Do abortion restrictions augur broader crackdowns on human rights? We examine the relationship between restrictions on abortion and future Physical Integrity Rights (PIR) abuses. We argue that abortion restrictions both directly and indirectly influence PIR. Directly, abortion restrictions serve as a testing ground for repressive policies and behaviors. Indirectly, restrictions worsen inequality across segments of society and winnow support for social and religious diversity. When abortion restrictions are enacted, regimes are better equipped to shift society and consolidate power, as a subdued public is discouraged from voicing collective grievances. Using a variety of time-series cross-sectional approaches, we show that significant retractions in abortion access foretell erosion of PIR.

Jean Jacques Rousseau wrote that “Man is born free, but is everywhere in chains.” Whereas the former claim of the quote is contestable and gendered, the latter part is empirically true from slavery to economic exploitation and widespread oppression that occurs to this day. Nevertheless, history shows that rarely will people take up weapons and rebel against the powerful. We have found that students often do not understand why this should be the case, given the rights that all people deserve. We use the Peasant Game exercise in class to shine a light on why most people, most of the time, endure repression and choose not to rebel. The game is played in turns with some students as lords, who decide how “food” will be apportioned, and other students as peasants, who produce the food. We discuss how power differentials occur and the difference they make. Students who play the game come away with a better understanding of why many people decide not to fight back against oppression—even if it is the right thing to do.

Students often find lectures on political science methodology difficult to grasp. Based on our success of simulations and games in teaching various political science theories, we created several mini-games to help students gain exposure in engaging ways with aspects of quantitative and qualitative methodology. We use techniques in which students learn through “gimmicks” (Schacht and Stewart 1990; 1992), for which they are the data points that they are studying. We believe that drawing conclusions based on what students do and think empowers them to better understand the sometimes tricky elements of political science methods. Each of the three games described in this article required little to no preparation time. We have used these mini-games in several courses and have received positive feedback from students about their utility. Thus, we are sharing them for more general use.

Much of the literature on affirmative action is normative. Further, in scholarship that takes an empirical approach to examine this topic, the object of inquiry is typically the ramifications of such provisions – most notably the extent to which they foster social transformation. Yet, we know surprisingly little about the antecedents of affirmative action. This work examines what variables systematically predict affirmative action. We focus on the policy feedback literature and compensatory justice frameworks to examine the effects of democracy, modernisation and globalisation on affirmative action programmes. Time-series cross-sectional analyses of data for hundreds of groups from all over the globe for the period 1985–2003 confirm our hypotheses. This is the first work to examine affirmative action programmes in a large-N framework of such scale. We find that such programmes systematically correlate with democracy, modernisation and globalisation.

Does the attention of human rights organizations limit exports from rights-abusing states? This article examines how naming and shaming by human rights organizations (HROs) conditions the influence of human rights abuse on exports, and argues that human rights abuse alone is insufficient to damage a state’s exports. However, as attention to abuse via HRO shaming increases, abuse has an increasingly negative impact on exports. Importantly, this relationship is also conditional on the respect for human rights among importing states; human rights abuse, even if it is shamed, has no effect when importers are similarly abusive. Empirical tests utilizing gravity models of trade incorporating data on physical integrity rights abuse and HRO shaming in 1990–2008 yield strong support for our expectations.

What factors make it more likely that non-state organizations will targetcivilians as a political strategy? This study examines targeting civiliansas a tactical and normative choice, and hypothesizes that the targeting ofcivilians (compared to the general use of violence) is a function of theideological make-up of organizations, organization weakness and staterepression. Other factors related to organizational capability will not havea differential impact on the likelihood that an organization will targetcivilians for violence. This article uses data from the Minorities at RiskOrganizational Behavior database to examine these issues with respect toethno-political organizations. It argues that the typical analytic focus ongeneral violence obscures understanding of the factors that lead totargeting civilians. It finds that targeting civilians—while similar in somerespects to the use of general violence—is different, particularly withrespect to organizational ideology.

Existing literature on contentious political movements has generally focused on domestic political activity. Using the new Minorities at Risk Organizational Behavior–Middle East data set (MAROB-ME), which contains organization-level data for 104 ethnopolitical organizations in the Middle East and North Africa, we analyze the decision of both violent and nonviolent organizations to engage in political activity transnationally. Among the results, we find that diaspora support is associated with transnational nonviolent protest, whereas foreign state support and domestic repression increase the use of transnational violence. The most robust finding, however, is that participation in the domestic electoral process consistently reduces the likelihood that an organization will engage in any political activity abroad.

What variables lead judicial and nonjudicial decision-making bodies to introduce policy change? In the theoretical framework proposed, the path-dependent nature of law has a differential impact on courts and legislatures. Likewise, certain political institutions including elections and political accountability lead those bodies to introduce policy change under dissimilar circumstances. Global trends, however, affect both institutional paths equally. We test this theory with data for the repeal of sodomy laws in all countries from 1972–2002. Results from two disparate multivariate models overwhelmingly confirm our predictions. The unique institutional position of courts of last resort allows them to be less constrained than legislatures by either legal status quo or political accountability. Globalization, on the other hand, has a comparable effect on both. This work is path breaking in offering a theoretical framework explaining policy change via different institutional paths, systematically testing the framework comparatively and with respect to a policy issue still on the agenda in many countries.

Economic, cultural, and political opportunity structures have been separately shown to facilitate and constrain abortion rights. We examine two central and related questions: First, which factors explain liberalization of different types of abortion laws? Second, which factor or set of factors is the most important in explaining abortion laws? The cross-national literature suggests a three-pronged explanation for the existence of abortion rights, including politics, economics, and culture. We parse these out into the structural and empowerment components of each, and posit a theory of rights in which empowerment factors are at least as important, if not more important, for explaining change than structural factors. To test this, we examine the impact of these components on the liberalization of abortion rights globally utilizing a distributed lag model. We find that an empowerment approach explains the liberalization of abortion laws better than a structural approach in terms of politics, but that a structural approach is a better predictor in terms of culture, and that both empowerment and structural factors are important predictors when economic factors are taken into account. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of these findings for understanding policy change and human rights on a global scale.