Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-qsmjn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T23:57:30.880Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Changing Standard of Accountability and the Positive Relationship between Human Rights Treaty Ratification and Compliance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 July 2017

Christopher J. Fariss
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Researchers have puzzled over the finding that countries that ratify UN human rights treaties such as the Convention Against Torture are more likely to abuse human rights than non-ratifiers over time. This article presents evidence that the changing standard of accountability – the set of expectations that monitoring agencies use to hold states responsible for repressive actions – conceals real improvements to the level of respect for human rights in data derived from monitoring reports. Using a novel dataset that accounts for systematic changes to human rights reports, it is demonstrated that the ratification of human rights treaties is associated with higher levels of respect for human rights. This positive relationship is robust to a variety of measurement strategies and model specifications.

Keywords

human rightstreaty compliancemeasurementlatent variable modelvalidity
Type
Articles
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 48 , Issue 1 , January 2018 , pp. 239 - 271
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

Jeffrey L. Hyde and Sharon D. Hyde and Political Science Board of Visitors Early Career Professor in Political Science, and Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, Pennsylvania State University (e-mails: cjf20@psu.edu; cjf0006@gmail.com). The author would like to thank Daniel Berliner, Chad Clay, Charles Crabtree, Geoff Dancy, Jesse Driscoll, James Fowler, Danny Hill, Miles Kahler, David Lake, Milli Lake, Yon Lupu, Jamie Mayerfeld, Will Moore, Amanda Murdie, Michael Nelson, Keith Schnakenberg, Brice Semmens, Kathryn Sikkink, Reed Wood, and Thorin Wright for many helpful comments and suggestions. The code and data files necessary to implement the models in JAGS and R are available in Harvard Dataverse at: doi:10.7910/DVN/TI77ZP and https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataverse/CJFariss. Online appendices are available at http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1017/S000712341500054X. This research was supported in part by the McCourtney Institute for Democracy Innovation Grant, Pennsylvania State University.

