Abstract
Three main theories lead the international human rights political politics: the realist, the ideational and the republican liberalist theory.
The realist theory assumes that democratic countries, and especially the great powers use coercion to make other governments adopt international human rights regime. They think that the most powerful countries are the primary of the international human rights politics.
The ideational theory believes in the transnational persuasion power of civil societies from democratic countries fighting for human rights. They think that these civil societies may influence the undemocratic countries to adopt a more compassionate international human rights regime.
However, and after having analysed these two theories but also republican liberalism, it seems that republican liberalism is the theory that is the most strongly connected to the reality of the international human rights politics, and as Andrew Moravcsik says "historical records strongly supports the republican liberal theory" (Moravcsik, 2000, p230). This is the reason why this essay will be focused on this theory.
This essay will first show how the international human rights institutions are getting more powerful, then the reason why governments may wish to adopt the international human rights regime and to conclude, we will show the relevance of these theoretical concepts through an empirical analysis of the situation of the European Court of Human Rights, and the United States.
