Alexander Thompson. 2009. Channels of power: The UN Security Council and U.S. Statecraft in Iraq (Ithaca: Cornell University Press)
In: The review of international organizations, Band 4, Heft 4, S. 435-437
ISSN: 1559-744X
In: The review of international organizations, Band 4, Heft 4, S. 435-437
ISSN: 1559-744X
In: Journal of peace research, Band 46, Heft 1, S. 79-97
ISSN: 1460-3578
Are violators of international human rights norms punished with lower levels of foreign aid? Despite their abstract preferences, governments often lack the incentive to punish norm violators bilaterally. Multilateral lending institutions, such as the World Bank, could fill the void if they wanted to consider human rights abuses and could bypass restrictions on evaluating the political character of recipients. This article argues that `shaming' in the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, through resolutions that explicitly criticized governments for their human rights records, provided substantive information about rights abuses and gave political cover for the World Bank and other liberal multilateral aid institutions seeking to sanction human rights violators. Statistical analyses support these theoretical claims. The adoption of a UNCHR resolution condemning a country's human rights record produced a sizeable reduction in multilateral, and especially World Bank, aid but had no effect on the country's aggregate bilateral aid receipts. The analyses also support predictions that `objective' measures of human rights have no independent effect on multilateral aid allocations. The findings, which are robust to different model techniques and specifications, suggest that punishment for violating international human rights norms is selective, that international organizations play an important role in the selection process and, thus, that seemingly symbolic resolutions of a politically motivated IO can carry tangible consequences.
In: Journal of peace research, Band 46, Heft 1, S. 79-97
ISSN: 0022-3433
World Affairs Online
In: American political science review, Band 102, Heft 4, S. 417-433
ISSN: 1537-5943
Can international judges be relied upon to resolve disputes impartially? If not, what are the sources of their biases? Answers to these questions are critically important for the functioning of an emerging international judiciary, yet we know remarkably little about international judicial behavior. An analysis of a new dataset of dissents in the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) yields a mixed set of answers. On the bright side, there is no evidence that judges systematically employ cultural or geopolitical biases in their rulings. There is some evidence that career insecurities make judges more likely to favor their national government when it is a party to a dispute. Most strongly, the evidence suggests that international judges are policy seekers. Judges vary in their inclination to defer to member states in the implementation of human rights. Moreover, judges from former socialist countries are more likely to find violations against their own government and against other former socialist governments, suggesting that they are motivated by rectifying a particular set of injustices. I conclude that the overall picture is mostly positive for the possibility of impartial review of government behavior by judges on an international court. Like judges on domestic review courts, ECtHR judges are politically motivated actors in the sense that they have policy preferences on how to best apply abstract human rights in concrete cases, not in the sense that they are using their judicial power to settle geopolitical scores.
SSRN
Working paper
In: American political science review, Band 102, Heft 4, S. 417-433
ISSN: 0003-0554
World Affairs Online
In: International organization, Band 61, Heft 4
ISSN: 1531-5088
SSRN
Working paper
In: International organization, Band 61, Heft 4, S. 669-701
ISSN: 0020-8183
World Affairs Online
In: International studies quarterly: the journal of the International Studies Association, Band 50, Heft 4, S. 861-888
ISSN: 0020-8833, 1079-1760
World Affairs Online
In: The journal of conflict resolution: journal of the Peace Science Society (International), Band 50, Heft 6, S. 809-830
ISSN: 1552-8766
How do citizens hold their leader accountable during an ongoing war? The authors distinguish between two models of accountability—the "decision maker" and "managerial" models—and investigate their implications in the context of the current war in Iraq. They employ a novel measurement model and a database of survey marginals to estimate weekly time series of aggregate beliefs about various aspects of the war. Consistent with the "decision maker" model, they find that shifts in aggregate support for the war have a greater impact on presidential approval than do equivalent shifts in perceptions of war success or approval of the president's handling of the war. Conversely, aggregate perceptions of success are more responsive to casualties and key events than are aggregate beliefs about the war's merits. This suggests that the link from casualties and events to presidential approval is less direct than previously assumed.
In: The journal of conflict resolution: journal of the Peace Science Society (International), Band 50, Heft 6, S. 809-830
ISSN: 0022-0027, 0731-4086
World Affairs Online
In: International studies quarterly: the journal of the International Studies Association, Band 50, Heft 4, S. 861-888
ISSN: 1468-2478
In: International organization, Band 59, Heft 3, S. 527-557
ISSN: 0020-8183
Nicht zuletzt der Golfkrieg 2003 hat gezeigt, dass Staaten zumindest bemüht sind, ihr Handeln durch den UN-Sicherheitsrat zu legitimieren. Doch warum ist die Legitimierung durch eine internationale Organisation so wichtig? In dem Beitrag wird argumentiert, dass das Motiv hierfür weniger in dem Wunsch einer unabhängigen Bestätigung der Notwendigkeit einer Intervention liegt, als vielmehr in dem Bestreben, sich gegen die Folgen militärischen Handelns politisch abzusichern. Die Legitimität der Entscheidungen des Sicherheitsrates beruht hierbei weniger auf rechtlichen oder moralischen Grundsätzen als vielmehr auf durch wenige Staaten undemokratisch beschlossenen Kompromisslinien. Somit prägt die UN das Handeln von Staaten auf Grundlage einer Legitimation, die erst durch das Handeln bzw. die Stellungnahmen von Trägern staatlicher Macht zustande gekommen ist. Es wird deutlich, dass diese Legitimation größer wäre, wenn sie auf allgemein anerkannten normativen Grundsätzen beruhen würde. (rll-swp)
World Affairs Online
In: International organization, Band 59, Heft 3
ISSN: 1531-5088