The Hierarchy of Human Rights

ion, that these were indeed rights, in practice the consensus would break down very quickly into debate about progress. This has been a very important aspect of the reluctance to talk about economic rights. Second, in the area of first generation rights, you have an infinite opportunity to express them. To be sure, if everyone insists on a right to speak on the same street corner at the same time, equal enjoyment would mean no enjoyment. But with a certain amount of management, roughly equal opportunity is achievable. When, however, it comes to the division of the gross national product, whether it is inter-generationally or within a single generation, only a finite amount of the valued thing is available. No consensus criteria exist for deciding how to make the requisite allocations. Different societies at different times, even different groups within a society, will disagree about the appropriate criteria. Allow me to conclude by disagreeing slightly with many of my colleagues by suggesting that we should try to operationalize the right to participate at the macro-level. The ability to participate through the traditional or classical modality of elected representatives is diminished by two phenomena of our time. First, of course, is privatization. As privatization continues, the state has fewer tools and less opportunity to make decisions on matters that vitally affect the quality of life of the electorate. But even if privatization does not occur, as long as the aspiration to increase the gross national product survives, then the consequent participation of the country in the global economy reduces the ability of national policy makers to influence outcomes. If we focus on participation on the micro or project level, I believe the key issue is the nature of the right to participation. Is it a right to be informed or to have one's views heard? Is it a right to veto projects when the local deprivation is great and the general benefits are uncertain or modest? Is it a right not to suffer a disproportionate burden in contributing to a possibly very great increase in the economic welfare of the society? Or, is it simply a right to compete for the benefits which result from growth? This question brings us back to the macro-level. Here one might look to demands for more education and training, antitrust laws, harsh taxation of inherited wealth, and so on. [VOL. 8:1 15 1992] HIERARCHY OF HUMAN RIGHTS 119 I would say finally that perhaps the deepest element of conflict between rights to development and rights to participation, both of which are group rights, and the classic first-generation concerns of human rights groups, relates to the fundamental question of what human rights are about. Some people think of human rights ultimately as a means to permit individuals to invent and re-invent themselves or to maintain their peculiar personal identity (to be, in G.K. Chesterton's words, "their own petty little selves"). Others think of these rights as a means for groups to prosper and to maintain their identity or to change their identity. Harsh conflicts arise between individual rights and other kinds of rights. In the process of seeking to maintain their identity, groups often must practice or wish to practice forced inclusion and exclusion, and often such group practices are incompatible with the whole notion of human rights as a basis for individual creation and recreation.