Rights are key vectors of democracy. When backed by institutions and supportive political cultures, human and political rights support democracy by limiting coercion, providing safe spaces for political organizing, speaking, and expression, and underwriting welfare securities for active citizenship (Moyn 2010, Sikkink 2011). They are very often the topics and sites of political struggles for inclusion. When institutionalized, they provide the infrastructure for democratic inclusions and influence. Human and political rights are not secure in many developing countries. Even in many developed democracies in which rights are strongly institutionalized, many groups lack the access and supports necessary to use them (e.g., Indigenous people, people of colour, migrants, the poor, and the less educated). In many countries, rights are under pressure from xenophobic nationalisms and authoritarian populisms (Ibhawoh 2014, Brysk 2013, 2018, Hopgood 2013, Posner 2014, Strangio 2017, Black & Williams, 2010). Yet, the language of “rights” has become widespread and even global in recent decades, and increasingly serves as the lingua franca of struggles for equal status and inclusion (Ibhawoh 2019, Sikkink 2017). Innovative human rights-based strategies are increasingly common and can often overlap with participatory governance: Participedia has already documented 167 cases of innovative processes focussed on human and political rights, for example, transitional justice processes that give voice to those who have been excluded, often violently so. New movements are now seeking to interpret human rights through Indigenous knowledge (e.g. Ubuntu Human Rights International, Turner 2006, Ibhawoh 2016). This research cluster will map, theorize, document, and explain innovations in human and political rights, particularly those that support democracy and democratization.