James Ron

James Ron uses controversial comparisons between Serbia and Israel to present a novel theory of state violence. Formerly a research consultant to Human Rights Watch and the International Red Cross, Ron witnessed remarkably different patterns of state coercion. Frontiers and Ghettos presents an institutional approach to state violence, drawing on Ro...

Many resource-strapped developing country governments seek international aid, but when that assistance is channeled through domestic civil society, it can threaten their political control. As a result, in the last two decades, 39 of the world’s 153 low- and middle-income countries have adopted laws restricting the inflow of foreign aid to domestica...

Local human rights organizations (LHROs) in the global South are increasingly keen to raise funds from cocitizens and local businesses to diversify their funding, to increase their political legitimacy, and to bolster their resilience to fluctuations in international donor trends. This concern with local funds has assumed new urgency today followin...

The number of rights organizations worldwide has grown exponentially, as the term “human rights” becomes increasingly common among politicians and civil society activists. As international donors pour money into global human rights promotion, many governments-as well as scores of scholars and activists-fear a subtle, Western-led campaign for politi...

Scholars, policymakers and commentators are divided over the nature of the relationship between human rights organizations (HROs) and the U.S. government. Some view the two as closely aligned, others view HROs as principled geopolitical neutrals, while yet others view HROs as opposed to U.S. government policy. How do global publics view this relati...

This article published in Open Global Rights explores the views of white evangelicals in the US towards human and civil rights, based on a nationally representative survey of 2,000 American adults in 2018. It finds that evangelicals are, on average, more skeptical of these rights, and provides an historical, rather than a theological, explanation.

This article, published on the website Open Global Rights, explores the correlates of concern for the state of human/civil rights in the US. It finds that this concern is unequally spread across the US public. Based on a representative survey of 2,000 American adults, I find that political partisanship is an important correlate of human/civil right...

Background Self-monitoring of blood glucose (SMBG) is an essential component of type 1 diabetes (T1D) management and typically involves several daily tests. However, due to high cost, SMBG supplies are often unavailable in low-resource settings. This study assessed whether the use of two SMBG tests per day improves glycemic control, measured by a c...

This article in Foreign Policy reports on the results of an experiment we performed during a survey of the adult US public (2,000 members of the general public, plus 1,000 early Trump supporters). We find that early Trump supporters are more likely to support human/civil rights when they are told that "religious leaders" are in favor.

This article draws on our survey of 2,000 American adults to explore attitudes towards US airstrikes on suspected terrorist targets. The results show that the public is skeptical of these strikes if they cause civilian casualties.

This New York Times op ed draws on our survey of 3,000 US adults (2,000 representative sample, 1,000 oversample of early Trump supporters) to explore public attitudes towards American Jews and Muslims. We find that similar individuals within the US are skeptical of extending human/civil rights protection to these two religious groups.

This report presents findings from a 2016 representative survey of adults residing in Bogota, Colombia. Respondents were asked for their views towards human rights principles, policies and organizations, and were asked for their willingness to donate to local human rights groups. The latter was further explored by a "real cash" experiment in which...

Aims: Parental care influences outcomes for children's type 1 diabetes (T1D). There is little evidence about the impact of parental caregiving in developing countries, where fixed dose human insulin (conventional) therapy and limited self-monitoring of blood glucose are common. This article investigates whether performance of key T1D management ta...

This article appeared in the Washington Post, and summarizes our findings from a dataset of government restrictions on foreign funded NGOs. It is available online to subscribers at https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/07/05/__trashed-4/

This report explores the results of a 2016 representative survey of the Mexico City population. We asked respondents a range of questions about their views towards human rights NGOs, principles, and policies, and also explored their willingness to donate money to local non-profits using a "real cash" experiment. This study was funded by the Open So...

Background/Objective: Diabetes Research Education and Management (DREAM) Trust (DT) is a charitable organisation that offers free insulin and healthcare to children and youth with type 1 diabetes (T1D) in central India. We systematically describe DT's model of care and evaluate medical and sociodemographic factors influencing glycaemic control in t...

Human rights groups in global South countries rely heavily, but not exclusively, on funds from abroad, and this pattern has created a number of vulnerabilities. Conventional explanations for this pattern include political repression, poverty, and cultural particularity. We argue that these do not tell the whole story, however, and offer evidence th...

This report presents findings from a representative survey of adult residents in Mumbai, India, as well as a survey of local activists in human rights non-profits. Respondents were asked for their opinion about human rights principles, policies and organizations.

Local human rights organizations (LHROs) are key domestic and transnational actors, modifying, diffusing, and promoting liberal norms; mobilizing citizens; networking with the media and activists; and pressuring governments to implement international commitments. These groups, however, are reliant on international funds. This makes sense in politic...

