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... Many scholars now argue that the disconnect between de jure judicial independence and the expectation of better human rights practices can be explained by the difference between de jure and de facto independence. While de jure independence refers only to formally written protections, de facto independence "is often defined as the extent to which a court may adjudicate free from institutional controls, incentives, and impediments imposed or intimidated by force, money, or extralegal, corrupt methods" ( [17]: 286). As Melton and Ginsburg ([18]: 209) point out, "clever politicians can exploit the absence of any single de jure protection for judicial independence." ...
... So whereas de jure independence has not been reliably found to equate to high government respect for human rights, Howard and Carey ( [17]: 290) suggest that de facto independence "leads to greater political rights." The challenge, however, is that de facto judicial independence "is not directly observable" ( [19]: 107). ...
... The challenge, however, is that de facto judicial independence "is not directly observable" ( [19]: 107). In an attempt to address this, Linzer and Staton [20] have constructed a new latent de facto measure of judicial independence that draws upon previous direct and indirect indicators by Keith [21], Howard and Carey [17], Feld and Voigt [22], Gwartney et al. [23], Cingranelli and Richards [24], Marshall and Jaggers [25], Johnson, Souva, and Smith [26], and the Political Risks Services Group [27]. Using Linzer and Staton's [20] measure, both Crabtree and Fariss [2] and Crabtree and Nelson [28] have found de facto judicial independence to be positively associated with high government respect for human rights. ...
A body of literature suggests that states with independent courts are more likely to protect human rights. A recent article challenges this notion by arguing that when both the president and his or her justice minister share the same party—i.e., they are copartisans—that state is less likely to protect human rights, as justice ministers may value their loyalty to the president over their duty to enforce court decisions. In this article, I estimate government respect for human rights accounting for both copartisan justice ministers and an independent judiciary. In the end, I find copartisan justice ministers to be negatively associated with high government respect for human rights, even after controlling for judicial independence. Many constitutions already seek to ensure an independent judiciary, but if copartisan justice ministers increase the likelihood that governments repress, then perhaps constitutional engineers should also consider options that would reduce the likelihood that both the president and his or her justice minister share the same party.
... Judicial Autonomy. Based on the evidence Ríos-Figueroa and Staton (2009) marshal, the least problematic measure of judicial autonomy is Howard and Carey's (2004) three-point measure, which scores judiciaries as full/high autonomy if they "function in practice independent from the executive and legislature, are relatively free from corruption and bribery, and afford basic criminal due process protections to criminal defendants" (pp. 287-88). ...
... Finally, the next-best competing measure of judicial power, according to Ríos-Figueroa and Staton, comes from Tate and Keith (2007). But it is coded from the same source data as Howard and Carey's (2004) judicial autonomy measure and the two are, not surprisingly, highly correlated (ρ = .78). ...
... Though Howard and Carey's (2004) autonomy measure and the CIM measure of power have drawbacks, they represent the most valid approximations of the twin dimensions of de facto judicial independence. But is this best way to operationalize the institutional dimension of rule of law? ...
In the last twenty years, the rule of law has undergone a revival in legal, academic, business, military, and development spheres. Yet we lack a clear understanding of the distinct forms the rule of law takes, and how and why they vary across states and over time. This study indicates one way to operationalize rule of law for analytic purposes while respecting the nonlinear combinations of rule of law's multiple dimensions. The results imply rule of law is not all of a piece and is likely to take only a handful of fairly predictable forms. Analyzing profiles of rule of law in the 1990s suggests five main typologies: Full Rule of Law, Incomplete Rule of Law, Peaceful Unrule of Law, Unstable Lawlessness, and Violent Unrule of Law. Finally, this essay encourages debates about the conceptualization, measurement, and types of rule of law similar to those found in the literature on democracy. Finally, this essay encourages debates about the conceptualization, measurement, and types of rule of law similar to those found in the literature on democracy.
... That is, we are concerned with de facto judicial independence. As a result, we evaluate two measures of de facto judicial independence: one from Tate and Keith (2009) and one from Howard and Carey (2004). 4 ...
... Judicial Independence, however, does not have a statistically significant effect on torture termination. Table 12 reports the results when we replace Tate and Keith's measure of de facto judicial independence with the variable from Howard and Carey (2004). The results for Voice and Veto remain positive and significant; in the case of Voice, the estimated effect strengthens. ...
... Results from t, t 2 , and t 3 and a constant not reported. Judicial Independence is measured using Howard and Carey (2004). NOTES: * p < 0.10; ** p < 0.05; *** p < 0.01 (two-tailed). ...
... These reports have a short section that deals specifically with the judiciary and in it its authors make a short assessment about the independence of the judicial system in each country. Replicating what other scholars have done before, (Howard andCarey 2004, Yamanashi 2002) I devised a coding scheme which assigned each country a value on a scale from 1 to 3, where one indicates low judicial independence and three indicates high independence. The final practical measure presented in the next chapter is a subjective evaluation of the independence of the judiciary in Latin America, made by the people living and working in those countries. ...
... First, a theory of judicial independence must have analytical clarity about the kind of phenomenon being referred to when we talk about it (Russell 2001 an end in itself, but a means to an end (Brashear 2006, Rubin 2002, Yamanashi 2002. It makes no difference whether one looks at independence as a vehicle to achieve better human rights protection (Cross 1999, economic growth (Feld andVoight 2003, Henisz 2000) or even democratization (Howard and Carey 2004). If statements about judicial independence are to be evaluated and judged, theories on the subject must deal with the reason why independence is considered to be a valuable feature of a political regime. ...
... Some have used independence as a component of a larger dependent variable, such as judicial review or the power that policy makers give to the judiciary (Clark 1975, Ishiyama andIshiyama 2000). Others have used judicial independence as an independent variable in an attempt to find its effects on human rights protection, economic growth or even democratization (Cross 1999, Feld and Voight 2003, Howard and Carey 2004. If one wants to categorize existing measures of judicial independence, however, the best way to do it would be to divide among those which measure judicial independence de iure and those which measure it de facto. ...
... Third, in testing our expectations, we employ a new measure of de facto independence (Keith 2011) and utilize a more extensive dataset than any previous study of de facto independence (Howard and Carey 2004;Powell and Staton 2009;Keith 2011;Volcansek and Lockhart 2012): 193 countries from 1981 to 2010. While there are certainly trade-offs to studying this process in a large-N fashion (such as the lack of case-level data for large, cross-sectional time-series studies), we join other judicial scholars in arguing that taking a comparative, global approach to the study of courts offers us valuable insights about both institutions and the protection of individual rights (Epp 1998;Keith 2011;Uribarri et al. 2011;Volcansek and Lockhart 2012). ...
