Do Human Rights Treaty Obligations Matter for Ratification?

Abstract

International relations scholarship assumes that states weigh the costs and benefits of treaty ratification. In human rights, the worse a particular state’s record, the higher the presumptive costs of ratification and the lower the likelihood of ratification. But prior work neglects variation in the extent of obligation that different treaties create. In this article, we argue and demonstrate that (1) human rights treaties differ substantially in the scope and scale of the obligations they contain, (2) this variation can be measured, and (3) it matters for ratification. Treaties that create a larger number of demanding obligations imply greater potential costs of compliance for states. The larger the number of demanding obligations, the more grounds various actors will have to challenge a state’s practices. We analyze innovative data on treaty obligations and commitments for the ten core global human rights treaties to test our propositions, and we find strong support.

Full text

Do Human Rights Treaty Obligations Matter for Ratification?
Journal of Human Rights (accepted version)
Suzie Mulesky
Senior Behavioral Scientist
Vanguard
Wayne Sandholtz (corresponding author)
John A. McCone Chair in International Relations
Department of Political Science and International Relations and
Gould School of Law
University of Southern California
wayne.sandholtz@usc.edu
Kelebogile Zvobgo
Government Department and Global Research Institute
William & Mary

1
Abstract
International relations scholarship assumes that states weigh the costs and benefits of treaty
ratification. In human rights, the worse a particular state’s record, the higher the presumptive
costs of ratification and the lower the likelihood of ratification. But prior work neglects variation
in the extent of obligation that different treaties create. In this article, we argue and demonstrate
that (1) human rights treaties differ substantially in the scope and scale of the obligations they
contain, (2) this variation can be measured, and (3) it matters for ratification. Treaties that create
a larger number of demanding obligations imply greater potential costs of compliance for states.
The larger the number of demanding obligations, the more grounds various actors will have to
challenge a state’s practices. We analyze innovative data on treaty obligations and commitments
for the ten core global human rights treaties to test our propositions, and we find strong support.

2
Introduction
The assumption that states weigh the costs and benefits of treaty ratification has been
foundational to a rich vein of international relations scholarship on treaty commitment (Downs et
al., 1996; Goodliffe & Hawkins, 2006; Hathaway, 2003, 2007; Simmons, 2009). Both theory and
empirical analysis have focused almost exclusively on states’ general human rights performance:
the worse a particular state’s record, the greater the presumptive costs it will face following
ratification, either from adapting its policies or being penalized for non-compliance.
1
For
instance, with reference to the International Criminal Court, Chapman & Chaudoin (2013)
contend that the prospect of ICC prosecutions makes non-democracies with a history of political
violence less likely to ratify. By contrast, Simmons & Danner (2010) argue that for states
transitioning to democracy, the likely costs of ratifying the Rome Statute can enhance the
credibility of the commitment, thus making ratification more likely. However, ratification costs
do not solely originate with states’ domestic contexts; they also originate with treaties
themselves, based on the degree to which they create demanding obligations for states.
Scholarship up until this point has largely ignored how a treaty’s text affects the costs of
compliance and, consequently, ratification. Scholarship has also overlooked variation in the
extent of obligation that different treaties create.
2
Extending research on treaty commitment, this
article assesses whether this variation influences states’ ratification decisions.
We theorize that, as they weigh ratification, states take into account the extent of the
obligations that human rights treaties would require of them. Treaties that create a larger number
of demanding obligations imply greater potential costs of compliance for ratifying states. The
larger the number of demanding obligations, the more grounds various actors – citizens, activists,
human rights organizations, journalists, etc. – will have to challenge a state’s practices, whether

3
in public fora or in courts of law. States may therefore be more cautious in ratifying more
demanding treaties than less demanding treaties.
In brief, we argue that (1) human rights treaties differ substantially in the scope and scale
of the obligations they contain, (2) this variation can be observed and measured, and (3) it
matters for ratification. To test our propositions, we analyze innovative data on treaty obligations
and commitments for the ten core global human rights treaties. Consistent with our expectations,
we find that the more demanding a treaty is, the less likely states are to ratify it within five years
and within ten years of the treaty opening for signature or a country gaining its independence and
becoming eligible to join treaties, whichever is later.
Our study makes conceptual, theoretical, and empirical contributions to scholarship on
treaty commitment. We offer a new way to think about and measure potential ratification costs:
the “demandingness” of treaties. A larger number of demanding treaty obligations implies a
broader range of behaviors in which a violation could occur. Where states must be attentive to a
wider range of behaviors, the potential costs of compliance are higher. Our findings are relevant
to longstanding questions regarding the hypothesized tradeoff between how costly a treaty is to
ratify and how many states decide to participate in it. In their influential article, Downs, Rocke &
Barsoom (1996: 399) ask, “Is this trade-off real?” Treaty drafters have claimed that it is. For
example, in negotiating the text of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), the United Kingdom argued that CEDAW “should be
of sufficient flexibility to cater to different social and economic conditions . . . from country to
country.” Barbados and Norway also suggested that “a lower standard will have to be set by the
Convention before a significant number of States will feel able to sign it” (Commission on the
Status of Women, 1976). In contrast, Gilligan (2004) has argued that if treaties allow states to set