Local human rights organizations (LHROs) are crucial allies in international efforts to promote human rights. Without support from organized civil society, efforts by transnational human rights reformers would have little effect. Despite their importance, we have little systematic information on the correlates of public trust in LHROs. To fill this...

What motivates countries to enact laws that restrict foreign funding to domestically operating non-governmental organizations (NGOs)? We suggest governments often pass these laws to combat perceived foreign attempts to shape domestic politics. Political elites are not necessarily opposed to NGOs per se, but rather see foreign intrusion via funding...

This article presents early results from the Human Rights Perception Polls, representative surveys on human rights attitudes conducted in 2012 in Mexico, Colombia, Morocco and India. We investigate statistical associations between two measures of human rights familiarity – exposure to the term, “human rights,” and personal contact with human rights...

Local human rights organizations (LHROs) are key domestic and transnational actors. They modify, diffuse, and promote human rights norms, and pressure governments to implement their international commitments. Although there are now hundreds of LHROs worldwide, most are funded by international, rather than local, sources. Surveys, however, show subs...

After decades of mobilization and advocacy, how familiar are ordinary people with human rights, and how is this familiarity shaped by socio-economic status? We explore these questions with new data from the Human Rights Perception Polls, representative surveys conducted in four countries. We find that public exposure to the term "human rights" is h...

What motivates countries to enact laws that restrict foreign funding to domestically operating non-governmental organizations (NGOs)? We suggest governments often pass these laws to combat perceived foreign attempts to shape domestic politics. Political elites are not necessarily opposed to NGOs per se, but rather see foreign intrusion via funding...

This report presents findings from a 2012 nationally representative survey of the Ecuadoran public. Respondents were asked for their opinion towards human rights principles, policies and organizations.

This report presents findings of three related research efforts: Interviews with Mexican human rights activists, a nationally representative survey of Mexican adults, and a representative survey of Mexican elites. Respondents were asked about their opinions towards human rights principles, policies and organizations. This research was funded by the...

This report presents the results of a nationally representative 2013 survey of Colombian adults. Respondents were asked a series of questions about their attitudes towards human rights principles, policies and organizations.

This report presents descriptive statistics from a 2012 representative survey of adult residents in Rabat, Casablanca and the surrounding rural areas within a 70-km radius. Respondents were asked about their opinion towards human rights principles, policies, and organizations. The study was funded by the Stassen Research Chair at the University of...

Hafner-Burton, Emilie and James Ron. (2012) The Latin Bias: Regions, the Anglo-American Media, and Human Rights. International Studies Quarterly, doi: 10.1111/isqu.12023 © 2012 International Studies Association Media attention is unevenly allocated across global human rights problems, prompting anger, frustration, and recrimination in the internati...

How do public regulations shape the composition and behavior of non-governmental organizations (NGOs)? Because many NGOs advocate for liberal causes such as human rights, democracy, and gender equality, they upset the political status quo. At the same time, a large number of NGOs operating in the Global South rely on international funding. This som...

Harold E. Stassen Chair of International Affairs at the Hubert Humphrey School of Public Affairs and Department of Political Science, University of Minnesota, and a visiting professor at the Centro d'Investigación y Docencia Económicas, México City (For details about his research, visit http://www.jamesron.com).

The rights-based approach (RBA) emerged as a new development paradigm in the late 1990s. Within ten years, it had swept through the websites, policy papers and official rhetoric of multi-lateral development agencies, bi-lateral donors, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) throughout the global development assistance sector. Today, specialized...

Global media attention is unevenly allocated across human rights problems and conflicts worldwide, leading to tension, anger and frustration in the international system. In recent years, scholars have made great progress in explaining these variations, focusing on factors such as the strength of transnational ties, local conditions for activist mob...

Advocacy organizations are viewed as actors motivated primarily by principled beliefs. This volume outlines a new agenda for the study of advocacy organizations, proposing a model of NGOs as collective actors that seek to fulfil normative concerns and instrumental incentives, face collective action problems, and compete as well as collaborate with...

1 At the core of policy debates on the state-level effects of transitional justice is a series of competing claims about the causal effects of various transitional justice mechanisms. A review of recent scholarship on transitional justice shows that empirical evidence of positive or negative effects is still insufficient to support strong claims. M...

In attempting to explain Israel's retaliatory policies toward Palestinian violence, new institutionalist and rational choice theories vie for dominance. This article argues that both approaches can contribute to understanding the severity of Israel's response if they are viewed as nested explanations appropriate to different threat levels. The arti...

Over the past two decades, human rights language has spread like wildfire across international policy arenas. The activists who sparked this fire are engaged in two different campaigns. The first is comparatively modest, involving the persuasion of tens of thousands of global elites such as journalists, UN officials, donors, and national political...

Over the past two decades, human rights language has spread like wildfire across international policy arenas. The activists who sparked this fire are engaged in two different campaigns. The first is comparatively modest, involving the persuasion of tens of thousands of global elites such as journalists, UN officials, donors, and national political...

