Catch me if you care: International development organizations and national corruption
In: The review of international organizations, Band 15, Heft 4, S. 767-792
ISSN: 1559-744X
In: The review of international organizations, Band 15, Heft 4, S. 767-792
ISSN: 1559-744X
In: Perspectives on politics, Band 17, Heft 3, S. 814-815
ISSN: 1541-0986
Since their emergence in the late eighteenth century, doctrines of universal individual rights have been variously criticized as philosophically confused, politically inefficacious, ideologically particular, and Eurocentric. Nevertheless, today the discourse of universal human rights is more internationally widespread and influential than ever. In Evidence for Hope, leading international relations scholar Kathryn Sikkink argues that this is because human rights laws and institutions work. Sikkink rejects the notion that human rights are a Western imposition and points to a wide range of evidence that she claims demonstrates the effectiveness of human rights in bringing about a world that is appreciably improved in many ways from what it was previously. We have invited a broad range of scholars to assess Sikkink's challenging claims.
In: International studies quarterly: the journal of the International Studies Association, Band 63, Heft 4, S. 1108-1121
ISSN: 1468-2478
Political corruption is rampant in—and destructive to—many parts of the world. A growing number of international organizations (IOs) claim to address the problem by encouraging good governance norms and rules, such as anti-corruption standards and practices. Whether membership in IOs dampens corruption, however, is unclear. Our central argument is that the characteristics of IO membership determine both whether corruption is tolerated and the extent to which formal anti-corruption rules effectively combat the problem. First, groups of corrupt states are reticent to enforce good governance norms or rules against other IO members, rendering punishment for corruption incredible. Second, leaders may witness the value of corruption to their IO peers and learn to act the same way. Using a variety of data sources and estimation strategies, including new data on IO anti-corruption mandates, we demonstrate that: (1) countries that participate in member-corrupted IOs are significantly more likely to engage in corruption themselves—and experience an increase in corruption over time—than are countries that participate in less corrupt IOs; and (2) this tolerance for corruption occurs even within IOs that have adopted formal anti-corruption mandates, rendering good governance rules largely cheap talk among organizations governed by corrupt principles.
World Affairs Online
In: American Journal of International Law Volume 113, Issue 2 April 2019 , pp. 221-271
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In: Human Rights Quarterly 41 (2019) 115–142
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In: American Journal of International Law Symposium on New Directions in Anticorruption Law, 2019
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In: Human rights quarterly, Band 41, Heft 1, S. A-1-A-11
ISSN: 1085-794X
In: The Journal of Politics, Band 81
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In: The journal of politics: JOP, Band 81, Heft 2, S. 707-711
ISSN: 1468-2508
In: International studies quarterly: the journal of the International Studies Association, Band 63, Heft 3, S. 449-463
ISSN: 1468-2478
AbstractThis article introduces a Thematic Section and theorizes the multiple ways that judicializing international relations shifts power away from national executives and legislatures toward litigants, judges, arbitrators, and other nonstate decision-makers. We identify two preconditions for judicialization to occur—(1) delegation to an adjudicatory body charged with applying designated legal rules, and (2) legal rights-claiming by actors who bring—or threaten to bring—a complaint to one or more of these bodies. We classify the adjudicatory bodies that do and do not contribute to judicializing international relations, including but not limited to international courts. We then explain how rights-claiming initiates a process for authoritatively determining past violations of the law, identifying remedies for those violations, and preventing future violations. Because judicializing international relations occurs in multiple phases, in multiple locations, and involves multiple actors as decision-makers, governments often do not control the timing, nature, or extent to which political and policy decisions are adjudicated. Delegation—and the associated choice of institutional design features—is thus only the first step in a chain of processes that determine how a diverse array of nonstate actors influence politically consequential decisions.
In: International studies quarterly: the journal of the International Studies Association, Band 63, Heft 3, S. 449-530
ISSN: 1468-2478
World Affairs Online
In: Political science quarterly: a nonpartisan journal devoted to the study and analysis of government, politics and international affairs ; PSQ, Band 133, Heft 1, S. 151-152
ISSN: 1538-165X
In: The journal of conflict resolution: journal of the Peace Science Society (International), Band 63, Heft 5, S. 1253-1282
ISSN: 1552-8766
A growing number of developed country governments link good governance, including human rights, to developing countries' access to aid, trade, and investment. We consider whether governments enforce these conditions sincerely, in response to rights violations, or whether such conditions might instead be used as a veil for protectionist policies, motivated by domestic concerns about import competition. We do so via an examination of the world's most important unilateral trade preference program, the US Generalized System of Preferences (GSP), which includes worker rights as one criterion for program access. We argue that the two-tiered structure of the GSP privileges some domestic interests at one level, while disadvantaging them at the other. Using a new data set on all US GSP beneficiary countries and sanctioning measures from 1986 to 2013, we demonstrate that labor rights outcomes play a role in the maintenance of country-level trade benefits and that import competition does not condition the application of rights-based criteria at this level. At the same, however, the US government does not consider worker rights in the elements (at the country-product level) of the program that have the greatest material impact. The result is a situation in which the US government talks somewhat sincerely at the country level in its rights-based conditionality, but its behavior at the country-product level cheapens this talk.
In: ILAR WP #28
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Working paper
In: 45 Yale Journal of International Law, 2017, Forthcoming
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