The Role of State-Sponsored Militias in Genocide

This article explains how and why armed, non-state actors collaborate with states to inflict massive levels of violence. Regime type and state capacity interact to provide state elites a menu of repertoires for implementing violence, some emphasizing direct state action, others emphasizing cooperation and alliance between state and armed, non-state actors. Rather than struggling in vain to build strong states to eliminate armed non-state actors and establish a monopoly over the use of force, averting genocide might necessitate recruiting and strengthening the power of indigenous, armed non-state actors.     

Complying with Human Rights

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.     

Defending the Nation: The Role of Nationalism in Chinese Thinking on Human Rights

This article examines the symbiotic relationship between Chinese thinking on human rights and Chinese nationalism. It analyses the three key periods in the Chinese discourse on human rights: late Qing, Republican, and post-Mao. In each case, discussions of rights have often (but not always) taken place within a wider debate about the protection of China's national interests from foreign infringement, although the nature of the foreign infringement has changed over time. During the late Qing debate, with China increasingly threatened by foreign military imperialism, scholars argued enthusiastically for the introduction of a new system of democratic rights as a vital tool of national resistance. During the Republican era that followed, the threat from outside remained the same. However by now many theorists had grown disillusioned with democracy and rights, believing that the only way China could withstand further foreign encroachments was to withhold rights from its people. In the post-Mao debate on rights, the interests of the nation are again at the fore. But with China now an emerging rather than a collapsing power, rights are often analysed – at least from an official perspective – within the context of cultural rather than military imperialism, the new ‘threat’ from abroad. The article then examines the views of China's ‘non-official’ rights thinkers, most of whom tend to be much less affected by nationalist concerns and ends with an assessment of the prospects for democracy and rights in China.     

伪满洲国的法律文本与人权实态

伪满成立后,颁布了殖民史上独一无二的《人权保障法》。通过对法律文本的解读,本文批驳了日本右翼史学家美化《人权保障法》的观点,还以结社权和通信自由为例,揭示了日本殖民统治下人权实态与法律规定的严重背离。可以说,伪满洲国任何冠冕堂皇的法律文本都掩盖不了三千万东北同胞生存权受到根本威胁的事实。     

Political Context and the Consequences of Naming and Shaming for Human Rights Abuse

Does being named and shamed for human rights abuse influence the amount of foreign aid received by the shamed state? Recent research suggests that the impact of public censure may depend on the political relationship between donor and recipient. We argue that donors deriving a direct political benefit from the aid relationship (such as a military advantage or the satisfaction of a domestic political audience) will ignore or work against condemnation, but donors with little political interest in the recipient (who give aid for symbolic or humanitarian reasons) will punish condemned states. We also argue that the size of prior aid packages can be used as a holistic measure of the donor’s political interest in the aid relationship because mutually beneficial aid packages are subject to a bargaining process that favors recipients with more to offer. We find that condemnation for human rights abuse by the United Nations is associated with lower bilateral aid levels among states that previously received small aid package, and with equal or higher bilateral aid to states already receiving a great deal of aid. The source of shaming also matters: We find that public shaming by human rights NGOs is not associated with decreased aggregate bilateral aid.     

The New U.S. Human Rights Policy: A Radical Departure

The United States, as the most powerful state and as the self-appointed champion of human rights, has a profound impact on the way human rights norms are interpreted and applied throughout the world. The human rights foreign policy of President George W. Bush can be distinguished from the policies of other administrations in three crucial respects: (1) In identifying the values that Americans can and should promote abroad, it avoids human rights terminology and scorns multilateral institutions, and instead looks to divine inspiration; (2) in place of well-recognized human rights norms, it uses a concept of "dignity" that is narrow and self-serving; and (3) it engages in "exceptional exceptionalism," continually holding others to standards that it does not apply to itself. This essay contends that the new U.S. human rights foreign policy drains human rights of its core meaning and limits its potential impact. Moreover, the United States lacks moral authority to act on human rights grounds as long as it fails to prioritize human rights explicitly and to uphold the same standards to which it holds other nations accountable.     