References

Adcock, Robert, and Collier, David. 2001. Measurement Validity: A Shared Standard for Qualitative and Quantitative Research. American Political Science Review 95 (3):529–546.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Albert, James H., and Johnson, Val E.. 1999. Ordinal Data Modeling. New York: Springer-Verlag.Google Scholar
Barbera, Pablo. 2015. Birds of the Same Feather Tweet Together. Bayesian Ideal Point Estimation Using Twitter Data. Political Analysis 23 (1):76–91.Google Scholar
Bond, Robert M., and Messing, Solomon. 2015. Quantifying Social Media’s Political Space: Estimating Ideology from Publicly Revealed Preferences on Facebo. American Political Science Review 109 (1):62–78.Google Scholar
Bonica, Adam. 2012. Ideology and Interests in the Political Marketplace. American Journal of Political Science 57 (2):294–311.Google Scholar
Borsboom, Denny. 2005. Measuring the Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Brysk, Alison. 1994. The Politics of Measurement: The Contested Count of the Disappeared in Argentina. Human Rights Quarterly 16 (4):676–692.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caughey, Devin, and Warshaw, Christopher. 2015. Dynamic Estimation of Latent Opinion Using a Hierarchical Group-Level IRT Model. Political Analysis 23 (2):197–211.Google Scholar
Cingranelli, David L., and Richards, David L.. 1999. Measuring the Level, Pattern, and Sequence of Government Respect for Physical Integrity Rights. International Studies Quarterly 43 (2):407–417.Google Scholar
Cingranelli, David L., Richards, David L., and Chad Clay, K.. 2015a. The Cingranelli-Richards (CIRI) Human Rights Data Project Coding Manual Version. Available from http://www.humanrightsdata.com/p/data-documentation.html, accessed 14 April 2014.Google Scholar
Cingranelli, David L., Richards, David L., and Chad Clay, K.. 2015b. The Cingranelli–Richards Human Rights Dataset Version. Available from http://www.humanrightsdata.com/p/data-documentation.html, accessed 14 April 2014.Google Scholar
Clark, Ann Marie, and Sikkink, Kathryn. 2013. Information Effects and Human Rights Data: Is the Good News about Increased Human Rights Information Bad News for Human Rights Measures? Human Rights Quarterly 35 (3):539–568.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clinton, Joshua, Jackman, Simon, and Rivers, Douglas. 2004. The Statistical Analysis of Roll Call Data. American Political Science Review 98 (2):355–370.Google Scholar
Cole, Wade M. 2012. Human Rights as Myth and Ceremony? Reevaluating the Effectiveness of Human Rights Treaties, 1981–2007. American Journal of Sociology 117 (4):1131–1171.Google Scholar
Cole, Wade M., and Ramirez, Francisco O.. 2013. Conditional Decoupling: Assessing the Impact of National Human Rights Institutions, 1981 to 2004. American Sociological Review 78 (4):702–725.Google Scholar
Conrad, Courtenay R. 2014. Divergent Incentives for Dictators Domestic Institutions and (International Promises Not to) Torture. Journal of Conflict Resolution 58 (1):34–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Conrad, Courtenay R., and Hencken Ritter, Emily. 2013. Treaties, Tenure, and Torture: The Conflicting Domestic Effects of International Law. Journal of Politics 75 (2):397–409.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Conrad, Courtenay R., Haglund, Jillienne, and Moore, Will H.. 2013. Disaggregating Torture Allegations: Introducing the Ill-Treatment and Torture (ITT) Country–Year Data. International Studies Perspectives 14 (2):199–220.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crabtree, Charles D., and Fariss, Christopher J.. 2015. Uncovering Patterns among Latent Variables: Human Rights and De Facto Judicial Independence. Research & Politics 2 (3):1–9, doi:10.1177/2053168015605343 Google Scholar
Dancy, Geoff, and Fariss, Christopher J.. 2015. Rescuing Human Rights Law from International Legalism and Its Critics; Tulane University and Penn State University working paper. http://ssrn.com/abstract=2506144.Google Scholar
Dancy, Geoff, and Sikkink, Kathryn. 2012. Ratification and Human Rights Prosecutions: Toward a Transnational Theory of Treaty Compliance. NYU Journal of International Law and Politics 44 (3):751–790.Google Scholar
Davenport, Christian. 1996. Constitutional Promises and Repressive Reality: A Cross-National Time-Series Investigation of Why Political and Civil Liberties Are Suppressed. Journal of Politics 58 (3):627–654.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davenport, Christian. 2007. State Repression and Political Order. Annual Review of Political Science 10:1–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Demeritt, Jacqueline H.R., and Young, Joseph K.. 2013. A Political Economy of Human Rights: Oil, Natural Gas, and State Incentives to Repress. Conflict Management and Peace Science 30 (2):99–120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Downs, George W., Rocke, David M., and Barsoom, Peter N.. 1996. Is the Good News about Compliance Good News about Cooperation? International Organization 50 (3):379–406.Google Scholar
Eck, Kristine, and Hultman, Lisa. 2007. Violence against Civilians in War. Journal of Peace Research 44 (2):233–246.Google Scholar