... What has received less systematic attention is how de facto judicial independence affects government respect for human rights. Howard and Carey (2004) create a trichotomous measure of de facto judicial independence using US Department of State Reports for a seven-year period in the 1990s (1992)(1993)(1994)(1995)(1996)(1997)(1998)(1999). They find a positive relationship between de facto judicial independence and the Freedom House index of political rights. ...
... While a number of de facto measures exist (Henisz 2000;Feld and Voigt 2003;Howard and Carey 2004;Cingranelli and Richards 2008;Keith 2011), we focused on three criteria as the basis for our selection of variables: construct validity, broad geographic coverage, and nonsystematic patterns of missing data. 15 It was important that our measure would tap into purely de facto aspects of judicial independence, not de jure, and would provide a good approximation of the extent to which judges are able to be the authors of their own opinions and to have their decisions reasonably respected. ...
Economists, political scientists, and legal scholars have argued that independent judiciaries have an important role to play in promoting economic development and protecting property rights. We argue that judicial independence can also have a positive impact on the protection of human rights. To assess the human rights impact of a De Facto independent judiciary, we also argue that scholars must account for the potential of endogeneity between judicial independence and protection of human rights. We examine whether greater De Facto independence improves government respect for citizens’ physical integrity rights, using a comprehensive dataset of 193 countries from 1981 to 2010. Employing an instrumental variables approach to control for endogeneity, we find strong support for the argument that greater levels of De Facto judicial independence improve government respect for physical integrity rights. These findings are robust to changes in measurement, estimation techniques, and model specification. Failing to account for endogeneity will tend to overemphasize the ability of completely independent courts to improve government respect for physical integrity rights.
... In sum, when dictators face ineffective domestic courts, the anticipated ex post costs to the state provided by the domestic judiciary are low-there is little cost to adopting a human rights treaty and violating its terms. 24 21 The requirement that judges have their decisions implemented into policy is missing from many traditional definitions of judicial independence (e.g., Howard and Carey 2004). 22 A large body of literature highlights the link between domestic judicial independence and increased respect for human rights (Cross, 1999;Blasi and Cingranelli, 1996;Keith, 2002a;Powell and Staton, 2009). ...
... Choosing a measure of judicial effectiveness is less straight-forward. Although there are several measures of judicial independence from which to choose (Keith, 2002b;Apodaca, 2004;Howard and Carey, 2004;Tate and Keith, 2009), I am interested not only in whether judges are allowed to issue rulings that are free from influence but also in whether or not judicial outcomes are translated into policy. 36 Because judicial decision making is strategic and ineffective courts may fail to rule on cases they are likely to lose (Ginsburg, 2003;Helmke, 2005;Vanberg, 2005), a typical de jure or de facto measure of judicial independence in inappropriate. ...
... I also include Communist, coded "1" if a country has a communist regime. 43 Because most communist 41 For example, see Gwartney et al. (2007); Kaufmann, Kraay and Mastruzzi (2007); Feld and Voigt (2003); LaPorta et al. (2004); Howard and Carey (2004). 42 I consider "high" judicial effectiveness here to be anything above 0.8 on CIM. ...
This dissertation consists of four papers that contribute to literatures on human rights, domestic political institutions, and international cooperation. Specifically, I look at how domestic and international political institutions affect commitment to international human rights law and domestic respect for human rights. In Chapter 2, I argue that the domestic incentives dictators face to support the Convention Against Torture (CAT) and engage in human rights violations are moderated in countries with effective domestic judiciaries. Chapter 3 takes advantage of variation in the number of democracies that have signed and ratified the Optional Protocol to the CAT and tests hypotheses about the conditions under which new democracies support human rights. Because different actors are responsible for signing, ratification, and compliance, legislatures in new democracies should be less likely to ratify, and bureaucracies and militaries should be less likely to comply with, these treaties when members of a former dictatorship participate in the new democratic government. In Chapter 4, I argue that petitions presented to international courts and like-organizations can be used to name and shame states that violate human rights. Such shaming only leads to improvements in human rights, however, when international audiences---specifically, foreign aid donors---have standing to pressure for domestic reform. Chapter 5 argues that domestic political institutions (in conjunction with environmental constraints) influence executive actions regarding state concessions. Although dictators "buy off" some types of domestic opposition with material concessions and liberalize when they face other types of opposition, financial conditions can sometimes limit a dictator's ability to respond beneficently to the opposition.
... At the core of the concept of judicial autonomy is an authority free from governmental control, or control by any other actor involved in the dispute. Howard and Carey (2004) illustrate this point in their definition of judicial independence as ''The extent to which a court may adjudicate free from institutional controls, incentives, and impediments imposed or intimidated by force, money, or extralegal, corrupt methods by individuals or institutions outside the judiciary, whether within or outside government.'' Given the central role that autonomy has in adjudicating disputes, it is necessary to find mechanisms to assess it. ...
... Budget restrictions can affect the functional independence of electoral bodies (Orozco-Henríquez 2010) and their ability to fully carry out their functions (Keith 2002). The protection and adequacy of salary is also an important element for protecting judges from corruption and bribery (Howard and Carey 2004). This variable is measured by determining whether the electoral courts or the institutions in charge of solving post-election disputes are fiscally autonomous-i.e., whether their salaries and/or budgets are constitutionally protected from reduction by the other branches of government. ...
While electoral management bodies have received an increasing amount of scholarly consideration recently, less attention has been paid to the institutions in charge of imparting electoral justice. These institutions are an integral column of the system of electoral integrity and the final check for achieving credible elections. This article offers an updated and systematic description of the institutions of electoral justice in all the presidential democracies around the world (19 countries in the Americas, eight in Africa, and four in Asia), based on an analysis of the accumulated total of 966 years of electoral legislation. I have traced the evolution of the institutions adjudicating election disputes from the time of the constitutional change immediately prior to the first democratic election in each of these presidential democracies following the start of the third wave of democracy in 1974. Contrary to the idea that specialized electoral courts are better suited than supreme courts for resolving election disputes, I have found that supreme or administrative courts are slightly more independent than specialized electoral courts, although this is not to deny the advantages that electoral courts may have in terms of expertise. I have also found an upward trend in the global average level of electoral autonomy since the late 1970s. Finally, since the late twentieth century, a whole wave of Latin American countries have adopted specialized electoral courts to handle election disputes, while most presidential democracies in Asia and Africa have relegated this task to their supreme courts.
... I control for a state's military capabilities. Neorealists argue institutional adoption is epiphenomenal to 26 Sources for the latent variable come from Clague et al. (1999) ; Feld and Voigt (2003) ; Howard and Carey (2004) ; Cingranelli and Richards (2010) ; Marshall and Jaggers (2010) ; Rìos-Figueroa and Staton (2010) . ...
