What is the added value – or disvalue – of a “right to effective governance”? That question is phrased in relative terms, and needs a baseline. If the baseline is the United States Constitution, then suffice it to say that the US Constitution is notoriously an eighteenth-century constitution with a few later additions, and that it includes rather few “positive rights” (meaning affirmative rights to government action, as opposed to negative rights to government forbearance). Assuming that the “right to effective governance” is defined in a manner that actually requires the government to do something, and especially if the right is enforceable by private persons, then it would add a great deal to the requirements of the US Constitution. (Whether the result would be a net benefit is a different question.)

The institutional dialogue among the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and other human rights tribunals has led to greater protection of rights. But not all courts and treaty bodies have accepted the Committee’s absolutist position on legal capacity. The chapter illustrates the multiple human rights-based approaches to capacity and decision-making, and describes how the Committee’s absolutism endangers many of the people living with moderate or severe dementia whom it supposedly benefits.

This chapter frames the discussion that follows by examining the concept of populism, which is debated among political scientists, and the negative effects that populism may produce on internationally recognized human rights. The chapter emphasizes an understanding of populism as a form of politics that employs an exclusionary notion of the people as opposed to disfavored groups that are unworthy and that purports to rule on behalf of the people, whose will should not be constrained. The chapter describes both internal and external effects of populists' rise to power. Domestically, populist governance threatens the human rights of the excluded group, but also poses danger for members of the majority, as leaders seek to entrench themselves in power and undermine checks. Externally, the influence of populism on foreign policy reduces support for the international human rights regime, in a manner that has become increasingly problematic as populists gain power in more countries that previously played key roles in maintaining it.

This concluding essay draws on the insights of earlier chapters and provides the author's own conclusions regarding how monitoring bodies in the human rights system should deal with the challenges created by the current wave of exclusionary populism. As the varied accounts illustrate, one size does not fit all. Moreover, international human rights institutions should not address populism as such, but should rather continue to focus on the specific human rights violations that populism leads to, and on the violations that have contributed to the rise of populism. Meanwhile, human rights institutions should also be attentive to the criticisms that populists have directed against the international human rights system, some of which (as examples show) may be meritorious even within a human rights analysis. These recommendations would not solve the problem that the spread of populism poses, but they would enable human rights institutions to contribute positively toward particular solutions.