4
policies at different levels, the “broader-deeper” trade-off does not exist.
3
Our study offers
empirical evidence that the “broader-deeper” tradeoff is real in human rights treaties, even when
taking into account the main flexibility mechanism in human rights lawmaking: reservations.
The next section offers a theoretical account of human rights treaty commitment,
incorporating our concept of demanding obligations, and spells out our central propositions.
After that, we explain and justify our main conceptual innovation, the demandingness of treaties,
and we outline our empirical expectations. Subsequent sections describe data from our
International Human Rights Obligations and Commitments (IHROC) data project and evaluate
our central propositions in light of the data.
Theory: Human Rights Treaty Commitment
In line with established research, we assume that governments weigh the likely benefits and costs
of joining a human rights treaty (Cole, 2005, 2009; Downs et al., 1996; Goodliffe & Hawkins,
2006; Hathaway, 2003, 2007; Sandholtz, 2017; von Stein, 2016). Though existing research
theorizes that the source of ratification costs is in states’ domestic contexts, we argue that
ratification costs can also originate with the treaty itself, based on the degree to which the treaty
creates demanding obligations for states, which we refer to as treaty “demandingness.” Table 1
lists the treaties included in our analysis.
4
Our study thus integrates insights from theories that have remained largely separate in
international law and international relations scholarship: legalization and treaty commitment.
The legalization project is about institutional design, offering a framework for placing
international agreements along a continuum, from less legalized to more legalized. Whereas the
legalization project leads up to the moment of treaty design, we assess the effects of treaty design

5
on ratification behavior. We also move beyond the legalization project by showing that even at
the most legalized end of the spectrum – formal treaties – there is substantial variation in
obligations.
Existing scholarship on treaty commitment also provides a foundation for our work. We
accept and build on this literature’s main findings, which focus almost entirely on state-level
factors affecting ratification choices, e.g., regime type and domestic human rights respect
(Hafner-Burton et al., 2015; Neumeyer, 2007; Simmons, 2009). We innovate by creating a
treaty-level variable that we propose also affects ratification decisions: the degree to which the
text of a treaty creates a larger number of demanding obligations for states, i.e., the extent to
which a treaty is more demanding. Treaties that are more demanding imply greater potential
Table 1. International human rights treaties, 1948-2014.
Code
Name
Opened for Signature
States Parties5
GENO
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the
Crime of Genocide
Dec. 9, 1948
145
CERD
International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms
of Racial Discrimination
Mar. 7, 1966
175
ICCPR
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
Dec. 16, 1966
167
ICESCR
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural
Rights
Dec. 16, 1966
161
CEDAW
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms
of Discrimination against Women
Dec. 18, 1979
186
CAT
Convention against Torture and Other Cruel Inhuman
or Degrading Treatment or Punishment
Dec. 10, 1984
154
CRC
Convention on the Rights of the Child
Nov. 20, 1989
190
CRMW
International Convention on the Protection of the Rights
of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families
Dec. 18, 1990
47
CRPD
Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
Dec. 13, 2006
148
CED
Convention for the Protection of All Persons
from Enforced Disappearance
Dec. 20, 2006
44

6
compliance costs on ratifying states than treaties that are less demanding. After discussing the
main costs of ratifying human rights treaties, below, we briefly summarize the main benefits.
Costs of Human Rights Treaty Ratification
Human rights treaties create costs, and we argue that more demanding treaties generate greater
potential costs by making it easier for domestic and international actors to identify and penalize a
state’s non-compliance. In other words, the text of a treaty affects the likely costs of complying
with its terms. By focusing almost exclusively on state-level attributes, existing research on
treaty commitment has so far tended to assume that human rights treaties do not vary in terms of
the burden of the obligations they create or that those differences do not matter. But we argue
that treaties vary dramatically in the quantity of obligations they impose as well as in how
demanding those obligations are.
From some theoretical perspectives, the substantive content of human rights treaty
obligations is essentially irrelevant. For international law realists, states ratify human rights
treaties for political or symbolic reasons. Posner (2014: 65) suggests that “ratification of a human
rights treaty may seem like a costless propaganda exercise” for non-democracies or rights-
violating democracies. World society theory, for its part, sees state adhesion to human rights
treaties as the product of world cultural scripts that states follow in order to be, and to be seen as,
full members of the world society – not as the result of estimating the costs and benefits of
specific treaty provisions (Goodman & Jinks, 2013). Other theories attribute human rights treaty
ratification to the socialization that takes place in international organizations and through
transnational networks (Goodman & Jinks, 2013). In all of these perspectives, however, the
extent of the formal obligations that human rights treaties create does not factor into states’
ratification decisions. Existing theories postulate that states weigh the costs and benefits of treaty

7
ratification, but for no category of states is the actual content of the treaty a factor in that
calculus.
Benefits of Human Rights Treaty Ratification
A primary finding of international relations research is that the benefits of human rights treaty
ratification vary across different types of domestic regimes (Simmons, 2009; von Stein, 2016).
For strong democracies, the benefits of ratifying a human rights treaty are in part symbolic or
expressive: joining affirms a country’s core human rights norms and values, as well as its
commitment to promoting rights internationally (Simmons, 2009). Strong democracies may also
foresee benefits from raising the level of rights fulfillment in repressive countries because large-
scale abuses can contribute to civil conflict, regional instability, humanitarian crises, and migrant
and refugee pressures. Transitional democracies – those with new democratic institutions but
recent experience with civil war or repressive regimes – foresee a different set of benefits from
human rights treaty membership. For these states, joining a treaty can enhance the credibility of
their commitment to democracy, rights, and the rule of law (Hafner-Burton et al., 2015;
Moravcsik, 2000; Simmons, 2009).
Authoritarian governments may ratify human rights treaties, not because they plan to
change their ways but because they might hope for some reputational gains. Adhering to a treaty
might relieve some of the pressure to ratify from states with rights-promoting foreign policies
and international and domestic non-governmental organizations (NGOs). It is possible that such
reputational gains disappear once it becomes clear that a repressive regime has no intention of
changing its behavior (Nielsen & Simmons, 2015). Authoritarian governments either fail to
foresee that a human rights treaty might have real domestic and international legal and political
effects, or assume that those consequences can be prevented or suppressed (Conrad & Ritter,

