Do international human rights treaties improve respect for human rights?

Neumayer, Eric ORCID: 0000-0003-2719-7563 (2005) Do international human rights treaties improve respect for human rights? Journal of Conflict Resolution, 49 (6). pp. 925-953. ISSN 1552-8766

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Abstract

After the non-binding Universal Declaration of Human Rights, many global and regional human rights treaties have been concluded. Critics argue that these are unlikely to have made any actual difference in reality. Others contend that international regimes can improve respect for human rights in state parties, particularly in more democratic countries or countries with a strong civil society devoted to human rights and with transnational links. Our findings suggest that rarely does treaty ratification have unconditional effects on human rights. Instead, improvement in human rights is typically more likely the more democratic the country or the more international non-governmental organizations its citizens participate in. Conversely, in very autocratic regimes with weak civil society, ratification can be expected to have no effect and is sometimes even associated with more rights violation.

Item Type:	Article
Official URL:	http://www.sagepub.com/journal.aspx?pid=21
Additional Information:	Published 2005 © SAGE Publications. LSE has developed LSE Research Online so that users may access research output of the School. Copyright and Moral Rights for the papers on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. Users may download and/or print one copy of any article(s) in LSE Research Online to facilitate their private study or for non-commercial research. You may not engage in further distribution of the material or use it for any profit-making activities or any commercial gain. You may freely distribute the URL (<http://eprints.lse.ac.uk>) of the LSE Research Online website.
Divisions:	Geography & Environment
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General) J Political Science > JZ International relations
Date Deposited:	18 May 2006
Last Modified:	21 Apr 2024 06:39
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/612

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