Database section - Dimensions of Contemporary Conflict and Human Rights Violations

Scholars have long recognized the importance of Karl Heinzen's Mord und Freiheit in the history of terrorist thought. Yet the translation most scholars have relied on—1881s Murder and Liberty—is incomplete. Our new translation reveals four elements omitted from the 1881 translation. First, Heinzen conceived of terrorism as a transnational phenomenon. Second, he provided a material justification for terrorist tactics. Third, Heinzen viewed terrorism as both a tool to impel human society to progress and as a “progressive” tool of violence. Finally, he argued in favor of the primary modern tactic of terrorism—the indiscriminate bombing of civilians.     

Linking Experiential and Classroom Education: Lessons Learned from The American University–Amnesty International USA Summer Institute on Human Rights

How can internships and other forms of experiential or service learning be designed to best accomplish academic goals? This article explores the benefits and pitfalls of experiential education by looking at the relevant scholarly literature and at students' and faculty members' experience with the American University–Amnesty International USA Summer Institute on Human Rights. Overall, faculty and students report that internships, when integrated with traditional classroom learning, greatly enhance learning overall. The article suggests strategies for structuring internships to enrich students' learning.     

When Killers Become Victims: Diversionary War,Human Rights,and Strategic Target Selection

The diversionary theory largely focuses on the incentives leaders have to use force. However, little attention has been given to the characteristics that make for a good target. We argue that US presidents choose targets that repress human rights since they are the easiest to sell to international and domestic audiences. By targeting repressive states US presidents can justify their use of force by cloaking their motivation in the language of human rights, responding to calls for intervention, pointing to the failure of international actors and institutions to resolve these problems, and building upon emerging norms that allow for intervention in repressive states. Updating US Use of Force data, we empirically test and find support for our hypothesis that presidents target human rights abusers when they face trouble at home. This paper contributes to target selection process by offering a complete theory of diversionary conflict accounting for cost/benefit calculation of presidents. Moreover, we believe that our findings reveal human rights practices’ role in international conflict, as well.     

Party prohibition cases: different approaches by the Turkish constitutional court and the European Court of Human Rights

The article deals with the different approaches followed by the Turkish Constitutional Court and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in party prohibition cases. The Turkish Constitution and even more so the Law on Political Parties contain a long list of party bans, the violation of which leads to the closure of the party by the Constitutional Court. The Turkish Constitutional Court, both under the 1961 and the 1982 Constitutions, interpreted these provisions in an exceedingly illiberal manner, and has so far closed down a total of 24 political parties. Turkish rules and practices concerning the prohibition of political parties are among the most important ‘democracy deficits’ of the Turkish political system. In the article, the Turkish Court's illiberal approach to party prohibition cases, especially those involving the protection of the national and territorial integrity of the state and of the principle of secularism, is compared with the much more liberal criteria developed by the ECtHR and the Venice Commission.     

Simulating the Creation of a New International Human Rights Treaty: Active Learning in the International Studies Classroom

This article details a simulation of formulating a new international human rights treaty designed for an introductory international studies course. Student understanding and interest in a range of international relations topics—including diplomacy, two –level games, international law, human rights, and group decision making—are reinforced by actively engaging the students in policy formulation and state –to –state negotiations. The article is structured around the four key components of active learning approaches—educational objectives, design parameters, procedures, and assessment and debriefing—in order to provide a full understanding of the goals, set –up, process, and advantages of the simulation. The simulation has been successfully run multiple times at both a large state university and a small liberal arts institution. Supportive student feedback and an interesting variety of outcomes indicate that this simulation is a positive addition to the course and reinforces the use of active learning approaches in the international studies classroom.     

From Media Attention to Negotiated Peace: Human Rights Reporting and Civil War Duration

Violations of human rights in the context of a conflict have in recent years received an increasing amount of attention from the international media. Yet how such media attention influences conflict remains understudied and, a priori, uncertain. On the one hand, media coverage of human rights abuses may constitute “naming and shaming” that might temper hostilities. On the other hand, such coverage might spark intransigence and complicate negotiations among conflicting parties, thereby hindering rather than hastening peace. This article tries to adjudicate among these and other possibilities by exploring how media reporting on human rights abuses influences the development of conflicts. The analysis reveals that such reporting is associated with shorter conflicts and negotiated agreements between fighting parties.     