8
2019; Simmons, 2009).
Still, the benefits of human rights treaty ratification may not depend only on regime type.
International human rights norms are part of world society institutions that define modern
statehood and shape its structures (Boli-Bennett & Meyer, 1978; Wotipka & Ramirez, 2007);
therefore, subscribing to the global human rights regime may be seen as an inherent component
of modern statehood (Meyer et al., 1987; Meyer et al., 1997), whereby countries ritualistically
commit to human rights treaties as evidence of their legitimacy as nation-states (Cole, 2009:
572). Conversely, the failure to ratify entails perceived costs, in the form of reduced international
approval or legitimacy. Goodman & Jinks (2013) ascribe the global diffusion of human rights
norms to processes by which state actors are acculturated, or socialized, into human rights
discourse, which external pressure or coercion cannot explain.
Demanding Treaty Obligations
Because the concept at the core of our argument and analysis – demanding treaty obligations – is
a fairly new one, we first define the concept and explain its usefulness. We propose that treaty
provisions create obligations of varying demandingness. A more demanding obligation is one for
which compliance likely requires more difficult or costly state action, for example greater policy
adaptation or increased official accountability.
In operationalizing demanding obligations, we build on insights from the legalization
project but go beyond it in key ways. In Abbott et al.’s formulation, obligation, precision, and
delegation define a continuum of legalization. Norms are more legalized when they demonstrate
a greater degree of obligation, precision, and delegation (Abbott et al., 2000; Goldstein et al.,
2000). Our study puts obligation at the center, moving the concept beyond the legalization

9
project’s “soft” versus “hard” distinction, to suggest that the obligations entailed by formal
treaties (representing high levels of legalization) still vary in terms of what they demand of
states. Three dimensions help us identify demanding obligations: precision, strength, and the
stipulation that a state takes actions at home. We define a more demanding treaty as one that
contains a larger number of demanding obligations.
6
The first distinction is whether a treaty provision creates an obligation or duty for states.
For example, Article 6(2) of the CRC establishes an obligation: “States Parties shall ensure to the
maximum extent possible the survival and development of the child.”
7
Not every treaty provision
creates an obligation. Treaty provisions serve numerous other functions, including defining
treaty terms, outlining treaty mechanics, and establishing a treaty body. Figure 1 depicts the
proportion of treaty provisions that create obligations in the ten treaties included in our analysis.
8
Figure 1. Proportion of treaty provisions that create obligations.
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
CAT CED CEDAW CERD CRC CRMW CRPD GENO ICCPR ICESCR
Treaty
Total Provisions
Obligations
Other Provisions

10
For provisions that establish obligations, we coded for three characteristics. First,
obligations can be precise or imprecise (Abbott et al., 2000; Koremenos, 2016).
9
Precise
obligations call for or ban specific, observable actions by state or other actors. Precision means
that non-compliant behavior can be identified, whereas imprecise, broad, or ambiguous language
creates uncertainty as to what constitutes a violation. We argue that more general or imprecise
legal rules will be less costly for states to comply with because states can more easily argue that
their behavior is consistent with the rule. More precise rules will have the opposite effect,
however: the more precise the obligation, the easier it is for other actors to determine whether or
not the state is meeting it. The following is exemplary of a precise obligation:
“Persons committing genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in article III
shall be punished, whether they are constitutionally responsible rulers, public
officials or private individuals.”
10
This obligation specifies the “who,” persons committing genocide or other acts; the “what,” shall
be punished; and “under what circumstances,” regardless of status. Next is an example of an
imprecise obligation, where the “who” is not clear nor is the “what.” There are a range of
possible ways to interpret “effective” and “legislative, administrative, judicial or other
measures”:
“Each State Party shall take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other
measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction.”
11
A potential objection to this logic might be that precision is really capturing the scope of
provisions; provisions may be so specific that they narrow the state’s obligation. More generally-
stated obligations might require more of states because they are more broadly defined. We
disagree. An obligation that is broad in scope implies lower compliance costs simply because it
is difficult for actors to determine that it is being violated. A duty to provide for a “healthful

11
environment,” for example, is imprecise because it does not generate clear expectations as to
what a state must do and, therefore, it does not facilitate clear judgments as to when a state falls
short. Of course, in a substantive sense, fully providing for a “healthful environment” would be
costly in terms of the investments that would be required. But such an obligation would not be
costly in the sense of establishing a basis for legal accountability, which is what matters here. We
argue that the cumulation of precise (even narrow) obligations amounts to a more demanding
treaty on the whole.
The second dimension captures whether an obligation is strong or weak. Weak
obligations express what a state should or should not do; strong obligations express what a state
must or must not do. A strong obligation requires states to enact laws, achieve objectives, or
carry out actions. The difference between “shall” or “shall not” and “undertake to” is seemingly
small but substantially changes the costs a state is likely to bear. Other examples of treaty terms
giving states a wide berth to decide the extent of their obligation include: “when circumstances
so warrant,” “take all feasible measures,” “whenever appropriate,” “whenever desirable.” These
phrases let states decide, allowing them to individually set and meet bare-minimum standards.
This language does little more than announce that states should do something. It is much less
clear when a state is in violation of a weak obligation because the state is only obligated to make
an effort to achieve an objective. As a strong obligation, we would reference the following:
“States Parties shall grant women equal rights with men to acquire, change or
retain their nationality. They shall ensure in particular that neither marriage to an
alien nor change of nationality by the husband during marriage shall automatically
change the nationality of the wife, render her stateless or force upon her the
nationality of the husband.”
12
For a weak obligation, consider the following example:
“States Parties undertake to respect the right of the child to preserve his or her
identity, including nationality, name and family relations as recognized by law