Does shaming affect human rights treaty ratification? Whereas most scholars study shaming’s effects on eventual human rights respect, models of international shame predict states institutionalize rights before behavioral changes become reality. I take a step back and study shaming’s effects on treaty ratification. Viewing shaming as a process that seeks to change behavior by isolating and embarrassing the target leads to a somewhat counter-intuitive prediction—although increasing pressure on states raises a state’s willingness to ratify treaties, too much shame can cause a state to eschew treaty ratification. The argument follows from the social psychology literature on social exclusion that shows isolated individuals retreat from efforts to act normatively rather than increasing their efforts at inclusion. Using data on ratifications of the core UN human rights treaties and an original latent variable measuring shame, I find support for the argument that shaming increases treaty ratification to a point, but then begins to decrease ratification rates.
... Theoretically, an independent judiciary in a state is essential because the judiciary plays a vital role in maintaining the balance of executive, legislative, and citizen power relations [9]. It means that if the judiciary can be independent, then the consolidation of democracy in the country will work well because of the running of the checks and balances mechanism [10]. ...
... Noting the weaknesses of previous measures, the authors used an IRT model to synthesize multiple direct or approximate judicial independence measures. Five of the eight evaluate judicial autonomy, judicial influence, or both (Cingranelli & Richards, 2010;Feld & Voigt, 2003;Howard & Carey, 2004;Keith, 2012;Ríos-Figueroa & Staton, 2014). The remaining three indicators provide indirect measures of judicial independence, such as executive constraints (Marshall & Jaggers, 2017); law and order, which captures popular observance of the law (PRS Group, 2013); and property rights protection (Gwartney & Lawson, 2007;Ríos-Figueroa & Staton, 2014). ...
A free and independent press monitors government actions, broadcasts public grievances, and facilitates debate and dissent among citizens. Because of this, some executives run interference—censoring newspapers, harassing journalists, and shutting down media outlets—whereas other executives do not. What explains this variation? We argue that executives decide to repress or to respect the press based on the sanctions they anticipate from two important constituencies: courts and citizens. We expect that attacks are less likely when courts can make adverse rulings and when citizens can vote leaders out of office. In addition, we suggest that these constraints can function as substitutes; we anticipate the reductive effect of judicial independence wanes as the level of electoral democracy rises, making courts vital to protecting journalists in less democratic systems. We evaluate these expectations using panel data on executive branch attacks on the press in 175 countries, from 1949 to 2016, and find strong support.
... 22 We also estimated a robustness check including a Rule of Law measure from Freedom House (2015) and the results remain the same. 23 Feld and Voigt (2003) , Howard and Carey (2004), Cingranelli and Richards (2010), Marshall and Jaggers (2010), , Johnson, Souva and Smith (2013) 24 To account international human rights treaty influence, we also estimated a model taking into account the extent to which states are embedded in the international human rights regime. Results remain the same. ...
Do regional human rights courts influence respect for rights? Beyond providing remedy for individual human rights abuse, case outcomes help frame potential social mobilization by setting standards and raising the rights consciousness of civil society actors. The expectation of mobilization can increase the government’s costs of flouting the court’s rulings. We argue that an enabling domestic environment characterized by two features increases government expectation of mobilization following regional court litigation. First, a robust civil society creates strong horizontal ties between potential mobilizing groups. Second, a national human rights institution (NHRI) creates vertical ties that both transfer information down from the court to civil society; and transfer demands up from civil society to political elites in position to make stronger human rights policy. Using data for all Council of Europe countries from 1980 to 2012, we find European Court of Human Rights litigation associated with higher respect for rights in an enabling domestic environment characterized by strong civil society and the presence of a NHRI.
... Noting the weaknesses of previous measures, the authors used an IRT model to synthesize multiple direct or approximate judicial independence measures. Five of the eight evaluate judicial autonomy, judicial influence, or both (Cingranelli & Richards, 2010;Feld & Voigt, 2003;Howard & Carey, 2004;Keith, 2012;Ríos-Figueroa & Staton, 2014). The remaining three indicators provide indirect measures of judicial independence, such as executive constraints (Marshall & Jaggers, 2017); law and order, which captures popular observance of the law (PRS Group, 2013); and property rights protection (Gwartney & Lawson, 2007;Ríos-Figueroa & Staton, 2014). ...
A free and independent press monitors government actions, broadcasts public grievances, and facilitates debate and dissent among citizens. Because of this, some governments run interference – censoring newspapers, harassing journalists, and shutting down media outlets. But, other governments do not. What explains this? We propose that executives decide to repress or to respect the press based on the sanctions they anticipate from two important constituencies: courts and citizens. We expect that attacks are less likely where courts can make adverse rulings and where citizens can vote leaders out of office. In addition, we suggest that these constraints can function as substitutes. Essentially, the reductive effect of judicial independence wanes as the level of electoral democracy rises, making courts vital to protecting journalists in less-democratic systems. We evaluate these expectations using panel data on government attacks on the media in 175 countries, from 1949 to 2016, and find strong support.
... De facto yargı bağımsızlığını ölçen başka iki çalışma Howard ve Carey (2004) ile Tate ve Keith (2007)'ın çalışmalarıdır. Her iki çalışmada da ülkelerin yargı bağımsızlığı seviyelerini hesaplamak için Amerika Birleşik Devletleri Dış İşleri Bakanlığı'nın yayınladığı ülke raporları kullanılmaktadır. ...
Yargı bağımsızlığı üzerine yapılan bilimsel çalışmalarda iki farklı yargı bağımsızlığı kavramı ön plana çıkmaktadır. “De jure yargı bağımsızlığı” yargıçların görev ve yetkilerinin anayasal güvence altına alınmasını ifade ederken, uygulamadaki yargı bağımsızlığı da “de facto yargı bağımsızlığı” olarak ele alınmaktadır. Literatürde yargı bağımsızlığının anayasal güvence altına alınmasının uygulamadaki yargı bağımsızlığını etkileyip etkilemediğini sorgulamak önemli bir araştırma sorusu olarak karşımıza çıkmaktadır. Bu çalışmanın amacı da anayasada öngörülen yargı bağımsızlığının uygulamadaki yargı bağımsızlığını hangi şartlar altında etkileyebileceğine dair kuramsal bir model sunmaktır. Halkın yargıya duyduğu güven, sahip olduğu siyasal farkındalık ve demokratik değerler doğrultusunda de jure yargı bağımsızlığının de facto yargı bağımsızlığı üzerindeki etkisinin siyasal rejimler arasında farklılık göstermesi beklendiği bu çalışmanın temel savıdır. Bu doğrultuda, gelişmiş demokrasiler ve otoriter rejimlerde yargı bağımsızlığını anayasal güvence altına almanın uygulamadaki yargı bağımsızlığını anlamlı bir şekilde etkilemediği savunulurken, hibrit (melez, karma) rejimlerde halkın yargıya duyduğu güven, sahip olduğu demokratik değerler ve siyasal farkındalık arttıkça anayasal güvencelerin uygulamadaki yargı bağımsızlığını anlamlı bir şekilde etkilediği savunulmaktadır.
