Human Rights and the Ontological Security of States through the Application of Anthony Giddens’s Structuration Theory

Abstract

Anthony Giddens is among the theorists who have had a significant influence on the metatheoretical debates of scholars in the field of International Relations. One of the most important of these areas is ontology, particularly the question of which has priority in the agent–structure relationship. In response to this question, Giddens emphasizes the reciprocal relationship between the two and does not accept the priority of one over the other. The question of the relationship between the structure of human rights and the state, and the mutual effects of these two on one another—namely, how they constitute each other and whether either has priority—is the main question of this study. In response, their interaction or duality within the framework of structuration theory is proposed as the main hypothesis. Accordingly, using a descriptive–analytical method, library and documentary sources, and an interdisciplinary approach, this study first explains structuration theory and its main concepts, as well as the structuration and transformation of the state and human rights within the context of time–space. Finally, by applying the concept of “existential or ontological security,” it demonstrates the interaction between these two in accordance with the main hypothesis. In this regard, human rights norms—as structural and organized rules—create anxieties for states in the process of internalization and transformation into a structure, namely the structure of international human rights. These anxieties arise from changes and transformations in the scope of states’ Westphalian sovereignty and their regularized social practices through the acceptance of human rights. However, with the semantic transformation of sovereignty and its scope, these anxieties disappear, and respect for human rights becomes a guarantor of governmental and sovereign legitimacy, as well as the reproduction of the concept of the state on the basis of its responsibility rather than its immunity.