12
without unlawful interference.”
13
The final dimension taps into whether a provision stipulates domestic action, which
means that an executive, administrative, legislative, or judicial body must fulfill the obligation.
The vast majority of, though not all, treaty obligations require domestic action. One obligation
that entails domestic action is the following:
“Migrant workers and members of their families shall have the right to equality
with nationals of the State concerned before the courts and tribunals. In the
determination of any criminal charge against them or of their rights and
obligations in a suit of law, they shall be entitled to a fair and public hearing by a
competent, independent and impartial tribunal established by law.”
14
Some obligations pertain to states between and among themselves or vis-a-vis an international
body. Here is one obligation that does not stipulate domestic action but international action:
“States Parties undertake to submit to the Secretary General of the United
Nations, for consideration by the Committee, a report on the legislative, judicial,
administrative or other measures which they have adopted to give effect to the
provisions of the present Convention and on the progress made in this
respect…”
15
Implementing domestic measures generally entails more direct and substantial costs of
adjustment and compliance for states than fulfilling obligations to the international community
broadly speaking. An established literature documents that human rights treaties affect states
primarily through domestic avenues, by empowering domestic civil society and domestic bodies
like national human rights institutions to pressure governments through political mobilization or
judicial action (Simmons, 2009). Of course, there can also be international costs associated with
violating human rights treaties, but the three mechanisms associated with enforcement of
international economic, security, and environmental agreements – reciprocity, reputation, and
retaliation – are simply not at work when it comes to human rights treaties, or at least not to the

13
same extent (Geisinger & Stein, 2008; Guzman, 2008). This is why much of the scholarship on
human rights law turns to domestic institutions and actors to explain how human rights
agreements are enforced (Conrad & Ritter, 2019; Hathaway, 2003; Simmons, 2009).
16
Related to this point, one might argue that another design feature of international human
rights treaties relevant to their demandingness is whether or not states accept the jurisdiction of a
treaty body, court, or committee to receive submissions from other states or from individuals, to
interpret the treaty, or to initiate inquiries (Reiners, 2021). In the human rights treaties we
analyze, such acceptance is always subject to an optional clause or protocol. For this reason, the
third dimension in the legalization framework – delegation – does not figure into our concept of
demanding obligations. Delegation of enforcement to international mechanisms does not vary for
nine of the ten treaties – it is optional. If some of the treaties required that individual complaints,
for example, be heard by a treaty committee with the authority to issue binding judgments, then
delegation to such bodies would offer an additional source of variation to analyze.
17
One might also argue that each dimension should be analyzed separately. But we contend
that strength, precision, and required domestic action contribute to demandingness.
18
If, for
example, obligations are precisely worded but weak, states still have the flexibility to interpret
their actions as compliant. For example, states can precisely craft the right to universal education
by specifying that all children should be enrolled in primary school. However, if states are only
obligated to “take all feasible measures” to accomplish this goal, they can always say they did all
they could and blame failure on circumstances outside of their control.
Hypotheses
In this section, we specify our empirical expectations.

14
Demanding Obligations
As previously discussed, we expect that states will see treaties containing more demanding
obligations as more costly to ratify, because they increase the likelihood that non-compliance
will be identified, reported out, contested, and subject to political or judicial action at the
domestic level. Prior research suggests that domestic accountability processes, including political
mobilization and litigation, are effective in inducing governments to comply with human rights
treaty obligations (Hill & Jones, 2014; Simmons, 2009). Domestic actors keen on improving
respect for human rights will be better able to rely on treaty law that establishes demanding
obligations.
At the international level, various actors – from rights-promoting states to transnational
NGOs and review mechanisms like the Universal Periodic Review – can also bring pressure to
bear on states that violate human rights treaty commitments. As with domestic actors, treaties
containing more demanding obligations make it easier for international actors to observe,
document, and denounce non-compliance, and take steps to impose costs on the violating state.
Shaming, reducing aid or investment, engaging in political action, or filing lawsuits are but a few
examples of the actions human rights promoters can take to achieve their objectives (Zvobgo,
2023). In brief, more demanding obligations create points of leverage for human rights
defenders. This logic leads to the following proposition:
Hypothesis 1: States will be less likely to ratify treaties with a larger number of
demanding obligations than treaties with a smaller number of demanding obligations.
Regime Type
The likely costliness of a treaty to a country also depends on that country’s existing level of

15
respect for the rights covered in that treaty. For example, an established democracy would likely,
at the time of ratification, already be largely compliant with the human rights obligations
contained in a particular treaty. But, given the greater openness of democratic regimes, in terms
of a free press and access to courts of law, democracies might actually expect greater public
attention, criticism, and/or legal consequences for rights violations, relative to non-democracies
(Chapman & Chaudoin, 2013; Solis and Zvobgo, 2023). An autocratic government, in contrast,
could more easily suppress criticism or complaints that it was violating human rights.
Autocracies might also be disposed to ratify human rights treaties as a perceived means of
deflecting criticism (Hathaway, 2003; Simmons, 2009). In other words, the anticipated effect of
treaty demandingness on ratification may be different for democracies than for autocracies, given
the difference in potential downstream costs.
19
We therefore hypothesize an interaction effect
between treaty demandingness and regime type.
Hypothesis 2: Democracies will be less likely than autocracies to ratify more demanding
treaties.
Reservations
States sometimes attempt to adjust their treaty obligations using reservations. Reservations are
permissible unless a treaty expressly prohibits them and as long as they are not “incompatible
with the object and purpose of the treaty.”
20
States can enter reservations at any time, including
before or after ratification or accession, but the vast majority of reservations are registered at the
time of ratification (Zvobgo et al., 2020). States’ ability to modulate their treaty obligations
raises the question of whether reservations wash out differences in treaty demandingness. That
is, countries might simply enter more reservations on more demanding treaties,
21
canceling the
effect of treaty demandingness on ratification. We argue that they do not, for several reasons.