... Judicial independence comes from Linzer and Staton (2015), who estimate a latent variable drawing on eight indicators of de facto or behavioral judicial independence, including from Keith, Tate and Poe (2009), Howard andCarey (2003/2004), and Ríos- Figueroa and Staton (2012). Latent judicial independence consists of judges' autonomous decision making and the extent to which judges decisions are respected by members of the other branches of government. ...
International relations scholarship has made significant strides in explaining how states design treaty obligations and why they accept treaty commitments. However, far less attention has been paid to factors that may influence states’ modification of their treaty obligations via reservations. We theorize that states will be more likely to enter reservations when treaty obligations increase compliance costs and policy adjustment costs. More specifically, we expect that demanding provisions, i.e., provisions that create strong, precise obligations requiring domestic action, will enhance the likelihood of reservation. To test our theory, we exploit an original dataset that codes reservations at the provision (treaty–article–paragraph) level for the ten core international human rights treaties. Consistent with our expectations, we find that states are more likely to enter reservations on more demanding treaty provisions. In contrast to prior studies, our results indicate that reservations are not driven purely by state-level characteristics such as regime type or the nature of the legal system. Rather, it appears that states weigh individual treaty obligations and calibrate their commitments accordingly.
... Therefore, states do not drop out of our sample in the country-months following ratification. 31 Courts can constrain executives, even from repressing, when the court is (a) able to rule freely, without external manipulation (Cross 1999;Keith 2002) and (b) powerful, such that actors actually comply with court decisions (Howard and Carey 2004;Powell and Staton 2009). 32 For more on the variety of empirical indicators of judicial effectiveness, see Ríos-Figueroa and Staton (2014). ...
How does state obligation to international human rights treaties (HRTs) affect mobilized dissent? We argue that obligations to protect human rights affect not only state behavior but also the behavior of dissidents. We present a theory in which the effect of HRTs on dissent is conditional on expectations of when it will constrain government behavior. We assume that HRT obligation increases the likelihood that government agents face litigation costs for repression but argue that leaders are only constrained when they would be most likely to repress. The expectation of constraint creates opportunity: citizens are more likely to dissent in HRT-obligated states with secure leaders and weak domestic courts. We find empirical support for the implications of our theory using country-month data on HRT obligation and dissent events from 1990 to 2004.
... 21 Energy Consumption is a more reliable and available measure than GDP, and the two are highly correlated capturing the same concept (Jackman 1973). 22 (Clague et al. 1999), (Feld and Voigt 2003), (Howard and Carey 2004), (Tate and Keith 2009), (Cingranelli and Richards 2010a), (Marshall and Jaggers 2010), (Rìos-Figueroa and Staton 2010) 23 Three of the variables do not meet the assumption of parallel slopes (CAT ratification, International War, and Lagged Torture), but the overall model meets the assumption. Fitting a partial proportional odds model does not change the beta coefficient or standard error on the explanatory variable or its constituents in a substantial way; therefore, the results are the same and not model dependent. ...
Does adopting a National Human Rights Institution (NHRI) make states’ international commitments to not torture more constraining? Many researchers have explored international human rights treaties’ abilities to constrain leaders from violating human rights, some focusing exclusively on the United Nations Convention Against Torture (CAT). Thus far, findings are not promising unless certain domestic conditions apply such as sufficient democratic space to air grievances or independent judiciaries. This article continues to explore domestic conditions by focusing on another liberal institution—National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs). Torture is usually a secretive practice, and NHRIs act as information providers to potential mobilizers and domestic legal systems assuring international legal commitments are not empty promises. Using statistical analysis on 153 countries over the years 1981–2007, I find that when a country has ratified the CAT, the presence of an NHRI substantively decreases the chances the state will be an egregious offender.
... La Porta, López-de-Silanes, Pop-Eleches, & Shleifer, 2004) or a limited time period (e.g. Howard & Carey, 2004), so including this variable in the analysis would do more harm than good. However, it is important to keep this explanation in mind when we analyze the results. ...
In the last 25 years, eight outsider candidates won presidential elections in Latin America. Outsiders are candidates with little political experience running with new parties. This reality presents a dual puzzle, which is the focus of this dissertation. First, what explains the sudden rise and election of political outsiders in presidential elections? Second, what are the consequences of the election of outsiders for democratic governability and institutional performance? I address these questions through a combination of quantitative analyses and an in-depth qualitative analysis of the case of Alberto Fujimori (outsider president of Peru who governed between 1990 and 2000).
Against the conventional wisdom, the first part of my dissertation shows that the rise of outsiders is not a “peril of presidentialism.” When other important economic and political factors are controlled for, the political system (presidential vs. parliamentary) is not a good predictor of outsider success. The rise of outsiders in Latin America is associated with a combination of supply and demand factors. A series of institutional design characteristics (compulsory voting, reelection provisions, and non-concurrent elections) make it easier for outsiders to run. Once viable outsiders are in the race, their success is facilitated in contexts where a severe crisis of representation exists. Dealigned citizens and voters whose preferences are not reflected in the established party system are more likely to support outsiders on election day.
The second main contribution of this dissertation is to show that outsiders are more likely to threaten democratic governability and to commit authoritarian excesses. There are three main factors that contribute to executive abuses when political outsiders reach the presidency: 1) the lack of democratic political socialization of outsiders, 2) the difficult socio-political context faced by outsiders –which creates a “window of opportunity” for executive excesses–, and 3) the lack of a strongly organized party monitoring the actions of outsider presidents. This work shows that executive-legislative relations tend to be more acrimonious when the president is an outsider. The in-depth analysis of the Fujimori case also suggests that outsiders tend to form very inexperienced cabinets, which generates serious governability problems.
... Choosing a measure of judicial effectiveness is less straightforward. Although there are several measures of judicial independence from which to choose (Keith 2002b;Apodaca 2004;Howard and Carey 2004;Tate and Keith 2007), I am interested not only in whether judges are allowed to issue rulings that are free from influence but also in whether or not judicial outcomes are translated into policy. 37 Because judicial decision making is strategic and ineffective courts may fail to rule on cases they are likely to lose (Ginsburg 2003;Helmke 2005;Vanberg 2005), a typical de jure or de facto measure of judicial independence in inappropriate. ...
