"Human Rights, Development and Governance in international Politics
– Conflict or Convergence of Policy Goals?“

Congress of the German Association of Political Sciences (DVPW) Tübingen (Germany)
September 24-28, 2012

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Although human rights in international development cooperation as well as democracy promotion (including the question of good governance) count as an indispensable component, there exist vagueness in the conception as well as tensions in the promotion of human rights, development and democratization work. For one thing, the agenda of the millennium development goals (MDG) corresponds in many aspects with the protection of human rights. Nevertheless, implementation work seems to fall short of developing an integrative approach that would clearly and effectively set priorities for both human rights and development work. Moreover, the orthodox neo-liberal doctrine asserts that there exist no inherent conflict between economic growth, development, democracy, stability, autonomy and equality. But local and national conditions often have been ignored - for the benefit of a market-oriented denationalization and deregulation. The consequences: devastating structural poverty, human rights violations, increasing inequality between the North and the South, and a lack of transparency and responsibility in democratic governance. At stake are the following questions: How have human rights, development and governance as inter-linking discourses been articulated with which interests standing behind? How have the conceptual connections or/and the re-definition between "human rights", "development" and "democratic governance" been implemented with what effects? Are there conflicts between these objectives so that specific concerns and issues have been subordinated?

This workshop serves as the first forum to tackle with the intersection issue between human rights, development and governance, systematically and critically. It pursues the following objectives. First, the workshop intends to facilitate an intra-disciplinary communication (human rights, policy fields research, democracy, transformation and development research communities) through theoretical reflections and new empirical findings. Secondly, the workshop invites not only papers from academic circles, but also reflections upon their practical work from both the policy- and NGOs-communities in order to reach a fruitful dialogue between theorists and practitioners.

Potential themes include:
- Overlap between human rights and development (with examples of millennium development goals, the question of sustainable development, development policies of the United States, the European Union, China and India, poverty reduction etc.);
- Overlap between human rights and democratic governance;
- Overlap between human rights, development cooperation and democratic governance;
- Policy-network analyses (conflict or convergence, theory and practices).

Please send your abstract (no more than 300 words) no later than April 15, 2012 to the following email-address: Dr. Miao-ling Lin Hasenkamp, Universität Magdeburg, Germany hasenkamp@ovgu.de

Depending on the result of the workshop, an edited book “Human Rights, Development and Governance in international Politics – Conflict or Convergence of Policy Goals” is planned after a peer-reviewing process in the publication series of policy research, Lit-Verlag, Münster / Germany for 2012/2013.