand the channels of communication between human rights scholars and practitioners and country/area experts (and not only those in the West) who can provide a context-sensitive understanding of local norms and practices. Vernacularization can offer a meaningful and fruitful basis for advancing human rights if it embraces an authentic “pluralistic universalism” that takes seriously non-Western ideas, norms, institutions, and experiences on their own terms.[97]

These complexities notwithstanding, Human Rights for Pragmatists should be required reading for anyone interested in human rights scholarship or advocacy. The book is a stark reminder that the human rights project is based in power and politics. It involves building coalitions; not relying excessively on naming and shaming strategies given the risk of backlash; and finding hot-button issues that have broad appeal and can produce mobilization. Snyder also reminds us that normative persuasion is a competitive game and that liberalism is no longer the only game in town (67). Regardless of whether one accepts Snyder’s embrace of liberal democracy as the sole path to sustainable rights-based societies, one thing seems clear: human rights scholars and activists have much to gain from deepening their understanding of alternative normative discourses by building stronger ties with area experts and authoritative representatives of local communities.

If the 1990s constituted a high-water mark for human rights hopes, the 2010s witnessed a dizzying array of pessimism from the media and academic circles about the efficacy of the human rights project.[98] The past several years, however, have seen a resurgent third wave of the scholarship that sits somewhere between the two extremes. Scholars such as Kathryn Sikkink and Jack Snyder, both of whom have spent their careers studying human rights, are grappling with this human rights backlash in order to understand how human rights can and do work.[99]

For Snyder, the answer rests within a pragmatic framework. In his wide-ranging book, Human Rights for Pragmatists: Social Power in Modern Times, Snyder makes the case for taking idealism out of human rights work. He argues that activists and scholars should focus on “strategies that can successfully advance the rights project” (x). Snyder synthesizes several decades of human rights scholarship, including his own extensive research, to make an argument for scaling back broader claims about the outcomes of human rights work to focus instead on empirical studies that reveal incremental and realistic possibilities for social change.[100]

Snyder organizes Human Rights for Pragmatists thematically. He starts with the philosophical basis for a pragmatic rights approach that looks at creating a social equilibrium based on equal rights and accountable government, progresses to building blocks and sequencing for rights promotion, and then examines how societies transition towards rights-based societies. Snyder’s approach rests on the foundational claim that “politics leads, rights follow,” wherein power and the role of the state are central components in his analysis (81). The second half of the book offers case studies, including: how to approach China; the importance of building mass movements and coalitions; an empirical study on the free speech’s intersection with rights achievements; how to deal with backlash against human rights shaming practices; and finally, how pragmatists might counter female genital mutilation, child marriage, and child labor.

In each chapter, the book provides an extensive overview of the literature on a diverse range of topics, offering policymakers, nongovernmental organization (NGO) workers, and academics a grounded evaluation of these studies as well as prescriptions for how to take this literature and apply it to pragmatic human rights work. Snyder asks human rights proponents to question some of the core operating assumptions that have guided human rights work for several decades. For example, some of the earliest and most well-known human rights NGOs such as Human Rights Watch have often employed naming and shaming as a method for pushing a human rights agenda. Snyder persuasively argues, however, that this approach tends to isolate the offenders and entrench or “lock in” their practices (189-211). He instead advocates for incentives to change behaviors and “forceful reminders of principled standards directed to everyone, not just those at risk of misbehavior” (209). By reevaluating central assumptions in human rights work, Snyder seeks to create more realistic opportunities for creating a rights-based liberal order in countries around the world.

While Snyder is successful in utilizing his vast expertise to question existing practices, Human Rights for Pragmatists is a bit vaguer in offering prescriptive ways forward. For example, Snyder effectively reassesses the research on the importance of early elections in democratic transitions, pointing out the dangers of spoilers from past regimes at these early stages (who often grow weaker over time). Snyder, instead, stresses the importance of first building strong institutions to support free, open, and fair elections (80-108). In essence, Snyder argues that

the short-run chance of peace and the long-run prospect for democratic consolidation might both be improved by postponing fully competitive elections until some progress has been made in strengthening institutions needed to make democracy work. These include competent state bureaucracies, independent courts, professionalized media, integrative political parties, and functioning market economies (105).

This is a highly rational—and pragmatic—approach but it also raises questions. The list of institutions that need strengthening is long, and there is no clear path to know how to go about strengthening them. Further, it is not clear what to do if these institutions are not sufficiently strong (or what that threshold is). Postpone fully competitive elections, indefinitely? How many of them need to be strengthened in order to hold elections? While Snyder shows that the drawbacks of early elections merit serious consideration, the alternatives are perhaps equally vexing, which is why human rights work continues to be so challenging across the globe.

Snyder also brings to the fore important research that critically evaluates the claims of judicial accountability to deter future violence and consolidate peace, questioning the central claims of the transitional justice (TJ) movement. He argues for utilizing amnesties, or at the least offering vague commitments to justice in peace agreements that can be renegotiated later, when spoilers potentially become weaker over time (104). Snyder focuses on reducing immediate atrocities through measures such as building coalitions for peace. Within this framework, this approach is indeed pragmatic. But such an approach also raises questions about the long-term effects of delayed justice in society and the ongoing effect on victims. For example, South America is replete with examples of divergent pathways for countries engaging to various degrees of with broad accountability mechanisms that range from trials to truth commissions, reparations, and memory and memorialization possibilities. While Snyder’s book is largely focused on immediate transitions, one only need to look at Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s reification of the military during his term in office,[101] or Argentine President Javier Milei’s current attack on the human rights community and institutions in Argentina, to begin to grapple with the long-term effects and threats to democracy of the various TJ pathways.[102] Similarly, victims’ right to know the truth about the disappearances of loved ones remains an urgent consideration and should not be ignored even within a pragmatic framework for understanding political transitions. In this way, Snyder’s questioning of TJ’s claims about consolidating democracy and deterring future abuses remains of incredible importance with negotiating transitions, but also offers opportunities to think about longer frameworks of evaluation and the enduring rights of victim groups.

Overall, Snyder explains that when writing the book, he felt an urgent and deeply understandable need to comprehend how the world, which is “precariously poised between forces of liberalism and illiberalism” (239), could look to continue and promote rights under unstable circumstances. Between the 2024 election in the US and far right successes across the globe, this urgency is even more poignant today. As such, Human Rights for Pragmatists uses years of impressive research to make the case for anticipating pushback, picking battles that can be won, building mass movements, and adapting strategies to the new reality. It is a sobering reevaluation but an important one for anyone who cares about human rights. It forces a reckoning with the promises and costs of a pragmatic approach, offering a crucial intellectual exercise for serious engagement with human rights work.

At the same time, I cannot help but be taken by Ronaldo Munck’s words in his recent book, Coloniality of Power and Progressive Politics in Latin America, where he argues that “it is only the limits of our imaginations—individual and collective—which restrict our ability to construct new futures.”[103] The field of human rights has often been embedded in idealism, and Snyder’s task of grounding it in pragmatism is a much-needed corrective. However, there are costs of pragmatism as well, mainly in thinking about what is being lost by pulling back perhaps too far, and what Munck suggests, limiting our imagination to construct new futures. In this way, Munck and Snyder offer somewhat opposite approaches to the current global precariousness, but it is perhaps thinking about both together that can offer a compelling way forward.

Response by Jack L. Snyder, Columbia University

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