ABSTRACT
This chapter undertakes an in-depth content analysis1 of the meanings of good governance, democracy and human rights (GDH) found in selected UN global documents, with a combined special emphasis on the 2000 and 2002 Human Development Reports (HDR), entitled Human Rights and Human Development and Deepening Democracy in a Fragmented World. The chapter applies the principles of rhetoric (see Chapter One) to interrogate the semantic and syntactical procedures and patterns of persuasion that add dimensions of meaning to the texts, beyond that which is explicit. Generally, using the principles of rhetoric to guide content analysis helps in the identification of implicit and explicit resort to claims of authority (ethos), appeals to emotion (pathos) and implicit assertions about the way the world is (logos). These combine to weave stories, within stories, within stories; an implicate2 web within which meaning both resides and is obscured. Through content analysis, then, we gain a dense understanding of the stories presented in the texts, and how they are tangled, intertwined and often contradictory.