International human rights language has swept across the landscape of contemporary world politics in a trend that began in the 1970s, picked up speed after the Cold War's end, and quickened yet again in the latter half of the 1990s. Yet, while this human rights 'talk' has fundamentally reshaped the way in which global policy elites, transnational a...

What influences the Northern media's coverage of events and abuses in explicit human rights terms? Do international NGOs have an impact, and, if so, when are they most effective? This article addresses these questions with regression analysis of human rights reporting by The Economist and Newsweek from 1986 to 2000, covering 145 countries. First, i...

Although epidemiology is increasingly contributing to policy debates on issues of conflict and human rights, its potential is still underutilized. As a result, this article calls for greater collaboration between public health researchers, conflict analysts and human rights monitors, with special emphasis on retrospective, population-based surveys....

The severity of abuse may be be less important than a nation's policy relevance to the West, the ability of journalists to investigate freely, and attention from rights activists.

This article outlines a human rights framework for analyzing violent internal conflict, "translating" social-scientific findings on conflict risk factors into human rights language. It is argued that discrimination and violations of social and economic rights function as underlying causes of conflict, creating the deep grievances and group identiti...

What shapes the transnational activist agenda? Do non-governmental organizations with a global mandate focus on the world's most pressing problems, or is their reporting also affected by additional considerations? To address these questions, we study the determinants of country reporting by an exemplary transnational actor, Amnesty International, d...

Abstract (112 words) This article empirically tests and theoretically qualifies prevailing theories linking natural primary commodities and civil war. Drawing on interviews with ex-militia and politicians, we find that oil did contribute to civil war in the Republic of Congo. At the same time, however, we also conclude that conflict would never hav...

During 1991-92, Israel's security agencies instituted changes in their techniques for interrogating Palestinian detainees. Rather than using brute force that was not centrally overseen, they began to use painful measures that did not leave scars, that were more tightly controlled by higher officials, and that they portrayed in public as humane. Isr...

This article develops a political economy approach to the study of contemporary transnational networks. We argue that many aspects of International Organization (IO) and International Non Governmental Organization (NGO) behavior can be explained by materialist analysis and an examination of the incentives and constraints produced by the transnation...

This article explains tactical escalation by a Peruvian left-wing group during the 1980s and 1990s as an interaction effect between organizational ideology and the broader political and organizational environment. In 1980, Peru's Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) organization ended a decade of political organizing and launched armed struggle against...

Argues that the US should have a truth commission to examine its global misdeeds, just as it urges other countries to do as they emerge from periods of political authoritarianism.

The second Palestinian uprising was sparked, in part, by a sense on the Palestinian side that nothing else could stop the Israeli settlement enterprise, which was rapidly eliminating any possibility of a territorially contiguous Palestinian state.

In 1988. Israeli security forces engaged in a wide variety of repressive tactics aimed at putting down the Palestinian uprising in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Rather than viewing these methods solely as products of instructions handed down from on high, this article regards Israeli tactics as emerging from processes of innovation and elaboration...

Boundary-related inequalities are perhaps starkest during war, where one’s location vis-a' -vis a boundary can mean the di¡erence between life and death. Drawing on 1997 ¢eld interviews in the former Yugoslavia, I explore the impact of the newly-created Bosnia/Yugoslavia border on the lives of Muslim Slavs during the ¢rst year of the Bosnian war. 3...

Author reviews actions that he and colleagues in the Israel military did in South Lebanon in 1986, and apologizes for his misdeeds. Argues that a truth and reconciliation process should go on between Israeli and Lebanon as a precursor to peace.

During the first months of the 1992 Bosnian civil war, ethnic Serb paramilitaries played a key role in forcibly displacing Bosnian Muslims and Croats from their homes, using classic death squad methods such as killing, torture, theft, and rape. Although socialist Yugoslavia’s increasingly Serb-led Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) aided the Bosnian Serb...

From Israeli soldiers, testimony to their brutal treatment of Palestinians during Yitzhak Rabin's government

This report is based on the author's interviews with ethnic Kurds who fled the fighting in Turkey during the 1992-94 period, as well as interviews with key informants in the US and Europe, including US diplomatic and military officials. It documents instances of violations of the laws of war by Turkish forces fighting an internal insurgency led by...

This report describes the authors' interviews with dozens of Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza who were interrogated by Israeli security forces during the 1992-94 period. It also relies on interviews with key informants from Israel and the occupied territories, including lawyers, soldiers, and officials. It finds a pattern of torture and ill...

This report describes the authors' interviews with eyewitnesses to arrests, shootings and killings by Israeli undercover forces in the occupied Palestinian West Bank and Gaza Strip. IT also relies on interviews with key informants, including Israeli soldiers. The report documents a pattern of potentially unjustified killings by two units that were...