Many states now feel an obligation not only to respect human rights themselves, but also to pursue human rights issues in their relations with other states.
Human rights are very much on the international political agenda.
Little is known, however, about how much one state can influence another state to improve its human rights record, and which factors make such influence-attempts more or less effective. Pronouncements and predictions concerning the influence of human rights policy are often based on the speaker's outlook on life, idealistic or cynical, optimist or pessimist, rather than on research. This study assesses how successful the human rights policy of a number of western states has been in influencing the Indonesian government's behaviour in the field of human rights over a period of nearly twenty-five years. Secondly, it examines which factors contributed to or detracted from this influence. On the basis of these case studies, conclusions are drawn about the extent to which the human rights policy of western states has been influential, and which factors were important in contributing to or detracting from that influence.