Testing for Negative Spillovers: Is Promoting Human Rights Really Part of the “Problem”?

Abstract

The international community often seeks to promote political reforms in recalcitrant states. Recently, some scholars have argued that, rather than helping, international law and advocacy create new problems because they have negative spillovers that increase rights violations. We review three mechanisms for such spillovers: backlash, trade-offs, and counteraction and concentrate on the last of these. Some researchers assert that governments sometimes “counteract” international human rights pressures by strategically substituting violations in adjacent areas that are either not targeted or are harder to monitor. However, most such research shows only that both outcomes correlate with an intervention—the targeted positively and the spillover negatively. The burden of proof, however, should be as rigorous as those for studies of first-order policy consequences. We show that these correlations by themselves are insufficient to demonstrate counteraction outside of the narrow case where the intervention is assumed to have no direct effect on the spillover, a situation akin to having a valid instrumental variable design. We revisit two prominent findings and show that the evidence for the counteraction claim is weak in both cases. The article contributes methodologically to the study of negative spillovers in general by proposing mediation and sensitivity analysis within an instrumental variables framework for assessing such arguments. It revisits important prior findings that claim negative consequences to human rights law and/or advocacy, and raises critical normative questions regarding how we empirically evaluate hypotheses about causal mechanisms.

The Logic of Transitional Justice and State Repression: The Effects of Human Rights Prosecutions in Post-Conflict States

“…Empirically, our study joins growing literature on the interrelationships between various rights violations as part of the government’s strategy of political control (e.g., Fariss and Schnakenberg 2014; DeMeritt and Conrad 2019; Strezhnev, Kelley, and Simmons 2021). We contribute to this research agenda by providing new evidence on these interrelationships in connection with another important area of human rights: transitional justice.…”

International Sports Events and Repression in Autocracies: Evidence from the 1978 FIFA World Cup

“…Such reporting may trigger public outcry and condemnations by international organizations and human rights groups. Research suggests that naming and shaming campaigns have the potential to delegitimize regimes, forcing autocrats to show more restraint toward the opposition and to make political concessions (e.g., DeMeritt 2012; Keck and Sikkink 1998; Strezhnev, Kelley, and Simmons 2021).…”

“…Second, the study adds to our understanding of how authoritarian regimes maintain political stability (e.g., Dukalskis 2021; Geddes, Wright, and Frantz 2018; Gerschewski 2013; Svolik 2012). Third, by theorizing the influence of foreign media attention on the survival strategies of illiberal regimes, we inform debates about international naming and shaming (e.g., DeMeritt 2012; Keck and Sikkink 1998; Strezhnev, Kelley, and Simmons 2021), press freedom and the escalation of violence (Carey and Gohdes 2021; Carey, González, and Mitchell 2021; Whitten-Woodring 2009), regime propaganda (e.g., Gläßel and Paula 2020; King, Pan, and Roberts 2017; Roberts 2018), and preemptive repression (e.g., Danneman and Ritter 2014; Dragu and Przeworski 2019; Ritter and Conrad 2016; Truex 2019). Finally, the article complements a growing literature on the microdynamics of state violence (e.g., Balcells and Sullivan 2018; Hassan and O’Mealia 2018; Osorio, Schubiger, and Weintraub 2018; Rozenas, Schutte, and Zhukov 2017; Scharpf and Gläßel 2020).…”