Although they are arguably the worst violators of human rights, dictators sometimes commit to international human rights treaties like the United Nations Convention Against Torture (CAT) to appease their domestic opposition. Importantly, however, executives facing effective judiciaries must anticipate ex post costs that can arise when international treaties are likely to be enforced domestically. This suggests that one domestic institutiona political opposition partymay provide a dictator with incentives to commit to international human rights treaties and violate human rights, while anotheran effective domestic judiciarymay constrain the dictator's ability to violate human rights and incentivize him to avoid international commitment. How do dictators make choices about commitment to human rights law and respect for human rights when they face conflicting domestic incentives? Furthermore, how do these divergent incentives affect compliance when dictators do commit to international treaties? In this article, I argue that the domestic incentives dictators face to support the CAT and engage in torture are moderated in countries with effective domestic judiciaries.
... A growing body of research, commonly referred to as the judicialization of politics, has found that the courts are increasingly addressing issues related to individual rights and that the role of the judiciary is expanding over time and across the globe (Ferejohn 2002;Hirschl 2008;Murphy 1993;Vallinder 1994). Holding an impartial and independent judiciary has been identified as important for protecting constitutional promises of many human rights (Chavez 2008;Howard and Carey 2004;Keith 2002;Vanberg 2008). In agreement with de Tocqueville, this work concludes that the court's power and freedom to review and challenge the constitutionality of legislative and executive actions is often essential for protecting constitutional promises on human rights. ...
Promises of religious freedoms have become the standard in national constitutions. Yet, despite these assurances, religious freedoms are routinely denied. Combining new data collections with expanded theoretical explanations, this research explores how dimensions of governance and measures of the religious economy contribute to government restrictions on religion. Consistent with recent work on the judicialization of politics, we find that the absence of an independent judiciary is an important predictor of government restrictions on religious freedoms, whereas free elections and government effectiveness are insignificant in our full models. Consistent with the religious economy theory, we find that social restrictions and government favoritism toward a religion(s) are persistent predictors of the government's restrictions. Although the proportion of the population Muslim holds a strong bivariate association with government restrictions (r = .57), the relationship is reduced to insignificance in our full models. We briefly discuss the implications of these findings.
... Domestic courts, in particular, have been found to have a notable effect on human rights outcomes. On average, effective domestic courts tend to limit human rights violations, including state torture (e.g., Blasi and Cingranelli 1996, Cross 1999, Apodaca 2004, Howard and Carey 2004, Hathaway 2007. But does domestic judicial effectiveness have a greater depressing effect on human rights violations by all government agencies, or only some of them? ...
The Ill-Treatment and Torture (ITT) Data Collection Project uses content analysis to measure allegations of government ill-treatment and torture made by Amnesty International (AI) from 1995 to 2005. ITT's country-year (CY) data quantify AI allegations of ill-treatment and torture at the country-year unit of observation and further across different responsible government agents and across different econo-socio-political groups of alleged victims. This paper introduces the Ill-Treatment and Torture country-year data, describes quantitative patterns likely to be of interest to researchers focused on the study of international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) and human rights, and suggests a number of theoretically motivated questions that can be explored using the ITT country-year data.
The synthetic control method has emerged as a widely utilized empirical tool for estimating the causal effects of public policies, natural disasters, and other interventions on various economic, social, institutional, and political outcomes. In this study, we demonstrate the potential application of this method in empirical comparative law by estimating the impact of the 2010 constitutional referendum in Turkiye on the trajectory of judicial independence. By comparing Turkiye with a salient Mediterranean donor pool of countries that did not experience similar interventions during the period from 1987 to 2021, we provide evidence of a severe breakdown and erosion of judicial independence. This deterioration appears to be a direct response to the populist constitutional backsliding initiated by the government-orchestrated assault on the judiciary, which was carried out under the guise of judicial modernization in 2010, before the additional constitutional reforms in 2017.
The Global State of Democracy Indices Methodology: Conceptualization and Measurement Framework, v7, 2023, outlines the conceptual distinctions, theoretical framework and measurement procedures on which the GSoD Indices are based. This document has been updated to reflect the changes implemented in version 7 of the data set.
To empirically assess the role of institutions and institutional quality in economic performance, it is necessary to select the proxy variable(s) for institutional quality. Although several indicators have been suggested in the literature, individuals and international organizations are still trying to introduce indicators that reflect the actual institutional quality of various countries. As institutions have different dimensions, several indicators have been suggested in the literature to measure the quality of institutions. However, there is no consensus among experts on which index should be used.
The Global State of Democracy is a biennial report that aims to provide policymakers with an evidence-based analysis of the state of global democracy, supported by the Global State of Democracy Indices (GSoD Indices), in order to inform policy interventions and identify problem-solving approaches to trends affecting the quality of democracy around the world. The second edition of the report provides a health check of democracy and an overview of the current global and regional democracy landscape. This document presents revised and updated information about all the variables included in the GSoD indices data set that enabled the construction of Version 4 of the GSoD Indices, which depicts democratic trends at the country, regional and global levels across a broad range of different attributes of democracy in the period 1975–2019. The data underlying the GSoD Indices is based on a total of 116 indicators developed by various scholars and organizations using different types of source, including expert surveys, standards-based coding by research groups and analysts, observational data and composite measures.
Constitutional amendment rules have traditionally been considered the most important part of a constitution. Nevertheless, recent empirical analyses argue that constitutional amendment rules do not matter at all. This dispute is due to the misuse of independent and dependent variables and inappropriate methodology. Using the Veto Players approach to measure constitutional rigidity, this article proposes a new index covering ninety-four democratic countries. It starts by explaining the underlying logic of the veto players approach and describing the specific derivation of the rules for the construction of the rigidity index, which aggregates all institutional provisions in a logically consistent way. It then explains why the lack of constitutional rigidity is a necessary but not sufficient condition for significant constitutional amendments in democratic countries. Finally, the author creates a new dataset on the significance of constitutional amendments and estimates the appropriate (heteroskedastic) model, which corroborates the theoretical expectations and demonstrates that more significant amendments lead to a better fit.
