Complying with Human Rights. Issue 4 (7th August 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Hug, Simon; Wegmann, Simone
• Is Part Of: International interactions. Volume 42:Issue 4(2016)
• Page Start: 590
• Page End: 615
• Publication Date: 2016-08-07
• Subjects: Compliance -- human rights -- treaties; International relations -- Research -- Periodicals; 327
• DOI: 10.1080/03050629.2016.1185712
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0305-0629

Abstract

ABSTRACT: The empirical assessment of how signatories of human rights conventions comply with their obligations has, so far, yielded conflicting results, especially regarding the compliance mechanisms that are the most promising to ensure improving human rights records. We argue that this is due to the fact that differences in compliance systems have been neglected and that different compliance mechanisms have been assessed in isolation, without considering possible interactions. To analyze this argument, we propose a novel way to assess the effect of these mechanisms by relying on a Markov-transition model. Our results show that human rights violations are time dependent and that the effect of independent variables is conditional on previous human rights violations as well as on the strength of human rights compliance systems.