16
First, reservations to human rights treaties are rare, as Zvobgo et al. (2020) show. The
authors introduce and analyze the IHROC – Treaty Reservations dataset, now in its second
version, which captures reservations and declarations for the ten core global human rights
treaties at the paragraph level.
22
Each treaty provision that creates an obligation represents for
each ratifying country an opportunity to enter a reservation and/or a declaration.
23
So, each data
observation is a country-provision.
24
As an illustration, through 2014, 145 countries had ratified,
acceded, or succeeded to GENO, with 6 provisions creating obligations. Thus, for GENO, there
are 870 opportunities (145 ´ 6) to reserve. Of those 870 opportunities, states reserved in fewer
than 40 cases, with a reservation rate of roughly 4 percent, the highest in the sample.
25
Second, what matters is that states have the option of reserving, not that they actually
reserve. All ten of the treaties in our analysis permit reservations, which means that the capacity
to reserve does not vary.
26
The capacity to reserve, in other words, is a constant across treaties,
across states, and across time. If treaties varied in terms of demanding obligations and the
capacity to reserve, we could explore the possibility that two treaties at similar levels of
demandingness, one permitting reservations and the other not, might have different ratification
rates. But this variation does not exist.
Third, while demanding obligations attract more reservations in human rights treaties
(Zvobgo et al., 2020), this is an issue of variation at the provision level, not at the treaty level.
For example, in our formulation, CEDAW is one of the less-demanding treaties, yet it has one of
the highest reservations rates, nearly 3 percent.
The level of treaty demandingness should therefore affect states’ behavior with respect to
entering reservations. The more demanding a treaty, the more likely states are to ratify it with
reservations. This argument leads to our final proposition.

17
Hypothesis 3: Ratification without reservation should be more likely for less demanding
treaties than for more demanding treaties.
Data
The IHROC – Treaty Obligations dataset, now in its second version,
27
captures 1,605 unique
treaty provisions (i.e., article paragraphs and sub-paragraphs) across the ten core global human
rights treaties,
28
53.6 percent of which create an obligation.
29
Of these, 77 percent are precise,
53.1 percent are strong, and 91.3 percent require domestic action on the part of the state.
Demanding is a binary variable that indicates whether an obligation is precise, strong, and
requires domestic action. Demanding obligations is the sum of these for a given treaty. Treaties
containing a larger number of demanding obligations are considered to be more demanding
treaties. According to this operationalization, the CRMW is the most demanding, as it includes
107 demanding obligations. The least demanding treaty by this definition is the CERD, which
contains only two such obligations.
Dependent Variable: Human Rights Treaty Ratification
The first outcome variable is ratification of a given treaty, coded for each country as a binary
variable taking a value of “1” if that country ratified the treaty within five years, otherwise zero.
The second outcome variable is also binary, with a value of “1” if a given country ratified a
given treaty within ten years, otherwise zero. The five and ten years are counted from the year in
which the treaty was opened for signature or the year in which a state became independent and
eligible to join treaties, whichever is later.
Primary Independent Variable: Demanding Obligations
The primary independent variable, used to test our main hypothesis, is a count of the number of

18
demanding obligations contained in each of the ten treaties. Figure 2 ranks the treaties according
to the demanding obligations index.
30
Figure 2. Number of demanding obligations, by treaty.
Covariates
We include in the analysis additional variables that have been shown to affect human rights
treaty ratification in previous research. These include:
• Democracy: democracies will generally perceive lower costs to ratifying human rights
treaties than autocracies (Simmons, 2009).
• Basic rights respected: countries with higher base levels of respect for human rights will
likewise face lower policy adjustment costs and compliance costs.
• Democratic transition: for states that have recently transitioned to democracy, joining a
107
76
57
38 36
21
7
432
0
50
100
CRMW CED ICCPR CRC CRPD CAT CEDAW ICESCR GENO CERD
Treaty
Total Demanding Obligations

19
human rights treaty can enhance the credibility of their commitment to democracy, rights,
and the rule of law (Hafner-Burton et al., 2015; Moravcsik, 2000).
• IGO memberships (natural logarithm): international organizations are often seen as
mechanisms of international socialization, meaning the more organizations of which a
country is a member, the more it will be socialized in human rights and international law
norms (Cole, 2005; Sandholtz & Gray, 2003; Wotipka & Tsutsui, 2008).
• GDP/capita (natural logarithm): countries’ level of wealth might also influence their
ability to comply, with wealthier countries potentially better able to assume the costs of
adjusting their policies than poorer countries.
Additional information on these covariates is available in the supplementary appendix.
Analysis
In this section, we present the results of logistic regression analyses. We pool all country-treaty
pairs and employ robust standard errors clustered by country and treaty. We report odds ratios,
which capture the effect of a given variable on the odds of treaty ratification. Odds ratios above
“1” indicate that a variable raises the odds of ratification. Odds ratios below “1” indicate that a
variable reduces the odds of ratification.
Table 2 presents the effect of Demanding obligations on the likelihood of ratification
within five years and within ten years. Recall that demanding obligations are those that require
domestic action, are precise, and are strong. Consistent with Hypothesis 1, the number of
demanding obligations in a treaty is negatively related both to ratification within five years and
ratification within ten years. Figure 3 presents this result graphically. This result is statistically
significant across a range of specifications, including models that control for additional state-

