Thinking Inside the Box: A Closer Look at Democracy and Human Rights

Mesquita, Bruce Bueno de; Cherif, F.; Downs, George W.; Smith, Alastair

doi:10.1111/j.1468-2478.2005.00372.x

Cited by 263 publications

(180 citation statements)

References 28 publications

(53 reference statements)

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“…As some scholars suggest (Bueno De Mesquita et al 2005;Cingranelli and Filippov 2010;Conrad and Moore 2010;Davenport and Armstrong 2004), certain democratic institutions could be more related to decreases in human rights violations. The distinction between the decreasing and the preventing effects of democracy should be considered when one assesses the effect of various democratic institutions.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In democratic governments that are composed of accountable and representative institutions, leaders who commit human rights abuses are more likely to be deposed from their positions by popular control. Therefore, democratic leaders are more likely to support strong human rights protections in order not to be voted out (Bueno de Mesquita et al 2005;Davenport 1999;Poe and Tate 1994).…”

Section: Democratic Institutions and Human Rights Violations Institutmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Do Democratic Institutions Reduce Human Rights Violations or Just Prevent More Violations than Current Levels? An Exogenous Explanation of Human Rights Improvements in Democracies

Yu¹

2016

kjis

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This article argues that human rights improvements are hard to achieve even in democracies because elites and citizens may not want to sacrifice other policy goals for human rights reforms even though both elites and citizens are believed to prefer better human rights protections. Improving human rights is a costly job that requires capacity to deter or reconcile with opposition against reforms, rationales and incentives to break bureaucratic rigidity, and the people s consent to use resources, as well as sound institutions and higher levels of economic development. Without changes in domestic preferences or resources that are exogenous to domestic institutions and somewhat susceptible to international factors-including changes in power structures, norm diffusion, transactions, and assistance-democratic leaders have little to do beyond supporting current practices in order not to be voted out. Using dynamic ordered probit models, this article assesses whether the democratic effect decreases human rights violations or prevents more violations than current levels. The results indicate that low levels of human rights violations are not more likely to emerge under democratic governments compared to other types of regimes, but low levels of violations are more likely to continue in democracies, which suggest that democratic institutions are effective in maintaining good practices rather than creating them. Demonstrating the limited nature of the democratic effect, this article also lends insight into the alternative causal routes involving international contexts for the improvement of human rights.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Democratic Institutions and Human Rights Violations Institutmentioning

confidence: 99%

Do Democratic Institutions Reduce Human Rights Violations or Just Prevent More Violations than Current Levels? An Exogenous Explanation of Human Rights Improvements in Democracies

Yu¹

2016

kjis

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“…Our reading of the literature suggests that the implicit mechanism underlying most of this work is the ballot: popular suffrage might serve as a check on executive authority. Following the direction charted by Davenport and Armstrong (2004), Bueno de Mesquita et al (2005), Gates et al (2006) and Davenport (2007b) we eschew that conceptualization in favor of a liberal conceptualization of democracy (see below) that focuses on three mechanisms that might reduce an executive's incentive to engage in torture: voice (i.e., suffrage and contestation), veto (i.e., separation of powers), and freedom of expression (i.e., the ability to criticize). Doing so permits us to make explicit what we believe are the mechanisms people implicitly have in mind when they argue that liberal democracy reduces the use of repression, but also allows us to build on those mechanisms to propose hypotheses explaining why the human rights activists were correct to expect that liberal democratic institutions have a palliative impact on the use of torture.…”

Section: Extant Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Puzzle of Abu Ghraib: Are Democratic Institutions a Palliative or Panacea?

2007

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“…Abuse of human rights is reduced in a multi-party environment (Bueno de Mesquita et al 2005). The use of low magnitude proportional representation districts and an open list electoral system is further associated with fewer abuses (Cingranelli and Filippov 2010).…”

Section: Democracy and Constrained Executivesmentioning

confidence: 99%