Human Rights and Participatory Politics in Southeast Asia.

• Jurisdiction: Singapore
• Date: 01 August 2020
• Author: Petcharamesree, Sriprapha

Human Rights and Participatory Politics in Southeast Asia. By Catherine Renshaw. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019. Hardcover: 247pp.

As the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR) marked its tenth anniversary last year, Catherine Renshaw's book, Human Rights and Participatory Politics in Southeast Asia, provides a very timely contribution to the literature on efforts to improve the existing human rights system and the region's human rights' record.

The book begins with the recognition that democratic deficit experienced by ASEAN members makes it difficult, if not impossible for "meaningful dialogue to occur on the scope and content of rights" in the region (p. 168). Moreover, Renshaw notes that a human rights declaration produced under non-democratic conditions cannot hope to answer the needs of the people in ASEAN member states.

The book is well researched and provides clear evidence to support the author's arguments, especially her claim that when states belong to a region where the predominant norms are not "good" liberal, democratic, human rights-oriented ones, "regional influences work to socialize states away from human rights norms" (p. 14). The book is divided into two main parts. The first attempts to demonstrate how "democratic deficit in Southeast Asia limits the legitimacy and potential of the regional human rights...