20
level factors (see the appendix).
Table 2. Demanding obligations and treaty ratification, logistic regression.
Ratification within 5
years
Ratification within 10
years
1
2
3
4
Demanding obligations
0.986*
0.987*
0.981**
0.982**
(0.008)
(0.007)
(0.007)
(0.007)
Democracy
1.804***
1.901***
1.477**
1.536*
(0.327)
(0.360)
(0.242)
(0.337)
Democracy x Demanding obligations
0.998
0.999
(0.002)
(0.003)
Democratic transition
0.355**
0.352**
0.543
0.540
(0.147)
(0.144)
(0.206)
(0.203)
Basic rights respected
0.910*
0.909*
0.998
0.998
(0.046)
(0.046)
(0.052)
(0.052)
IGO memberships
0.996
0.996
0.998
0.998
(0.009)
(0.009)
(0.010)
(0.010)
GDP/capita (ln)
1.000
1.000
1.000**
1.000**
(0.000)
(0.000)
(0.000)
(0.000)
Constant
1.075
1.047
2.290*
2.248*
(0.465)
(0.445)
(1.003)
(1.002)
Observations
1,587
1,587
1,587
1,587
Log-likelihood
-999.8
-999.7
-1015.7
-1015.6
X2
25.41
25.14
18.39
18.01
p > X2
0.0003
0.0003
0.0053
0.0062
Odds ratios reported. Robust standard errors clustered by country and treaty in
parentheses.
*** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1
These findings add to our understanding of human rights treaty ratification. Prior research
has tended to assume that human rights treaties are essentially alike and has not taken into
account that they vary dramatically in the extent of the obligations they create. But our analysis
shows that differences in the number of demanding obligations in human rights treaties affect
states’ ratification behavior.

21
Figure 3. Predicted probability of treaty ratification, by number of demanding obligations.
Under Hypothesis 2, we expect treaty demandingness to have different effects for
democracies as compared to autocracies, with democracies more reluctant than autocracies to
ratify more demanding human rights treaties. The analysis does not support this proposition.
Democracy x demanding obligations, representing the interaction between democratic regime
and treaty demandingness, is negative but not statistically significant. See Table 2, specifically
Models 2 and 4. Figure 4 visualizes the decreasing likelihood of ratification, for both
democracies and autocracies, as the number of demanding obligations rises. Though democracies
ratify more demanding human rights treaties at a higher rate than autocracies, overlap in
confidence intervals for the sample of democracies and autocracies means the difference in rates
is not statistically distinguishable from zero. Democracy, itself, is positively signed and
statistically significant, consistent with previous scholarship.
0
.2
.4
.6
.8
Predicted Probability of Ratification
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110
Total Demanding Obligations

22
Figure 4. Predicted probability of treaty ratification, by number of demanding obligations,
democracies versus autocracies.
We also test whether the effect of increasing the number of demanding obligations is
offset by reservations. To assess our argument that ratification is not altered by reservation
behavior, we run ordered logistic regressions. In these models, presented in Table 3, the outcome
is an ordinal variable with three values: non-ratification (0), ratification with reservations (1),
and ratification without reservations (2). The outcome is ordinal because higher values
correspond with greater levels of acceptance of a treaty, ranging from “none” to “full,” with
“ratification with reservations” representing an intermediate category. The results are as we
expect: the greater the number of demanding treaty obligations, the less likely is the next
“higher” outcome. Increasing the number of demanding obligations decreases the likelihood of
ratification, even when taking reservations into account. In addition, the interaction of
0
.2
.4
.6
.8
Predicted Probability of Ratification
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110
Total Demanding Obligations
Autocracy
Democracy

23
democracy and demanding obligations is not significant, though democracies are more likely to
ratify overall in three of the four models.
Table 3: Demanding obligations and treaty ratification, including reservations,
ordered logit regression.
Ratification within 5
years
Ratification within 10
years
1
2
3
4
Demanding obligations
0.986*
0.987*
0.982**
0.981***
(0.008)
(0.007)
(0.007)
(0.007)
Democracy
1.751***
1.804***
1.391**
1.343
(0.318)
(0.335)
(0.221)
(0.281)
Democracy x Demanding obligations
0.999
1.001
(0.002)
(0.003)
Democratic transition
0.373**
0.371**
0.582
0.584
(0.162)
(0.160)
(0.232)
(0.230)
Basic rights respected
0.908**
0.908**
0.985
0.985
(0.044)
(0.044)
(0.046)
(0.046)
IGO memberships
0.995
0.995
0.996
0.996
(0.009)
(0.009)
(0.009)
(0.009)
GDP/capita (ln)
1.000
1.000
1.000***
1.000**
(0.000)
(0.000)
(0.000)
(0.000)
Observations
1,587
1,587
1,587
1,587
Log-likelihood
-1199.5
-1199.5
-1321.6
-1321.6
X2
25.25
22.21
25.19
23.24
p > X2
0.0003
0.0011
0.0003
0.0007
Robust standard errors clustered by country and treaty.
*** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1
To clarify these results, we generated predicted probabilities for all three outcomes at two
levels of demanding obligations, holding all other variables at their means. Figure 5 graphs
predicted probabilities for two prominent human rights treaties, CEDAW and the CED, which
are widely separated in terms of the number of demanding obligations they contain. CEDAW
contains 7 demanding obligations (ranking seventh among the ten treaties) and the CED includes
76 (the second highest total). The results are consistent with Hypothesis 3. We find a significant

