Human Rights and Structural Adjustment

Introduction

Based on the critiques of structural adjustment programs described in Chapter 3, the weight of most case study findings, and the findings of the highest-quality large-n comparative studies, our main hypothesis was that, other things being equal, the more years a developing country had been under structural adjustment the worse its government's respect for most human rights. In addition, consistent with the critical perspective presented in the previous chapter, we expected to find that greater exposure to structural adjustment conditions would be associated with more civil conflict, especially violent civil conflict.

In this chapter we examine a number of issues that recur throughout the rest of the book. We describe the importance of studying both the World Bank and IMF if one is interested in estimating the impact of structural adjustment. We explain the importance of controlling for the effects of selection. We also discuss how we measured structural adjustment receipt and implementation: two of the key variables used. Part of the chapter discusses the use of the CIRI data set which provides the source of many of the dependent variables used in the analyses (Cingranelli and Richards 2006). Finally, some of the control variables common to several of the chapters are described.

Why study both the World Bank and International Monetary Fund?

Both institutions promote structural adjustment policies, yet the great majority of existing research has concentrated on one institution.