Suchergebnisse

Common perceptions of Sweden seldom include images of ill treatment and torture. However, human rights reports published by Amnesty Int'l and the US State Dept. describe recurring allegations of ill treatment and torture perpetrated by security forces in Sweden. What explains this unexpected case of human rights abuse? The answer to this question reveals an important theoretical concept that has not previously been discussed in human rights documentation and measurement projects: the level of institutional transparency. We provide evidence of the process by which the bureaucracy in Sweden ensures an extremely high level of transparency about allegations of human rights abuse by government agents. We argue that this transparency likely varies systematically over time but especially across countries. The major implication of our study therefore travels beyond Sweden: documentation and measurement projects that do not account for differential levels of transparency of government institutions may not be comparable across cases, possibly introducing bias to cross-sectional comparisons.

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.