Fariss, Christopher J. 2013. Uncertain Events: A Dynamic Latent Variable Model of Human Rights Respect and Government Killing with Binary, Ordered, and Count Outcomes. Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Political Methodology, University of Virginia, July.Google Scholar
Fariss, Christopher J. 2014. Respect for Human Rights Has Improved over Time: Modeling the Changing Standard of Accountability in Human Rights Documents. American Political Science Review 108 (2):297–318.Google Scholar
Fariss, Christopher J., and Schnakenberg, Keith. 2014. Measuring Mutual Dependence between State Repressive Actions. Journal of Conflict Resolution 58 (6):1003–1032.Google Scholar
Fariss, Christopher. 2015. Replication Data for: The Changing Standard of Accountability and the Positive Relationship between Human Rights Treaty Ratification and Compliance. http://dx.doi.org/10.7910/DVN/TI77ZP, Harvard Dataverse, V2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gelman, Andrew, and Rubin, Donald B.. 1992. Inference from Iterative Simulation Using Multiple Sequences. Statistical Science 7:457–511.Google Scholar
Geweke, John. 1992. Evaluating the Accuracy of Sampling-Based Approaches to Calculating Posterior Moments. Pp. 169–193 in Bayesian Statistics 4, edited by J. M. Bernardo, J. Berger, A. P. Dawid and J. F. M. Smith. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gibney, Mark, Cornett, Linda, Wood, Reed M., and Haschke, Peter. 2015. Political Terror Scale. Available from http://www.politicalterrorscale.org (last accessed: 21 October 2015).Google Scholar
Gill, Jeff. 2008. Bayesian Methods: A Social and Behavioral Sciences Approach. New York: Chapman & Hall/CRC Statistics in the Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2nd edn. Chapman and Hall/CRC.Google Scholar
Gleditsch, Kristian Skrede. 2002. Expanded Trade and GDP Data. Journal of Conflict Resolution 46 (5):712–724.Google Scholar
Goodman, Ryan, and Jinks, Derek. 2003. Measuring the Effects of Human Rights Treaties. European Journal of International Law 14 (1):171–183.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hafner-Burton, Emilie M. 2013. Making Human Rights a Reality. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Hafner-Burton, Emilie M. 2014. A Social Science of Human Rights. Journal of Peace Research 51 (2):273–286.Google Scholar
Hafner-Burton, Emilie M., and Ron, James. 2009. Seeing Double Human Rights Impact through Qualitative and Quantitative Eyes. World Politics 61 (2):360–401.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hafner-Burton, Emilie M., and Tsutsui, Kiyoteru. 2005. Human Rights in a Globalizing World: The Paradox of Empty Promises. American Journal of Sociology 110 (5):1373–1411.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hafner-Burton, Emilie M., and Tsutsui, Kiyoteru. 2007. Justice Lost! The Failure of International Human Rights Law to Matter Where Needed Most. Journal of Peace Research 44 (4):407–425.Google Scholar
Hafner-Burton, Emilie M., Tsutsui, Kiyoteru, and Meyer, John W.. 2008. International Human Rights Law and the Politics of Legitimation – Repressive States and Human Rights Treaties. International Sociology 23 (1):115–141.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harff, Barabara. 2003. No Lessons Learned from the Holocaust? Assessing Risks of Genocide and Political Mass Murder since 1955. American Political Science Review 97 (1):57–73.Google Scholar
Harff, Barbara, and Gurr, Ted R.. 1988. Toward Empirical Theory of Genocides and Politicides: Identification and Measurement of Cases since 1945. International Studies Quarterly 32 (3):359–371.Google Scholar
Hathaway, Oona A. 2002. Do Human Rights Treaties Make a Difference? Yale Law Journal 111 (8):1935–2042.Google Scholar
Heidelberger, Philip, and Welch, Peter D.. 1981. A Spectral Method for Confidence Interval Generation and Run Length Control in Simulations. Communications of the ACM 24:233–245.Google Scholar
Heidelberger, Philip, and Welch, Peter D.. 1983. Simulation Run Length Control in the Presence of an Initial Transient. Operations Research 31 (6):1109–1144.Google Scholar
Hill, Daniel W. Jr. 2010. Estimating the Effects of Human Rights Treaties on State Behavior. Journal of Politics 72 (4):1161–1174.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hill, Daniel W. Jr., Moore, Will H., and Mukherjee, Bumba. 2013. Information Politics v Organizational Incentives: When are Amnesty International’s ‘Naming and Shaming’ Reports Biased? International Studies Quarterly 57 (2):219–232.Google Scholar
Hill, Daniel W. Jr., and Jones, Zachary M.. 2014. An Empirical Evaluation of Explanations for State Repression. American Political Science Review 108 (3):661–687.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hollyer, James R., and Peter Rosendorff, B.. 2011. Why Do Authoritarian Regimes Sign the Convention Against Torture? Signaling, Domestic Politics and Non-Compliance. Quarterly Journal of Political Science 6:275–327.Google Scholar