24
effect, in the expected direction, of treaty demandingness on ratification while taking
reservations into account. Non-ratification is more likely for the more-demanding CED than the
less-demanding CEDAW. Ratification with reservations is equally likely for the two treaties.
Last, ratification without reservations is more likely for the less-demanding CEDAW than it is
for the more-demanding CED. In other words, accounting for reservations confirms our central
finding, that states are less likely to commit to more demanding treaties. In addition to
addressing the issue of reservations, the ordered logit analysis serves as a robustness check,
confirming our central results.
Figure 5. Predicted probability of treaty commitment level, CEDAW versus CED.
We tested additional variables that could plausibly be related to human rights treaty
ratification. For instance, ratification of the two omnibus human rights treaties (the ICCPR and
ICESCR) could affect a state’s likelihood of ratifying subsequent treaties. A state’s prior
0
.2
.4
.6
.8
1
Predicted Probability of Commitment Level
Non−ratification Ratification with reservations Ratification,
no reservations
CEDAW
CED
Note: CEDAW contains 7 demanding obligations, while the CED contains 76 demanding obligations.

25
ratification of the ICESCR had a significant positive effect on the likelihood of subsequent
ratifications in both five- and ten-year timeframes, but prior ratification of the ICCPR did not.
31
See Tables A1 and A2 in the appendix. The timing of treaties also does not appear to have an
effect: neither the Cold War period nor the post-Cold War period had a consistently significant
effect on the likelihood of ratification.
Domestic legal institutions could also affect whether a country ratifies. Judicial
independence, for example, could increase courts’ capacity to apply human rights treaties in the
domestic legal system, thus increasing the costs of ratification. However, the variable Judicial
independence was not significant. Finally, as a further robustness check, we analyzed the
relationship between treaty demandingness and ratification using a different model specification,
time-series logistic regression, as presented in Table A3 in the appendix. With one observation
per country-treaty-year, we tested our main hypothesis, that countries would be less likely to
ratify more demanding treaties. The results were consistent: more demanding treaties are less
likely to be ratified. All of these results are available in the appendix.
Conclusion
Political science research on human rights treaty ratification has largely neglected the content of
treaties in both theory and empirical analysis. We sought to advance the field’s understanding of
treaty commitment by examining treaty content more carefully. We found empirical support for
our prediction that states would more cautiously ratify treaties containing more demanding
obligations. Our analysis suggests that states weigh the content of international human rights law
– in particular, the extent of the obligations contained in treaties – when making decisions about
ratification. This finding holds even though states can modify their obligations through

26
reservations.
We anticipate promising avenues of future research, including explorations of the role of
treaty committees. Most human rights treaties create committees that can increase the precision
or the strength of treaty obligations. The committees issue “general comments,” authoritative
interpretations of specific treaty provisions, that can clarify states’ obligations (Reiners, 2021).
For example, General Comment No. 35 for Article 9 of the ICCPR (on liberty and security of
person) is 20 pages long. In total, it contains 68 paragraphs elaborating on specific state
obligations related to arbitrary detention and notice of reasons for arrest, among others. The
original Article 9 of the ICCPR contains only five paragraphs. General comments may alter
perceptions of the demandingness of treaties by increasing their precision.
Notes
1
Comstock (2021) complicates this picture, arguing that different commitment paths (e.g., ratification with or
without prior signature, accession, and succession) also influence the expectation and likelihood of state compliance.
2
One partial exception is Dancy & Sikkink (2012), who classify human rights treaties into three broad categories
(physical integrity rights treaties with individual criminal accountability, physical integrity rights treaties without
individual criminal accountability, and all others). Our approach differs in that it recognizes that human rights
treaties vary in terms of how demanding the obligations they contain are and takes into account the level of
“demandingness” of each treaty. Even among Dancy & Sikkink’s three categories of treaties, there is variation in the
degree of obligation.
3
It is worth noting that all of the examples Gilligan (2004) uses to illustrate his argument are in the economic or
environmental realms – not human rights.
4
We acknowledge that unlike the other treaties in our sample, the GENO is both a human rights and criminal law
treaty and is more limited in scope. In addition, while the other treaties have committees that monitor state
compliance, the main compliance mechanism for the GENO is the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
5
Note that our analysis excludes the European Union (recorded by the United Nations [UN] as a party to the
CRPD), Palestine (recorded as a party to all ten human rights treaties, save for the CED and CRMW), Hong Kong
and Macau (at one time recorded as parties to the CAT, CERD, CRC, and CRPD), and the Holy See (recorded as a
party to the CAT, CERD, and CRC). These actors’ ability to enter treaties is contested and variable across our
period of analysis, making them too different to compare to the broader population. In any case, listwise deletions
due to missing data for state-level covariates means their exclusion does not affect the overall results.
6
If it is possible to measure the level of demandingness and demonstrate its effect on commitment to human rights
treaties, it should be possible to do so in other domains (e.g., security, economics, environment) where the costliness
of treaty obligations should be easier to observe and quantify. For security, economic, and environmental treaties,
the costs of specific obligations should be more readily measurable, for example, in terms of particular weapons
systems, military bases, trade gains and losses in specific industries or even products, and reductions in particular
pollutants.
7
Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), Art. 6(2).

