1.

4 Methodology
In keeping with a constructivist framework that considers language a constitutive factor of the
social reality in which states operate, I have investigated this form of vernacularization through
discourse analysis. This is also the methodology that Krook and True (2012, 105) recommend
specifically for studies of norm evolution, since it rejects the reductive assumption that norms
exist only as and to the extent that they are formally codified in international law, allowing one
to analyze them more flexibly and dynamically as they are “anchored in language and revealed
by repeated speech acts.” Moreover, the approach permits a more actor-oriented focus that

confers agency to discursive participants as they purposively define and innovate through such
speech acts the terms of political debate. Discourse analysis is thus a useful tool for tracing the
process by which states reinterpret dominant definitions of human rights norms and subsequently
deploy those reinterpretations to condemn, defend, or excuse given policies.

The empirical base of my analysis is the documentation that a sample of authoritarian regimes
have submitted to the Universal Periodic Review (UPR), a peer-review mechanism administrated
by the UN Human Rights Council under which member states regularly examine each other’s
human rights records. The mere fact that all UN members have agreed to subject themselves to
such scrutiny is in itself illustrative of the normative sway that human rights now hold in the
international arena, yet the voluminous documentation that the review process has generated also
evidences the degree to which states compete to establish rival definitions of human rights and
imbue the term with political and philosophical content that aligns with their own values and
interests. The process can thus provide considerable insight into the manner in which states
vernacularize transnational norms in accordance with local belief systems.

The UPR was established in 2006 and is currently in its third cycle. Each cycle follows a set
schedule—currently spanning five years—according to which every state submits a report
detailing the domestic measures it has taken to strengthen human rights, as well as responds to
other states’ recommendations regarding its human rights record. For this thesis, I analyzed both
the reports and responses that eight authoritarian regimes have submitted through the course of
all three UPR cycles. In order to ensure variety as to the level of capacity and degree of
repression exhibited by each regime, I determined my sample by selecting two states from each
of the four levels of development described by the UN’s Human Development Index (HDI)—
very high, high, medium, and low—with each pair of states comprised of one deemed partly free
and one deemed not free in Freedom House’s annual democracy ranking (Table 1).
HDI Category

Very high
High
Medium
Low

“Partly Free”

Singapore
Turkey
Philippines
Nigeria

TABLE 1: Sample

“Not Free”

Saudi Arabia
China
North Korea
Syria
Analyzing these states’ UPR documentation, I developed a typology of illiberal human rights
claims organized by the specific—and traditionally liberal—norms that the regimes have

vernacularized in order to level their claims. These norms are: 1) non-discrimination; 2) rule of
law; 3) criminal justice; 4) majority rule; and 5) developmentalism. By way of illustration,
several of the regimes in the sample defend severe restrictions on their citizens’ freedom of
expression by citing the need to protect minority groups from hate speech; such claims are
discussed under the non-discrimination heading. Combined, the categories cover the most
prevalent and significant ways in which the eight reviewed states have vernacularized human
rights to promote illiberal politics.