Hopgood, Stephen. 2006. Keepers of the Flame: Understanding Amnesty International. Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Hopgood, Stephen. 2013. The Endtimes of Human Rights. Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Jackman, Simon. 2008. Measurement. In The Oxford Handbook of Political Methodology, edited by Janet M. Box-Steffensmeier, Henry E. Brady and David Collier. Oxford: Oxford University Press, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199286546.003.0006 Google Scholar
Jackman, Simon. 2009. Bayesian Analysis for the Social Sciences. New York: JohnWiley and Sons.Google Scholar
Jessee, Stephen A. 2015. ‘Don’t Know’ Responses, Personality and the Measurement of Political Knowledge. Political Science Research and Methods (doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/psrm.2015.23. Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 June 2015.Google Scholar
Keck, Margaret, and Sikkink, Kathryn. 1998. Activists beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics. Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Keith, Linda Camp. 1999. The United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights: Does It Make a Difference in Human Rights Behavior? Journal of Peace Research 36 (1):95–118.Google Scholar
Keith, Linda Camp. 2002. Constitutional Provisions for Individual Human Rights (1977–1996): Are They More than Mere ‘Window Dressing’? Political Research Quarterly 55 (1):111–143.Google Scholar
Keith, Linda Camp. 2012. Political Repression Courts and the Law. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Keith, Linda Camp, Tate, C. Neal, and Poe, Steven C.. 2009. Is the Law a Mere Parchment Barrier to Human Rights Abuse? Journal of Politics 71 (1):644–660.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keith, Linda Camp, and Poe, Steven C.. 2004. Are Constitutional State of Emergency Clauses Effective? An Empirical Exploration. Human Rights Quarterly 26 (4):1071–1097.Google Scholar
Kim, Hunjoon, and Sikkink, Kathryn. 2010. Explaining the Deterrence Effect of Human Rights Prosecutions for Transitional Countries. International Studies Quarterly 54 (4):939–963.Google Scholar
Korey, William. 2001. NGOs and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: A Curious Grapevine. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Landman, Todd. 2005. The Political Science of Human Rights. British Journal of Political Science 35 (3):549–572.Google Scholar
Lord, Frederic M. 1980. Applications of Item Response Theory to Practical Testing Problems. Mahwah, N.J: Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Lord, Frederic M., and Novick, Melvin R.. 1968. Statistical Theories of Mental Test Scores. Boston. Mass: Addison-Wesley.Google Scholar
Lupu, Yonatan. 2013a. Best Evidence: The Role of Information in Domestic Judicial Enforcement of International Human Rights Agreements. International Organization 67 (3):469–503.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lupu, Yonatan. 2013b. The Informative Power of Treaty Commitment: Using the Spatial Model to Address Selection Effects. American Journal of Political Science 57 (4):912–925.Google Scholar
Lupu, Yonatan. 2015. Legislative Veto Players and the Effects of International Human Rights Agreements. American Journal of Political Science 59 (3):578–594.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marchesi, Bridget, and Sikkink, Kathryn. 2015. The Effectiveness of the International Human Rights Legal Regime: What Do We Know and How Do We Know It? (Harvard University working paper).Google Scholar
Marshall, Monty, Jaggers, Keith, and Gurr, Ted R.. 2013. Polity IV Project: Political Regime Characteristics and Transitions 1800–2013 Dataset Users’ Manual. Available from www.systemicpeace.org/polity/polity4.htm (last accessed: 21 October 2015).Google Scholar
Martin, Andrew D., and Quinn, Keven M.. 2002. Dynamic Ideal Point Estimation via Markov Chain Monte Carlo for the U.S. Supreme Court, 1953–1999. Political Analysis 10 (2):134–153.Google Scholar
Mayerfeld, Jamie. 2016. The Architecture of Human Rights: Why Constitutional Government Requires International Human Rights Law. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Morrow, James D. 2007. When Do States Follow the Laws of War? American Political Science Review 101 (3):559–572.Google Scholar
Moyn, Samuel. 2010. The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History. Cambridge, Mass: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Murdie, Amanda, and Davis, David R.. 2012. Looking in the Mirror: Comparing INGO Networks across Issue Areas. Review of International Organizations 7 (2):177–202.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Murdie, Amanda, and Bhasin, Tavishi. 2011. Aiding and Abetting? Human Rights INGOs and Domestic Anti-Government Protest. Journal of Conflict Resolution 55 (2):163–191.Google Scholar
Neumayer, Eric. 2005. Do International Human Rights Treaties Improve Respect for Human Rights? Journal of Conflict Resolution 49 (6):925–953.Google Scholar
Nordås, Ragnhild, and Davenport, Christian. 2013. Fight the Youth: Youth Bulges and State Repression. American Journal of Political Science 57 (4):926–940.Google Scholar
Pemstein, Daniel, Meserve, Stephen A., and Melton, James. 2010. Democratic Compromise: A Latent Variable Analysis of Ten Measures of Regime Type. Political Analysis 18 (4):426–449.Google Scholar
