ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in this book. The book explores the current state of play in the study of human rights socialisation revealing the many different approaches that have developed to explain how human rights are spread. It focuses on three examples where regional organisations are significant for rights socialisation attempts before, and after, membership is granted Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Organization of American States (OAS), and the European Union (EU). Instead EU scholarship has repeatedly emphasised one type of activity, conditionality, understood through one explanatory framework, rational choice. The literature is useful not only because the conclusion about rational choice and conditionality before membership is granted is part of a fuller answer, but also because it provides vital clues about how to construct a comparative framework by identifying a way to tie together real-world politics to theoretical argument.
