Is there any space for rational choice nowadays?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/human-rights-report-mexico-disappearances-during-drug-war-a-crisis-ignored/2013/02/20/c0ec6606-7b9a-11e2-b147-36af0e207220_story.html

                                                                    

Por: Yishaq Talavera González

Comportamiento Politico

There is an interesting  note  by  Washington Post  mentioning  a report  that has been recently  published  by  Human Right Watch, which  underlines several  flaws  in human right protection . It´s quite alarming the figures   that are presented on this report, for example, it mention that more than 20,000   people including 1.200 children had gone missing in México during the administration of Felipe Calderon. It also provide evidence of the corrupted   system and the so called law enforcement of military institutions such as the Marines which made several   suspicions detentions making  people disappear.  Human Right Watch having all this information suggests that it must be a change in legal terms, such as providing security measures and also that detainees shouldn´t be held in military bases

What calls my attention is, why we keep having this Human Rights  violations  problem over and over again?, we can rapidly say, it´s because our government simply don’t care !.   I won´t deny the fact that this answer is wrong!  , especially when we had several ONG´s in compliance with mass protests and social movements that demand a better understanding and a different approach to the drug war. My point here is. What kind of  rationality use the  last administration to sustain their actions? Is there any consideration  for rationality nowadays ?. What I meant whit this questions is,  if we can really use a model of rationality to establish a line of action for the actual government to see what would be the situation of human right´s the new year’s? . Let´s start explaining a basic model of  rational choice which is  integrated  by interests , individuals, institutions and ideas in which preferences and desires are interconnected with 3 elements , action as an outcome , beliefs referring as complex  mass belief system and evidence or information, which must  be  the optimal one  . In other word´s it is called instrumental rationality in which basically an actor take decisions according to their interests.  Now, let´s assume that the State will take the part as an actor  , so the question here is, what kind of interests  and evidence does the actual  government is taking into consideration to make an action in Human rights?. Well , it´s really fuzzy actually because the problem of human rights became  a  heritage  and the public opinion as a political preference become more demanding  on guaranteeing  certain level of Human rights protection , so the State as an actor need to consider this issue as part of his agenda and bring to discussion some measures or ideas about it . However, there is no evidence of real change, the human rights violations continues and the violence caused by drug war persists.

 In Conclusion,  the evidence is being ignored by the State  and their true interests are being diluted in public opinion  . However, it doesn´t mean its coherent at all . It is rational , because even do when  civil society or activists expects  the State to take as a real interest the Human Rights , the State knows  is big  a cost , so it would prefer  to optimize and have more results whit less cost which at the end of the day are traduced as  acceptance and electoral  votes  .The State is really incapable to deal with the whole package of human rights  because  it hasn´t built a proper rational method to deal with what actually benefits society.