Abstract:This paper investigates states' commitment to human rights, democracy and rule of law through ratifying Council of Europe treaties. We present a first comprehensive analysis of ratifications of all 221 Council of Europe treaties that opened for ratification since 1949 among the 47 current member states. Applying a multilevel Cox regression, we observe a strong influence of external sources for states' commitment and find evidence for both coercion and emulation mechanisms. First, upcoming EU membership is stro… Show more
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.