Human Rights and Public Opinion From Attitudes to Action.pdfVIP

Human Rights and Public Opinion: From Attitudes to Action SHAREEN HERTEL LYLE SCRUGGS C. PATRICK HEIDKAMP Contrary to the notion that civil and political rights trump eco- nomic rights in American popular consciousness, this article demonstrates that Americans widely view the right to a minimum standard of living as a human right—and say they are willing to pay more for ethically produced goods in order to promote such rights. For the first time, there are data to demonstrate the connection between what Americans think about human rights, and how they are willing to behave. The national public opinion poll conducted by the authors and discussed in this article is the first in a series aimed at exploring such connections. Nearly two decades ago, scholar Kathleen Pritchard noted that: “There is very little research on the role played by mass public opinion, and perhaps even less, on factors that shape and influence that opinion in the field of human rights.”1 Her appraisal remains accurate almost 20 years later. Our 1 Kathleen Pritchard, “Human Rights: A Decent Respect for Public Opinion?” Human Rights Quarterly 13 (May 1991): 123–142. SHAREEN HERTEL is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Connecticut and holds a joint appointment with the universityʼs Human Rights Institute, where she co-directs the Economic Rights Research Group. She is the author of Unexpected Power: Conflict and Change Among Transnational Activists and co-editor of Economic Rights: Conceptual, Measurement, and Policy Issues. LYLE SCRUGGS is an associate professor of political science at the Univ