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AbstractUntil recently, researchers who wanted to examine the determinants of state respect for most specific negative rights (i.e., physical integrity and empowerment rights) needed to rely on data from the CIRI or the Political Terror Scale (PTS). The new Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) dataset offers scholars a potential alternative to the individual human rights variables from CIRI. We analyze a set of key Cingranelli–Richards (CIRI) Human Rights Data Project and V-Dem negative rights indicators, finding unusual and unexpectedly large patterns of disagreement between the two sets. First, we discuss the new V-Dem dataset by comparing it to the disaggregated CIRI indicators, discussing the history of each project, and describing its empirical domain. Second, we identify a set of disaggregated human rights measures that are similar across the two datasets and discuss each project's measurement approach. Third, we examine how these measures compare to each other empirically, showing that they diverge considerably across both time and space. These findings point to several important directions for future work, such as how conceptual approaches and measurement strategies affect rights scores. For the time being, our findings suggest that researchers should think carefully about using the measures as substitutes.

What do political scientists think about research ethics? What research practices do they find acceptable? Using a survey conducted with the American Political Science Association, we explore perceptions of ethics among 362 political scientists. We find that political scientists do not place much relative weight on ethics when evaluating research. We do, however, find that researchers view different modes of inquiry as having different potential harms. Furthermore, using a conjoint experiment, we find that factors like author affiliation, study location, method, and sample size shape evaluations of study ethicality. Our results contribute to the growing body of metascience by expanding understanding of ethics in political science research.

What factors shape support for the human rights of prisoners and asylum seekers at the individual level? Although the human rights literature has expanded greatly in the last 30 years, comparatively little attention has been paid to (a) the many human rights outside of a very small set of physical or bodily integrity rights and (b) the role of public opinion. We build a theoretical model of various human rights as public opinion-related policy choices, developing the micro-foundations of public support for the human rights of vulnerable subpopulations. Drawing on the broader literature on public policy and international norms, we use experimental methods to test whether calls to rational effectiveness or international norm cascades improve support for the rights of prisoners and asylum seekers. Although we find baseline support for these rights in the United States and Canada, our findings also imply that rhetoric on the potential costs of human rights policy could reduce popular support, even when such policy is consistent with international norms.

How do international norms affect respect for human rights? We report the results of an audit experiment with foreign missions that investigates the extent to which state agents observe international norms and react to the potential of international shaming. Our experiment involved emailing 669 foreign diplomatic missions in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom with requests to contact domestic prisoners. According to the United Nations, prisoners have the right for individuals to contact them. We randomly varied (1) whether we reminded embassies about the existence of an international norm permitting prisoner contact and (2) whether the putative email sender is associated with a fictitious human rights organization and, thereby, has the capacity to shame missions through naming and shaming for violating this norm. We find strong evidence for the positive effect of international norms on state respect for human rights. Contra to our expectations, though, we find that the potential of international shaming does not increase the probability of state compliance. The positive effect of the norms cue disappears when it is coupled with the shaming cue, suggesting that shaming might have a 'backfire' effect.

How do international norms affect respect for human rights? We report the results of an audit experiment with foreign missions that investigates the extent to which state agents observe international norms and react to the potential of international shaming. Our experiment involved emailing 669 foreign diplomatic missions in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom with requests to contact domestic prisoners. According to the United Nations, prisoners have the right for individuals to contact them. We randomly varied (1) whether we reminded embassies about the existence of an international norm permitting prisoner contact and (2) whether the putative email sender is associated with a fictitious human rights organization and, thereby, has the capacity to shame missions through naming and shaming for violating this norm. We find strong evidence for the positive effect of international norms on state respect for human rights. Contra to our expectations, though, we find that the potential of international shaming does not increase the probability of state compliance. The positive effect of the norms cue disappears when it is coupled with the shaming cue, suggesting that shaming might have a 'backfire' effect.