Gagasan Rousseau dalam mengkonstruksi hubungan antara pemerintah negara dengan rakyat lewat skema perjanjian masyarakat ((social contract) tidak terlepas dari pengaruh aliran pemikiran hukum alam (natural law). Salah satu ciri yang melekat pada ajaran hukum alam adalah tidak memisahkan antara hukum dan moral (moral as part of law). Aliran hukum itu memandang bahwa setiap manusia terlahir dalam keadaan atau kondisi bebas. Seperti dikatakan Rousseau pada bagian awal dari bukunya The Social Contract: “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains”. Dalam kehidupan setiap warga juga melekat hak-hak politik yang diakui secara universal. Atas dasar itu, rasionalitas hubungan antara penguasa (raja) dengan rakyat dalam suatu organisasi publik (negara) adalah didasarkan pada suatu perjanjian (kontrak) yang mengikat kedua belah pihak. Bilik suara di Tempat Pemungutan Suara (TPS) merupakan ruang bagi warga pemilih untuk mengekspresikan hak konstitusionalnya, dan menunaikan HAM-nya dalam bidang politik. Di bilik suara, warga pemilih secara langsung (tanpa diwakili) memberikan suaranya. Di ruang bilik suara, warga pemilih bebas menentukan pilihannya, dan di ruang bilik suara pula terjamin kerahasiaan suara warga pemilih. Kehadiran warga pemilih di ruang bilik suara ibarat melakukan kontrak sosial dengan calon pemangku daulat rakyat yang kelak akan mengatur dan mengurus negara. Ruang bilik suara merupakan “ruang pertama” dalam mengimplementasi makna kedaulatan rakyat, yakni ruang bagi warga pemilih untuk menyalurkan volonte generale atau pernyataan kehendak umum (general will).
This paper presents a review of existing literature to understand the effects and effectiveness of human rights treaties in the Asia Pacific region, particularly in Southeast Asian countries, in contrast to Western nations. The review argues that factors at the international/treaty level and factors at the domestic state level increase the difficulty of implementing effective international treaties on human rights. At the international level, the treaties and organizations to which states belong suffer some weakness as discussed in international relations theories, while seven factors are particularly important for promoting effectiveness of international human rights treaties at the domestic level: political capacity, economic development, national human rights institutes, regional human rights courts, regional intergovernmental organizations, strength of civil society, and political stability. Although the number of international human rights agreements signed and ratified by Asia Pacific states is increasing following the trends of Western states, less research focuses on the implementation and effects of these institutions. Asia Pacific nations face vastly different conditions than Western nations, such as more complicated security environments, larger cultural and religious differences, and less development and democratic values in some cases. Due to these differences, it is important to consider other potential variables that influence efficacy of treaty instruments for non-Western nations. What are the differences between implementation of human rights treaties in Western and Asian nations? How do they affect the efficacy of international agreements on individual human rights?
An independent judicial power is very important as one of the main characteristics of the rule of law, therefore its position must be maintained in Indonesia. The purpose of this paper confirms that any attempt to intervene in the authority of the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court in the justice system, including intervention from the President, must be considered an unconstitutional act and violates the ideals of the Indonesian rule of law. A review of the President's position in the statutory regulations found the fact that there was still a gap in the infiltration of the President's power over judicial authority. Specifically in two cases, the first relates to the ambivalence of the prosecutor's position that is not as firm as the Police. Second, the constitutional judge selection model. The need to re-arrange the mechanism for selecting constitutional judges derived from the President's proposal so that it can be more aligned with efforts to distance the President's power from the power of the judiciary. In addition to the recommendations to the formers to reorganize the two potential infiltrations, this paper also recommends the institutionalization of public petitions based on Mark Tushnet's ideas about populist constitutional law. The existence of a public petition institution becomes a forum for gathering input and advice in law enforcement and justice. The opening of the President to accept public petitions makes it easier for the people to submit law enforcement issues which, in a sense of people's justice, must be addressed.
Many argue that during conflict, executive power expands at the expense of the judiciary and civil liberties. Although this is a common conjecture, no systematic study of conflict and judicial independence exists. We argue that conflict, rather than strictly inhibiting independence, is instead a critical juncture that increases the possibility of institutional change, either positive or negative. We assess this claim in three ways: cross-national analyses of (1) de facto and (2) de jure judicial independence after the onset of conflict, and (3) a case study of statutory and jurisdictional changes to the federal judiciary after the outbreak of the U.S. Civil War. Each illustrates that conflict onset is associated with a higher likelihood of changing levels—both decreases and increases—rather than unidirectional decreases in judicial independence. We then present preliminary hypotheses and analyses for three factors that, given conflict onset, should be associated with either improved or worsened conditions for the judiciary. This study has implications for research on conflict, courts, and the rule of law in both political science and legal studies.
Independent judiciaries prevent democratic reversals, facilitate peaceful transitions of power, and legitimate democracy among citizens. We believe this judicial independence is important for citizen-level judicial confidence and faith in democratic institutions. I challenge this and argue that citizens living under terror threats lose confidence in their independent judiciaries. Terror threats lead citizens to enable the state leader to provide counterterrorism for their security, which has important implications for interbranch relations between the executive and the judiciary. Citizens lose confidence in independent judiciaries that provide due process for suspected terrorists. I test my argument with mixed effects models that incorporate the Global Terrorism Database and four waves of European Values Survey. The analyses demonstrate the negative effects of terror threats on judicial confidence when interacting terror threats with measures of judicial independence. My findings have important implications for the study of democratic confidence and the liberty-security dilemma.
This article investigates the role of political competition in explaining de facto judicial independence in non-democratic regimes. It argues that the electoral, political insurance explanation popular in the study of courts in democracies also offers explanatory power in the autocratic context, despite popular wisdom otherwise: due to the relatively greater risks of losing power in non-democracies, electoral competition is highly salient when present. This is examined via hierarchical and fixed effects models that show competition strongly associated with increased levels of independence. This relationship is robust to alternative model and data specification, and has strong out-of-sample predictive accuracy.
In this paper we construct an index of constitutional commitment to social security (CCSS) in seven areas: Old Age, Survivors, Disability, Unemployment, Sickness, Work Injury, and Income Support. We have found a positive connection between our measure of constitutional commitment to social security and the extent and coverage of actual measures of social security laws. The constitutional text of each nation seems to play a role in explaining the large variations in welfare state coverage around the world.
The European Network of Councils for the judiciary defined indicators and gathered data to assess the formal safeguards for independence of the judiciary in twenty European countries. It also conducted a survey among judges about their perception of judicial independence. Distinguishing between old and new democracies, statistical analysis of the data show a strong correlation between perceptions of judges and those of citizens for the old democracies and a weaker but still sizeable correlation for the new democracies. Regression analyses for the two groups of countries reveal that in the old democracies the improper allocation of cases, altering working conditions due to changes in pay, pensions and retirement age and (the threat of) claims of personal liability are the three aspects that have the largest impact on perceived independence, while in the new democracies improper appointments, inappropriate pressure and media influence are most important. The connection between perceived independence and formal safeguards is weak. It is found, however, that the formal legal position of the judiciary is important in new democracies, while in old democracies the funding of the judiciary plays a role. Formal safeguards regarding case allocation have positive effects on perceived independence with both groups of countries.
