HUMAN RIGHTS QUARTERLY Human Rights Quarterly 24 (2002) 890–923 © 2002 by The Johns Hopkins University Press Comparative Politics and Human Rights Todd Landman* I. INTRODUCTION The academic study of human rights since the 1948 UN Declaration has flourished considerably, a process that has increasingly involved a variety of disciplines from the legal, social, and human sciences including traditional and critical legal studies, political science, philosophy, anthropology, sociology, history, psychology, economics and environmental sciences. Despite the claim and desire to make the study of human rights truly inter- disciplinary, much work is still needed in examining the contribution that particular disciplines can make to understanding key issues in the field. Within political science, normative and empirical studies seek to establish the rational, cultural, and structural foundations for human rights, their possible relationships with democracy, and the key factors that help explain the global variation in their protection. The field of comparative politics has much to contribute to this important area of research both in substantive and methodological terms. Comparative politics fits well with the theory and practice of human rights because it is based upon the cross-cultural comparison of individual nation states in an effort to explain and understand the different ways in which * Todd Landman received his B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, his M.A. from Georgetown, and an M.A. from Colorado. He received a Ph.D. from the University of Essex. He is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Government and Deputy Director, Human Rights Centre at the University of Essex. He is the author of Issues and Methods in Comparative Politics (Routledge 2000), the co-author (with Professor Joe Foweraker) of Citizenship Rights and Social Movements: A Comparative and Statistical Analysis (Oxford University Press 1997), co-author (with Joe Foweraker and Neil Harvey) of Governing Latin America (Polity Press 2003) and has published articles and reviews in The British Journal of Political Science, International Studies Quarterly, Political Studies, Electoral Studies, Interna- tional Comparative Law Quarterly, Journal of Latin American Studies, West European Politics, Democratization, and Human Rights and Human Welfare.