Human rights are an ideological fiction. This is not to diminish the concept; rather, it is to recognise that the notion of a universally definable set of rights that are inherent to human beings by virtue of their humanity is a socially constructed ideal. Human rights are an expression neither of eternal verities on the one hand, nor mere moral norms on the other, but of systemically derived ethical principles or social values.

The common wisdom that informs much current debate about welfare reform is that economic globalisation has signalled the end of the ‘golden age’ of the welfare state. More particularly, however, it has been argued that the concept of social or welfare rights – as a distinctive component of citizenship within capitalist welfare states – has been eclipsed and that the development of social welfare should now be conceptualised as the pursuit not of social rights, but of the minimum social standards appropriate to any particular stage of economic development (Mishra, 1999).

However, should we accept that globalisation (insofar that this contested concept does relate to palpable processes) has political and cultural as well as economic dimensions (for example, Held et al, 1999), then we should also acknowledge that one of its effects has been the ascendancy of a particular human rights discourse. Enthusiasts for human rights now speak of a ‘third wave’ in the development of human rights that is closely linked to globalisation (Klug, 2000). Even the fiercest theoretical critics of the substantive gap between law and justice around the globe acknowledge the prevailing concept of human rights as “the new ideal that has triumphed on the world stage” (Douzinas, 2000, p 2). There is a paradox here. The 1980s and 1990s witnessed a renaissance of interest in the concept of citizenship, not only within the academic subjects of Political Science and Sociology, but also within academic Social Policy (for example, Jordan, 1989; Roche, 1992; Twine, 1994; Lister, 1997; Dean, 1999), an interest that succeeded in pushing debate about rights and welfare beyond the bounds of the seminal theory of citizenship first espoused by T.H. Marshall in 1950. However, with the re-emergent preoccupation with human rights, the debate has entered a new and potentially quite different phase.