1 Rational Choice Theory and Human Rights i Valeska Korff ii , Mimi Zou iii , Tom Zwart iv , Rafael Wittek v Word count: 5.381 (including references) Introduction: A Rational Choice Perspective on Human Rights One of the key objectives of the international human rights movement is to institutionalize adherence to human rights principles in societies across the world. Institutionalization refers to a situation in which a set of rules is considered as legitimate, widely accepted and “infused with value” (Selznick, 1957: 17). The key argument we seek to elaborate in this chapter is that rational choice theory and its core methodological principle, structural individualism, offers a valuable contribution to the human rights paradigm in general, and to explaining variations in the institutionalization of human rights in particular. Structural individualism posits that all social phenomena on the macro and meso level – like the institutionalization of human rights – need to be explained by referring or descending to the micro level of individual decisions and behavior. Hence, when explaining under which structural conditions human rights become institutionalized in a society, we need to understand the decision-making and behavior of the involved actors. While challenging the macro-level focus of human rights discourse, this proposition in fact is linked to a seminal development in legal conception: the emergence of the field of international criminal law. International Criminal Law and International Human Rights Law are interlinked in many ways (De Than & Shorts, 2003), whereby the former can basically be regarded as an individual-centered subcategory of the latter. Presupposing the responsibility of individual offenders for human rights violations, international criminal law departs from the