Scholars who examine judicial independence offer various theories regarding its development. Some argue that it serves as a type of insurance for regimes who believe their majority status is in jeopardy. Other scholars argue that insurance theory does not offer an adequate explanation until states democratize. We argue that part of the explanation for these mixed results involves the inadequacy of insurance theory as a complete explanation. Our paper develops a multidimensional theory that focuses on the interplay of constraints on ruling elites derived from levels of political competition within the government, the potential for social competition within the state, and regime type. We test our argument using a dataset of approximately 145 countries over forty years, and our results support the argument that development of judicial independence is related to the political landscape encountered by the executive. Ethnic fractionalization in the state, political competition, and regime type each has a conditional effect on the observation of judicial independence.
We present a new cross-national measure of de facto judicial independence, which is available for 200 countries from 1948 to 2012. To do so, we introduce a statistical measurement model for uncovering latent concepts commonly encountered in time-series, cross-sectional analyses in comparative politics and international relations. Our approach addresses unique challenges that arise in these data: temporal dependence in the observed and unobserved variables, conceptual boundedness in the latent quantity, and substantial missing data and measurement error in the observable indicators. The resulting measures match a common conceptual definition of independence with greater reliability than existing alternatives. The model is extensible to many concepts in comparative politics and international relations.
I investigate the non-unanimous decisions of judges on the Estonian Supreme Court. I argue that since judges on the court enjoy high de jure independence, dissent frequently, and are integrated in the normal judicial hierarchy, the Estonian Supreme Court is a crucial case for the presumption that judicial disagreement reveals policy preferences. I analyse dissenting opinions using an ideal point response model. Examining the characteristics of cases which discriminated with respect to the recovered dimension, I show that this dimension cannot be interpreted as a meaningful policy dimension, but instead reflects disagreement about the proper scope of constitutional redress.
The relationship between de jure and de facto judicial independence is much debated in the literature on judicial politics. Some studies find no relationship between the formal rules governing the structure of the judiciary and de facto judicial independence, while others find a tight correlation. This article sets out to reassess the relationship between de jure and de facto judicial independence using a new theory and an expanded data set. De jure institutional protections, we argue, do not work in isolation but work conjunctively, so that particular combinations of protections are more likely to be effective than others. We find that rules governing the selection and removal of judges are the only de jure protections that actually enhance judicial independence in practice and that they work conjunctively. This effect is strongest in authoritarian regimes and in contexts with checks on executive authority.
Leading explanations of judicial independence argue political competition incentivizes those in power to create independent courts as insurance against uncertain futures. While much work addresses the role competition plays, little analyzes the fundamental assumption that courts provide political insurance. I offer an original hypothesis as to how independent courts provide insurance against post-tenure punishment and test this using data on the post-tenure fate of leaders from 1960 to 2004. Results show independence is associated with significantly higher probabilities of unpunished post-tenure fate. The article builds on and extends existing political insurance explanations and offers the first test of one of their critical assumptions.
This article outlines an effort to gauge cross-national and intertemporal differences in law-based orders for 165 nations from 1850 to 2010. Despite the increasing importance attributed to “the rule of law,” there have been few efforts to develop objective measures of it. The conceptual foundations for this effort rest on a review of centuries of scholarship concerning the societal utility of law. Data are drawn from a variety of sources to create two composite measures. The derivation of these measures is reported and the measures are examined to determine whether they present reinforcing profiles of a country's legal order.
Do institutions designed to limit arbitrary government promote the survival of democratic regimes? Although the international effort to build the rule of law is predicated on a belief that they do, mainstream research on democratic survival typically treats institutions as epiphenomenal. We argue that institutions encourage regime survival by addressing problems of monitoring and social coordination that complicate democratic compromise. We find that property-rights institutions generally, and judicial institutions specifically, encourage survival, especially when macroeconomic conditions favor inter-class compromise.
The relationship between de jure and de facto judicial independence is much debated in the literature. Some studies find no relationship between the formal rules governing the structure of the judiciary and its de facto independence. Other studies find a significant correlation between de jure and de facto judicial independence, with one study even touting de jure judicial independence as the most powerful predictor of de facto judicial independence. This paper sets out to explain these divergent findings by reassessing the relationship between de jure and de facto judicial independence using data on de jure judicial independence from the Comparative Constitutions Project and a new measure of de facto judicial independence from Linzer and Staton. The resulting analysis addresses many of the empirical problems in the existing literature, providing a robust test of the effect of de jure judicial independence on de facto judicial independence. Our findings indicate that rules governing the selection and removal of judges are the only de jure protections that actually enhance judicial independence in practice. This effect is strongest in authoritarian regimes and in contexts with checks on executive authority.
One of the most significant developments in Latin American democracies since the beginning of the Third Wave of democratization is the rise to power of political outsiders. However, the study of the political consequences of this phenomenon has been neglected. This article begins to fill that gap by examining whether the rise of outsiders in the region increases the level of executive-legislative confrontation. Using an original database of political outsiders in Latin America, it reports a series of logistic regressions showing that the risk of executive-legislative conflict significantly increases when the president is an outsider. The likelihood of institutional paralysis increases when an independent gets elected, due to the legislative body's lack of support for the president and the outsider's lack of political skills. The risk of an executive's attempted dissolution of Congress is also much higher when the president is an outsider.
Scholars have identified a number of societal features that contribute to the support of human rights. Controlling for the most prominent of these factors, we examine the degree to which judicial independence (JI) exerts an autonomous positive effect on human rights. We use a cross-sectional design, drawing on data for the 27 European Union members and its four prospective members, in conjunction with ordinary least squares (OLS) regression. We find that multiple indices of JI based on expert judgment, which include institutional but predominantly behavioral measures, reveal JI producing the most powerful positive effect in the support of human rights among the variables included in the analysis. Multiple measures of JI based on public surveys of the trustworthiness of a society's judicial institutions exert a positive, but not statistically significant, effect on support of human rights. Indeed, these latter effects are eclipsed by the relative equality of a society's national executive and legislature and its GDP/capita. Surprisingly, judicial review exerts no statistically significant effect on human rights protection, counter to the conventional wisdom that has driven so many constitutional designers in the post-World War II era. Our findings suggest that, while an independent judiciary holds the greatest potential for protecting human rights, constitutional drafters should focus less on institutional elements related to judicial independence and judicial review. Rather, those crafting constitutions intended to protect human rights should look to dispersing government power by enhancing electoral competitiveness and fostering judicial independence.
This global cross-national study seeks to build upon earlier studies that have tested the impact of constitutional provisions upon state human rights behavior. I examine across a twenty-year period the impact of constitutional provisions for six individual freedoms and four due process rights on state abuse of the right to personal integrity. Here I find statistical evidence that some constitutional provisions do matter, even when controlling for democracy and for other factors known to influence human rights behavior. While none of the constitutional provisions for individual freedoms is statistically significant, two of the due process provisions (provisions for fair and public trials) do decrease substantially the likelihood that states will abuse their own citizens' human rights. The other two due process provisions, which have become almost universal, the ban against torture, and the writ of habeas corpus, are quite disappointing in that they do not produce the expected impact. Over the long term, the trial provisions would lead to a decrease of about one level in the personal integrity abuse score, which is only somewhat less than the impact produced by other variables in the model, such as population size.