Plummer, Martyn. 2010. JAGS (Just Another Gibbs Sampler) 1.0.3 Universal. Available from http://mcmc-jags.sourceforge.net/ (last accessed: 21 October 2015).Google Scholar
Poe, Steven C., and Neal Tate, C.. 1994. Repression of Human Rights to Personal Integrity in the 1980s: A Global Analysis. American Political Science Review 88 (4):853–872.Google Scholar
Poe, Steven C., Tate, C. Neal, and Camp Keith, Linda. 1999. Repression of the Human Right to Personal Integrity Revisited: A Global Cross-National Study Covering the Years 1976–1993. International Studies Quarterly 43 (2):291–313.Google Scholar
Poole, Keith T., and Rosenthal, Howard. 1997. A Political-Economic History of Roll Call Voting. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Posner, Eric A. 2014. The Twilight of Human Rights Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Powell, Emilia Justyna, and Staton, Jefferey K.. 2009. Domestic Judicial Institutions and Human Rights Treaty Violation. International Studies Quarterly 53 (1):149–174.Google Scholar
Quinn, Keven M. 2004. Bayesian Factor Analysis for Mixed Ordinal and Continuous Responses. Political Analysis 12 (4):338–353.Google Scholar
Rasch, Georg. 1980. Probabilistic Models for Some Intelligence and Attainment Tests. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Roth, Brad. 2001. Understanding the Understanding: Federalism Constraints on Human Rights Implementation. Wayne Law Review 47:891–907.Google Scholar
Rummel, Rudolph J. 1994. Power, Genocide and Mass Murder. Journal of Peace Research 31 (1):1–10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rummel, Rudolph J. 1995. Democracy, Power, Genocide, and Mass Murder. Journal of Conflict Resolution 39 (1):3–26.Google Scholar
Sandholtz, Wayne. 2012. Treaties, Constitutions, Courts, and Human Rights. Journal of Human Rights 11 (1):17–32.Google Scholar
Schnakenberg, Keith E., and Fariss, Christopher J.. 2014. Dynamic Patterns of Human Rights Practices. Political Science Research and Methods 2 (1):1–31.Google Scholar
Shadish, William R. 2010. Campbell and Rubin: A Primer and Comparison of Their Approaches to Causal Inference in Field Settings. Psychological Methods 12 (1):3–17.Google Scholar
Shadish, William R., Cook, Thomas D., and Campbell, Donald T.. 2001. Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Designs for Generalized Causal Inference. Belmont, Calif: Wadsworth Publishing.Google Scholar
Sikkink, Kathryn. 2011. The Justice Cascade: How Human Rights Prosecutions Are Changing World Politics. New York: Norton Series in World Politics.Google Scholar
Simmons, Beth A. 2000. International Law and State Behavior: Commitment and Compliance in International Monetary Affairs. American Political Science Review 94 (4):819–835.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simmons, Beth A. 2009. Mobilizing for Human Rights: International Law in Domestic Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Simmons, Beth A., and Hopkins, Daniel J.. 2005. The Constraining Power of International Treaties: Theory and Methods. American Political Science Review 99 (4):623–631.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sinkovits, Robert S., Cicotti, Pietro, Strande, Shawn, Tatineni, Mahidhar, Rodriguez, Paul, Wolter, Nicole, and Bala, Natasha. 2011. Data Intensive Analysis on the Gordon High Performance Data and Compute System. KDD’11 Proceedings of the 17th ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, pp. 747–748. doi:10.1145/2020408.2020526 Google Scholar
Smith-Cannoy, Heather. 2012. Insincere Commitments: Human Rights Treaties, Abusive States, and Citizen Activism. Washington, D.C: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Taylor, Charles Lewis, and Jodice, David A., eds. 1983. World Handbook of Political and Social Indicators, 3rd edn. Vol. 2, Political Protest and Government Change. New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Treier, Shawn, and Jackman, Simon. 2008. Democracy as a Latent Variable. American Journal of Political Science 52 (1):201–217.Google Scholar
Trochim, William M.K., and Donnelly, James P., eds. 2008. Research Methods Knowledge Base, 3rd edn, Mason, Ohio: Atomic Dog.Google Scholar
Voeten, Erik. 2000. Clashes in the Assembly. International Organization 54 (2):185–215.Google Scholar
Von Stein, Jana. 2005. Do Treaties Constrain or Screen? Selection Bias and Treaty Compliance. American Political Science Review 99 (4):611–622.Google Scholar
Vreeland, James Raymond. 2008. Political Institutions and Human Rights: Why Dictatorships Enter into the United Nations Convention Against Torture. International Organization 62 (1):65–101.Google Scholar
Western, Bruce. 1999. Bayesian Methods for Sociologists: An Introduction. Sociological Methods & Research 28 (1):7–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wong, Wendy H. 2012. Internal Affairs: How the Structure of NGOs Transforms Human Rights. Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: PDF

Fariss Supplementary Material

Appendix

Download Fariss Supplementary Material(PDF)
PDF 17.1 MB
Supplementary material: Link

Fariss Dataset

Dataset

http://dx.doi.org/10.7910/DVN/TI77ZP
Link