US and EU Human Rights and Democracy Promotion since the Arab Spring. Rethinking its Content,Targets and Instruments

The momentous changes in the Middle East and North Africa have brought the issue of human rights and democracy promotion back to the forefront of international politics. The new engagement in the region of both the US and the EU can be scrutinised along three dimensions: targets, instruments and content. In terms of target sectors, the US and EU are seeking to work more with civil society. As for instruments, they have mainly boosted democracy assistance and political conditionality, that is utilitarian, bilateral instruments of human rights and democracy promotion, rather than identitive, multilateral instruments. The content of human rights and democracy promotion has not been revised.     

More Bang for the Buck: Media Freedom and Organizational Strategies in the Agenda-Setting of Human Rights Groups

Studies investigating the agenda-setting of human rights groups disagree on both their prospects of garnering political attention, and the factors that help them in that quest. This study makes the argument that we need to take account of both macro-institutional opportunity structures and actor-level strategies in order to gain a more complete understanding of the group-media interface. Specifically, it posits that the urgency of social problems only drives media attention toward groups if a country’s media landscape is sufficiently free, and that within these institutional constraints, groups themselves can enhance their media access by providing newsmakers with information subsidies. These claims are substantiated by way of a novel cross-nationally comparative data set of more than 1,000 domestic election monitoring and advocacy organizations. Findings show that media attention is structurally limited by the degree to which the news media serve as an open arena, and that even in countries with a free press, few groups achieve media access. At the same time, the most successful groups are not necessarily the most resourceful ones. Rather, strategic choices to invest in media effort, narrow policy engagement, and professionalization substitute for scarce resources, thereby giving groups “more bang for their buck.” The results clarify the causal mechanisms behind the dominance of resource-rich groups on the media agenda and reinforce calls for more globally comparative research into media agenda-setting.     

Agent permeability, principal delegation and the European Court of Human Rights

A growing body of international relations literature examines the delegation of state authority to international organizations. Delegation is a conditional grant of authority from a principal to an agent in which the latter is empowered to act on behalf of the former. This paper explores the effect of agent permeability to interested third parties on the efficacy of control mechanisms established by principals. Our central argument is that higher levels of agent permeability are likely to lead to higher levels of agent autonomy. Because of this, principals who face a potentially permeable agent are likely to delegate more cautiously—partially, in stages, or with clear limits. We illustrate our argument with a case study of the European Convention of Human Rights and its two principal institutions, the Commission and the Court. We find that principals (contracting states) historically delegated quite cautiously to the Court, clearly concerned about the Court’s autonomy. Court behavior in its first two decades reassured principals while increasing the Court’s permeability. Over time, that increased permeability increased Court autonomy in conjunction with the Court’s growing visibility and experience.

人权还是知识产权:美国对华政策的一个重要转折

克林顿政府初期处于对华政策的十字路口。冷战结束,美国全面调整对外政策,把经济放到对外战略的首位,知识产权问题凸现。而对华政策背离这一主旨,把人权作为首要目标,并与最惠国待遇问题挂钩。这种矛盾决定其必然改弦更张。以经贸为立足点的接触政策的确立,使知识产权问题再次回到中美关系的中心,美国经历了对华政策的一次重要转折。     

Demanding Their Rights? Collective Identity and the Tactics of Older Persons’ Organisations at the UN

ABSTRACT

Recent scholarship in International Relations focuses on the tactics of international non-government organisations and transnational advocacy networks, with scholars mostly explaining the diverse and dynamic tactics of organisations working on similar issues. Based on multiple qualitative data sources, this article explores why the members of a transnational advocacy network, comprising organisations of, and representing, older persons, that are calling for a UN Convention on the Rights of Older Persons adopt tactics that are static, uniform and surprisingly softly-softly, despite their modest gains since the issue was put on the UN’s agenda nine years ago. The article demonstrates many of the existing explanations for tactical choices, but it extends what we know by importing the concept of collective identity from social movement studies. It argues that the older persons’ network has a weak collective identity that is conservative in nature, which influences the tactics deployed at the UN.     

Impact of human rights on U.S. foreign assistance to Latin America

Building upon the contributions of previous studies of U.S. foreign aid, this study examines the relationship between human rights and U.S. foreign assistance. Concentrating on the years 1979–1985, the impact of human rights conditions on both economic and military aid allocations to Latin America is analyzed. The results of this analysis indicate that though other factors have a significant effect upon aid allocation, human rights are an important factor in determining the allocation of both U.S. economic assistance and U.S. military assistance. The findings suggest that those countries with better human rights conditions are likely to receive more U.S. aid than others.