The conditions associated with the existence and stability of democratic society have been a leading concern of political philosophy. In this paper the problem is attacked from a sociological and behavioral standpoint, by presenting a number of hypotheses concerning some social requisites for democracy, and by discussing some of the data available to test these hypotheses. In its concern with conditions—values, social institutions, historical events—external to the political system itself which sustain different general types of political systems, the paper moves outside the generally recognized province of political sociology. This growing field has dealt largely with the internal analysis of organizations with political goals, or with the determinants of action within various political institutions, such as parties, government agencies, or the electoral process. It has in the main left to the political philosopher the larger concern with the relations of the total political system to society as a whole.
This crossnational study seeks to explain variations in governmental repression of human rights to personal integrity (state terrorism) in a 153-country sample during the eighties. We outline theoretical perspectives on this topic and subject them to empirical tests using a technique appropriate for our pooled cross-sectional time-series design, namely, ordinary least squares with robust standard errors and a lagged dependent variable. We find democracy and participation in civil or international war to have substantively important and statistically significant effects on repression. The effects of economic development and population size are more modest. The hypothesis linking leftist regime types to abuse of personal integrity rights receives some support. We find no reliable evidence that population growth, British cultural influence, military control, or economic growth affect levels of repression. We conclude by considering the implications of our findings for scholars and practitioners concerned with the prevention of personal integrity abuse.
Argentina's constitution and electoral rules promote a fragmented polity. It is in those environments that inde- pendent judiciaries develop. Instead, most analysts do not consider the Argentina judiciary as independent. In this article we attempt to explain this contradiction by showing that this perception is inappropriate. We de- velop a test of the hypothesis that the judiciary is independent by empiri- cally examining the political incen- tives faced by individual justices in their decision making. Our results show an often-defiant Court subject to constraints. Our measure of defi- ance is the probability of a non- aligned justice voting against the government. We find that judicial decision making was strategic. The probability of voting against the gov- ernment falls the stronger the control of the president over the legislature, but increases the less aligned the justice is with the President. Thus,
Human Rights Quarterly 23.3 (2001) 650-677
The US State Department's annual publication, the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, has been a continuing source of controversy since it was first issued in the mid-1970s. These reports, which assess the degree to which human rights standards are respected in countries around the world, have been examined carefully by policymakers and academics alike. Particularly in the 1980s, critics frequently charged the State Department with biased reporting. The State Department has been accused of unfairly painting with the tar of repression countries ideologically opposed to the United States, while unjustly favoring countries where the US has had a compelling interest.
Commentary on the Country Reports has not all been negative, however. Interviews conducted by Innes and the results of careful, critical examinations over the years (e.g., Lawyers Committee for Human Rights Reports for 1982, 1984, 1987, 1991, 1993, 1995, 1996), tend to agree that the annual State Department Reports are an invaluable resource that accurately reports on the conditions of most of the countries most of the time. Though critical of reports on particular countries, they also have suggested that the reports have substantially improved over the years.
In this study we present the results of our systematic, quantitative examination of the State Department Reports (1977-1996), comparing them with the reports issued by Amnesty International (1977-1996) , to find if existing evidence is consistent with allegations of bias. In conducting this examination we will fill a lacuna in the fast-developing quantitative research on human rights for in spite of the great public and scholarly scrutiny of these allegations, no statistical investigation of them has ever been conducted. We will also examine the historical record to find if evidence does indeed indicate that the reports have improved over time.
Since the mid-1980s researchers have increasingly turned their attention to human rights issues. Most of the quantitative research conducted under the human rights rubric thus far has investigated violations that pertain to personal (or physical) integrity: the right not to be imprisoned, tortured, disappeared, or executed, either arbitrarily or for one's political views. One vein of human rights research has attempted to isolate the impact of human rights considerations on foreign policy outputs, such as foreign aid and immigration policies of the United States government. Another fast-growing line of research seeks a theoretical understanding of why these human rights are violated. Beginning in the 1970s, numerous empirical studies addressed the problem of explaining cross-national variations in the respect for personal integrity rights. In the last two decades, many studies from both of these veins have been based on statistical analysis conducted either wholly or in part with data gathered from the U.S. State Department's Country Reports. Given the large and growing amount of empirical research based on these reports and those of Amnesty International, a systematic comparison of the two is long overdue.
This study should also be of interest to international relations and foreign policy scholars with a more general orientation. Statements of policymakers made in the introduction of the Country Reports (e.g., 1982) and statements by political appointees suggest that particular presidents' ideological orientations are reflected in the reports. Still, the career officers who are often responsible for compiling the Country Reports may not always be malleable to presidential preferences. Our analysis will also provide a means of assessing whether presidents have successfully reached through the layers of bureaucracy to affect the State Department's evaluations of human rights. And they will also provide us with some indication of whether the reports may have changed in reaction to the breakdown of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, events that have been shown to have changed other aspects of American foreign policy.
Finally, it should be noted that this inquiry is important to practical politics. The Country Reports, along with Amnesty International's annual reports, are the two most widely distributed and read sources of information on countries' human rights practices. Certainly credible allegations of bias have been around for a long time, but as yet...
Here we seek to build on our earlier research (Poe and Tate, 1994) by re-testing similar models on a data set covering a much longer time span; the period from 1976 to 1993. Several of our findings differ from those of our earlier work. Here we find statistical evidence that military regimes lead to somewhat greater human rights abuse, defined in terms of violations of personal integrity, once democracy and a host of other factors are controlled. Further, we find that countries that have experienced British colonial influence tend to have relatively fewer abuses of personal integrity rights than others. Finally, our results suggest that leftist countries are actually less repressive of these basic human rights than non-leftist countries. Consistent with the Poe and Tate (1994) study, however, we find that past levels of repression, democracy, population size, economic development, and international and civil wars exercise statistically significant and substantively important impacts on personal integrity abuse.
Relatively little empirical research on the protection of human rights considers the significance of legal rules and institutions. This article examines the effects of legal institutions on the general protection of political rights and on the protection of one discrete right—freedom from unreasonable search and seizure. A cross-sectional analysis reveals that legal institutions, and in particular judicial independence, are significant in protecting human rights. The significance remains even when extralegal variables, such as wealth, are considered. The presence of an explicit constitutional protection against unreasonable search and seizure does not have an independently significant effect on human rights but does affect the manner in which rights are protected.