27
8
This figure replicates Figure 2 in Zvobgo et al. (2020: 790).
9
Our definition of precision aligns with Koremenos’s: “an agreement’s degree of precision or ambiguity refers to
the exactness or vagueness of its prescribed, proscribed, and authorized behaviors” (2016: 160).
10
Genocide Convention (1948), Art. 4.
11
Convention Against Torture (1984), Art. 2(1).
12
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (1979), Art. 9(1), emphasis added.
13
Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), Art. 8(1), emphasis added.
14
Convention on the Rights of Migrant Workers (1990), Art. 18(1), emphasis added.
15
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, Art. 18(1), emphasis added.
16
A partial exception is Boyes, Eldredge, Shannon, and Zvobgo (2023) who investigate states’ withdrawal of human
rights treaty reservations in response to international social pressure, operationalized as peer state objections and
treaty body periodic reviews calling for reservation withdrawals and affirming that a given state is legally bound by
the provision to which it had attached a reservation.
17
Of course, states can prosecute specific human rights violations under domestic law in domestic courts. The CAT
is unique in requiring states to criminalize torture and prosecute or extradite persons who commit acts of torture.
18
Given that obligations requiring domestic action account for 91 percent of obligations – and the exclusion of such
a requirement would not alter the measure – the question about combining dimensions into one measure centers on
whether precision and strength should be jointly included. See the appendix for further discussion.
19
Hill and Watson’s (2019) work challenges this idea. The authors find that regime type does not always condition
treaties’ effect on rights respect, at least in the case of CEDAW. To be sure, CEDAW is in many ways unique
among human rights treaties and the lack of a conditional effect of regime type on compliance may be due to
autocracies’ substantial participation in the treaty’s negotiations (Comstock, 2022) and autocracies’ engagement
with and socialization in women’s rights, both during and after CEDAW’s adoption (Comstock and Vilán, 2023).
20
Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (1969), Art. 19.
21
Hill (2016) argues that states are more likely to enter reservations when human rights treaties contain standards
that are more rigorous than those in their domestic laws, and he tests the argument with respect to the ICCPR.
Comparable data on domestic laws relevant to all ten of our human rights treaties are unfortunately not available.
Still, our argument is slightly different from Hill’s. We test the relationship between how demanding a treaty is and
the likelihood that states ratify it with reservations as compared to without reservations. We find that states are less
likely to ratify more demanding treaties, even when taking reservations into account. The higher the number of
demanding obligations, the less likely states are to commit and the less likely they are to commit fully, i.e., without
reservations.
22
Version 2 of the IHROC – Treaty Reservations dataset is available via the JHR Harvard Dataverse site. This
version increases the sample size by roughly six percent, to 77,821 observations, and the number of reservations to
1,013. We replicate Zvobgo et al.’s (2020) main findings in the appendix.
23
Note, the reservations dataset captures additional observations for amendments to prior reservations and
declarations. The dataset also includes observations for “edge cases,” for example Hong Kong and Macau, for which
there are recorded reservations and declarations. Because both reservations and declarations are rare, we erred on the
side of inclusion for the reservations data and analysis, while we err on the side of exclusion for the ratification data
and analysis. Due to missing values on a number of the covariates, observations for Hong Kong and Macau are
ultimately dropped in statistical analyses of reservations accounting for state-level factors. The reservations dataset
does not include observations for Palestine or the Holy See, which had no registered reservations or declarations
through the end of 2014. Due to missing values on a number of the covariates, they too would be subject to listwise
deletions. For its part, the European Union, as an international organization, is not germane to an analysis of state
ratification or reservation behavior.
24
We are interested in reservations that apply to specific treaty provisions. States sometimes enter reservations
regarding a treaty as a whole. Such reservations are not directly relevant to our analysis because they concern a
state’s broader political values or goals, for example, its constitutional or religious law, or its relationship with the
state of Israel. Whole-treaty reservations do not express a state’s position regarding specific obligations.
25
The average reservation rate across treaties is 1.3 percent.
26
We note that the GENO first raised the question of the possibility and permissibility of treaty reservations, a
question that was answered in a 1951 ICJ advisory opinion. The ICJ’s “object and purpose” criteria laid the ground
for Article 19 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT), which further defines the possibility and

28
permissibility of reservations. As a technical point, the VCLT covers the human rights treaties in our sample from
CEDAW onward.
27
Version 2 of the IHROC – Treaty Obligations dataset is available at the JHR Harvard Dataverse site. Details on
the data are available in the appendix.
28
Each treaty was coded independently by two coders following detailed instructions from the principal
investigator. Any differences in coding were resolved by the principal investigator. See the appendix for additional
discussion.
29
To identify treaty obligations, the relevant unit of the treaty text is sometimes the article (for example, CAT Art.
11 is a single-paragraph article). More often, an article contains two or more paragraphs, some of which also contain
sub-paragraphs. We coded the lowest-level unit available in each instance.
30
We measure the skewness of Demanding obligations at 0.85, which means that the distribution leans moderately
to the right.
31
In these models, we exclude observations in which ratification of the ICESCR or the ICCPR is the outcome
variable.
Acknowledgments
For helpful comments on previous drafts, we thank the editors and reviewers at The Journal of
Human Rights. Previous versions of this article were presented at the University of Southern
California, the 2017 Southern California International Law Scholars Workshop, and the 2018
International Studies Association Convention. The data underlying this article are available at the
JHR Harvard Dataverse site.
Disclosure statement
The authors report that there are no competing interests to declare.
Funding
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate
Research Fellowship Program under Grant No. DGE-1418060. Any opinions, findings, and
conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not
necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
Notes on contributors
Suzie Mulesky is a senior behavioral scientist at Vanguard.
Wayne Sandholtz is John A. McCone Chair in International Relations and Professor of
International Relations and Law at the University of Southern California.
Kelebogile Zvobgo is an assistant professor of government at William & Mary, a faculty affiliate
at the Global Research Institute, and the founder and director of the International Justice Lab.

29
ORCID
Wayne Sandholtz ORCID: 0000-0002-8314-0038
Kelebogile Zvobgo: ORCID: 0000-0001-8701-8016
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