Human Rights Advocacy and State Repression Substitutability
Year: 2011
Type: preprint
Abstract: When governments improve human rights in one area, do they simultaneously increase other types of human rights violations? State leaders have a variety of repressive techniques at their disposal. As a result, studies focusing only one repressive tactic in isolation—for example, political imprisonment or state-sponsored killing—can lead to biased conclusions about the conditions under which we can expect broad improvements in human rights. In this paper, we develop a theory to explain when states will employ one means of repression over available alternatives, focusing particularly on the effects of international naming and shaming campaigns on political imprisonment and government killing. When an international spotlight increases the relative costs of a particular repressive tactic, governments decrease use of the targeted policy and increase other, relatively less costly human rights violations. Using new quantitative data on the type of violation shamed by United Nations Humans Rights Commission (UNCHR) resolutions, we show that state leaders do indeed engage in repression substitution; the naming and shaming of one type of physical integrity rights violation by the UNHRC often leads to increases in other types of repression, especially in democracies. ∗Paper prepared for the 2011 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Seattle, Washington. A previous version of this paper was presented at the 2011 Annual Meeting of the International Studies Association. Thanks to Matthew Krain for helpful comments and suggestions and to Taylor Lee, Steve Liebel, Omar Salem, and Delina Wright for invaluable research assistance. Please do not cite without permission. Last edited 17 August 2011. †Assistant Professor of Political Science. Email: [email protected] ‡Assistant Professor of Political Science. Email: [email protected]
Source: SSRN Electronic Journal
Institutions: University of California, Merced, University of North Texas
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2343135963