complied with, a reference to such norms can strengthen the demands emanating from civil society and social movements. They were supplicants, and they had to overcome their political marginalization in order to count in the political process ; once they rely on a human rights framework, they become claimants, and they can enlist the support of the domestic human rights machinery -- non-governmental organisations, independent human rights institutions, and even courts -- in their struggle for social justice.255 The traditional approach has seen human rights and democratic self-determination as competing requirements, and human rights scholars have dedicated considerable energy at justifying the role of courts in upholding rights against the will of popularly elected majorities. This view now looks increasingly outdated. It was based both on an impoverished representation of the functioning of democracy, as if democracy could be assimilated to the ritual of fair and regularly held elections, and on the idea that the State was the chief threat to human rights, rather than an institution indispensable, through its redistributive role, for their full realization. In these times when governments in all world regions, invoking the need for fiscal orthodoxy, are tempted to remove budgetary choices from democratic scrutiny -- in effect constitutionalizing austerity --,256 we need more democracy, not less, in order for economic and social rights to be fulfilled through supportive macro-economic policies. More democracy however does not mean democracy as usual, just like pro-poor economic policies are not pro-growth policies as usual. Democracy can be made more responsive to the rights of the poor: it can be enriched, by democratic deliberations relying more systematically on rights-based impact assessments involving the poor, by independing monitoring of progress in the realization of human rights, and by more participatory forms of budgeting. It is towards creating this virtuous cycle, in which stronger participation leads to policies that are more pro-poor, and in which the contribution of taxation and spending policies to the fulfilment of social rights encourages civil society and social movements to monitor budgetary choices, that efforts should now converge. 255 See Paul O'Connell, "Let Them Eat Cake: Socio-Economic Rights in an Age of Austerity", in Aiofe Nolan, R. O’Connell & Colin Harvey, Human Rights and Public Finance: Budgets and the Promotion of Economic and Social Rights, cited above (note 4), 59-76, at 73 ; and Shareen Hertel and Lanse Minkler, "Economic Rights: The Terrain", in Hertel and Minkler (eds), Economic Rights. Conceptual, Measurement, and Policy Issues, cited above note 46, 1-36, at 29 ("By invoking the nromative force of human rights in defense of their own needs, [...] grassroots protesters can change the nature of their ineraction with powerful government or private sector representatives. Instead of offering petitions for help, they can demand that rights be fulfilled [...]. In so doing, they transform their status from that of supplicants to claimants"). 256 This is illustrated for instance by the adopted in the European Union of the ‘Fiscal Compact’, introduced in 2012 to impose stronger fiscal discipline on the Member States : the Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance within the Economic and Monetary Union (TSCG) signed on 2 March 2012 commits the States parties to seek to maintain balanced public budgets, or even to strive to having a surplus (article 3(1) a)). To this end, they Article 3(2) of the TSCG imposes that the balanced-budget rule be stipulated in rules of constitutional rank in the domestic legal order : this is the so-called "golden rule", to which the Fiscal Compact is often reduced. See Federico Fabbrini, "The Fiscal Compact, the "Golden Rule," and the Paradox of European Federalism", 36 Boston College Int'l & Comp. L. Rev. 1 (2013). This temptation is not limited to Europe, however. At the time of writing, the Brazilian Senate was considering the adoption of a constitutional amendment (Constitutional Amendment 55, or PEC 55 in its Portuguese acronym), which would freeze public spending in real terms until 2036. In a press release of 9 December 2016, the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Mr Philip Alston, stated that “It is completely inappropriate to freeze only social expenditure and to tie the hands of all future governments for another two decades. If this amendment is adopted it will place Brazil in a socially retrogressive category all of its own.” (Brazil 20-year public expenditure cap will breach human rights, UN expert warns, available on: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=21006&LangID=E (last consulted on 20 Dec. 2016)). 55