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International relations research has regarded networks as a particular mode of organization, distinguished from markets or state hierarchies. In contrast, network analysis permits the investigation and measurement of network structures—emergent properties of persistent patterns of relations among agents that can define, enable, and constrain those agents. Network analysis offers both a toolkit for identifying and measuring the structural properties of networks and a set of theories, typically drawn from contexts outside international relations, that relate structures to outcomes. Network analysis challenges conventional views of power in international relations by defining network power in three different ways: access, brokerage, and exit options. Two issues are particularly important to international relations: the ability of actors to increase their power by enhancing and exploiting their network positions, and the fungibility of network power. The value of network analysis in international relations has been demonstrated in precise description of international networks, investigation of network effects on key international outcomes, testing of existing network theory in the context of international relations, and development of new sources of data. Partial or faulty incorporation of network analysis, however, risks trivial conclusions, unproven assertions, and measures without meaning. A three-part agenda is proposed for future application of network analysis to international relations: import the toolkit to deepen research on international networks; test existing network theories in the domain of international relations; and test international relations theories using the tools of network analysis.

“Naming and shaming” is a popular strategy to enforce international human rights norms and laws. Nongovernmental organizations, news media, and international organizations publicize countries' violations and urge reform. Evidence that these spotlights are followed by improvements is anecdotal. This article analyzes the relationship between global naming and shaming efforts and governments' human rights practices for 145 countries from 1975 to 2000. The statistics show that governments put in the spotlight for abuses continue or even ramp up some violations afterward, while reducing others. One reason is that governments' capacities for human rights improvements vary across types of violations. Another is that governments are strategically using some violations to offset other improvements they make in response to international pressure to stop violations.

A growing number of preferential trade agreements~PTAs! have come to play a significant role in governing state compliance with human rights+ When they supply hard standards that tie material benefits of integration to compliance with human rights principles, PTAs are more effective than softer human rights agreements~HRAs! in changing repressive behaviors+ PTAs improve members' human rights through coercion, by supplying the instruments and resources to change actors' incentives to promote reforms that would not otherwise be implemented+ I develop three hypotheses:~1! state commitment to HRAs and~2! PTAs supplying soft human rights standards~not tied to market benefits! do not systematically produce improvement in human rights behaviors, while~3! state commitment to PTAs supplying hard human rights standards does often produce better practices+ I draw on several cases to illustrate the processes of influence and test the argument on the experience of 177 states during the period 1972 to 2002+Human rights violations are pervasive+ 1 As a substantial percentage of states repress their citizens, an increasingly dense set of formal treaties, conventions, and protocols have been designed to protect the inalienable rights of human beingshuman rights agreements~HRAs!+ These agreements are different than other forms of international cooperation designed to overcome collective action problems and to internalize cross-border externalities+ HRAs are designed to regulate sov-I would like to thank

When are governments most likely to use election violence, and what factors can mitigate government incentives to resort to violence? How do the dynamics of election violence differ in the pre-and post-election periods? Our central argument is that an incumbent's fear of losing power as the result of an election, as well as institutionalized constraints on the incumbent's decisionmaking powers, are pivotal in her decision to use election violence. While it may seem obvious to suggest that incumbents use election violence in an effort to fend off threats to their power, it is not obvious how to gauge these threats, and a central purpose of our research is to identify sources of information about the incumbent's popularity that can help predict the likelihood of election violence. The observable implications of our argument are tested using newly available cross-national evidence on elections, government use of pre-and post-election violence, and post-election protests from 1981 to 2004.2 When Do Governments Resort to Election Violence? 1 On paper, Azerbaijan is a multiparty democracy, and has held periodic multi-party presidential and parliamentary elections since the country regained independence in 1991. Despite the nominal existence of democratic institutions, tactics of electoral manipulation used by the government include overt election fraud, violence, and intimidation. Opposition supporters, opposition candidates, and journalists risk torture, arbitrary arrest, and political imprisonment-all strategies the government uses to "win" elections. 2 For example, in the run up to the 2005 parliamentary elections in Azerbaijan, facing the possibility that the "colour revolutions" of Georgia and Ukraine would spread, the government arrested journalists and attempted to prevent the opposition from campaigning.The police detained over a thousand activists before the election, and jailed hundreds without cause. 3 After the election, amid accusations of fraud, the government announced that the ruling party won an overwhelming majority, 4 Opposition supporters began to protest the results, assembling more than 7,000 people. Riot police and military forces disbursed the protesters using clubs and water cannons, and several opposition politicians were beaten. 5 In the end, despite international and domestic backlash, the incumbent remained in power. 6 Government-sponsored election violence-events in which incumbent leaders and ruling party agents employ or threaten violence against the political opposition or potential voters before, during, or after elections-is common. 4(including threats of violence such as harassment), we present and test a theory of when an incumbent government is likely to use election violence prior to or after an election. Our central argument is that an incumbent's fear of losing power as the result of an election, as well as institutionalized constraints on the incumbent's decision-making powers, are pivotal in her decision to use election violence. While it may seem obvious t...

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International human rights treaties have been ratified by many nation-states, including those ruled by repressive governments, raising hopes for better practices in many corners of the world. Evidence increasingly suggests, however, that human rights laws are most effective in stable or consolidating democracies or in states with strong civil society activism. If so, treaties may be failing to make a difference in those states most in need of reform — the world's worst abusers — even though they have been the targets of the human rights regime from the very beginning. The authors address this question of compliance by focusing on the behavior of repressive states in particular. Through a series of cross-national analyses on the impact of two key human rights treaties, the article demonstrates that (1) governments, including repressive ones, frequently make legal commitments to human rights treaties, subscribing to recognized norms of protection and creating opportunities for socialization and capacity-building necessary for lasting reforms; (2) these commitments mostly have no effects on the world's most terrible repressors even long into the future; (3) recent findings that treaty effectiveness is conditional on democracy and civil society do not explain the behavior of the world's most abusive governments; and (4) realistic institutional reforms will probably not help to solve this problem.

This study explores, with quantitative data analyses, why nation-states with very negative human rights records tend to sign and ratify human rights treaties at rates similar to those of states with positive records. The study's core arguments are (1) that the deepening international human rights regime creates opportunities for rights-violating governments to display low-cost legitimating commitments to world norms, leading them to ratify human rights treaties without the capacity or willingness to comply with the provisions; and (2) that among repressive regimes, autonomous ones that are less constrained by domestic forces are more likely to ratify human rights treaties as symbolic commitment, because these sovereigns are free to entertain high levels of decoupling between policy and practice, while constrained governments are more reluctant to incite domestic (and foreign) oppositions and interest groups. The combined outcome is that repressive states ratify human rights treaties at least as frequently as non-repressive onesparticularly those repressive states that have greater autonomy. Our cross-national time-series analyses provide supportive evidence for these arguments.keywords: human rights ✦ international treaty ✦ world societyThe world human rights movement has been an enormous and surprising success in putting forward high standards for states and societies to follow. It has created a striking array of international treaties (Buergenthal, 1995;