Makers and shapers: Human rights INGOS and public opinion

Human Rights Quarterly

Volumn 34, Issue 1, 2012, Pages 199-224

  Davis, David R ^a   Murdie, Amanda ^b   Steinmetz, Coty Garnett ^b  

^a EMORY UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b KANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

GOVERNMENT; HUMAN RIGHTS; INTERNATIONAL LAW; NONGOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATION; PUBLIC ATTITUDE; STATE ROLE;

EID: 84857511067     PISSN: 02750392     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/hrq.2012.0016     Document Type: Article

References (192)

1. United Nations Decade for Human Rights Education, adopted 23 Dec. 1994, G.A. Res. 49/184, U.N. GAOR, 49th Sess., 94th plen. mtg., Agenda Item 100(b), U.N. Doc. A/RES/49/184 (1995).
2. Id. at 2
3. Id. In this article an international nongovernmental organization (INGO) is minimally defined as any non-profit, open-membership, transparent, and legal organization with a presence in more than one state. This is the definition agreed to in the Yearbook of International Organizations, the standard reference on INGOs. See Union of Int'l Ass'ns [UIA], Yearbook of International Organizations: Guide to Global Civil Society Networks (2008) [hereinafter Yearbook of Int'l Org.]. Within this minimally defined category, however, we focus here on INGOs interested and concerned with policy change and performance related to the hypothetical meta-goal of a world in which there are no human rights violations.
4. David L. Cingranelli & David L. Richards, Measuring the Impact of Human Rights Organizations, in NGOs and Human Rights: Promise And Performance 225 (Claude E. Welch, Jr. ed., 2001).
5. Harry M. Scoble & Laurie S. Wiseberg, Human Rights and Amnesty International, 413 Annals Am. Aca d. Pol. & Soc. Sci. 11 (1974)
6. Human Rights Internet, Human Rights Directory: Latin America, Africa, Asia (Laurie S. Wiseberg & Harry M. Scoble eds., 1981) [hereinafter Human Rights Directory: Latin America, Africa, Asia]
7. Ramesh Thakur, Human Rights: Amnesty International and the United Nations, 31 J. Peac e Res. 143 (1994)
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12. NGOs and Human Rights, supra note 3
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18. Keck & Sikkink, supra note 4
19. The Power of Human Rights: International Norms and Domestic Change (Thomas Risse, Stephen Ropp & Kathryn Sikkink eds., 1999)
20. Amanda Murdie & David R. Davis, Shaming and Blaming: Using Events Data to Assess the Impact of Human Rights INGOs, Int'l. Stud. Q. (forthcoming Mar. 2012).
21. The theoretical literature, however, clearly lays out this effect.
22. Scoble & Wiseberg, Human Rights and Amnesty International, supra note 4
23. Human Rights Directory: Latin America, Africa, Asia, supra note 4;
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26. Thakur, supra note 4
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29. To Walk Without Fear, supra note 4
30. Keck & Sikkink, supra note 4
31. William Korey, NGOs and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1998)
32. The Power of Human Rights, supra note 6
33. Clark, supra note 4
34. NGOs and Human Rights, supra note 3
35. Anthony Tirado Chase, The State and Human Rights: Governance and Sustainable Human Development in Yemen, 17 Int'l J. Pol., Culture & Soc'y 213 (2003)
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37. Global Social Movements, supra note 4
38. Tsutsui & Wotipka, supra note 4
39. Hopgood, supra note 4
40. Calnan, supra note 4.
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42. Kathleen Pritchard, Human Rights: A Decent Respect for Public Opinion?, 13 Hum. Rts. Q. 123 (1991)
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44. Sam McFarland & Melissa Mathews, Who Cares about Human Rights?, 26 Pol. Psychol. 365 (2005)
45. Christopher J. Anderson et al., In the Eye of the Beholder?: The Foundations of Subjective Human Rights Conditions in East-Central Europe, 38 Comp. Pol. Stud. 771 (2005)
46. Matthew Carlson & Ola Listhaug, Citizens' Perceptions of Human Rights Practices: An Analysis of 55 Countries, 44 J. Peac e Res. 465 (2007)
47. H. Michael Crowson & Teresa K. DeBacker, Belief, Motivational, and Ideological Correlates of Human Rights Attitudes, 148 J. Soc. Psych. 293 (2008).
48. Anderson, Regan, & Ostergard, supra note 8
49. Anderson et al., In the Eye of the Beholder?, supra note 8
50. Carlson & Listhaug, supra note 8.
51. Welch, supra note 5
52. Keck & Sikkink, supra note 4
53. The Power of Human Rights, supra note 6.
54. Steven Poe & C. Neal Tate, Repression of Human Rights to Personal Integrity in the 1980s: A Global Analysis, 88 Am. Pol. Sci. Rev. 853 (1994)
55. Keck & Sikkink, supra note 4
56. The Power of Human Rights, supra note 6.
57. Moghaddam & Vuksanovic, supra note 8
58. Pritchard, supra note 8
59. Anderson, Regan, & Ostergard, supra note 8
60. McFarland & Mathews, supra note 8
61. Anderson et al., supra note 8
62. Carlson & Listhaug, supra note 8
63. Crowson & DeBacker, supra note 8
64. Shareen Hertel, Lyle Scruggs & C. Patrick Heidkamp, Human Rights and Public Opinion: From Attitudes to Action, 124 Pol. Sci. Q. 443 (2009)
65. Brooke A. Ackerly & José Miguel Cruz, Hearing the Voice of the People: Human Rights as if People Mattered, 33 New Pol. Sci. 1 (2011)
66. Petya Puncheva-Michelotti, Marco Michelotti & Peter Gahan, The Relationship Between Individuals' Recognition of Human Rights and Responses to Socially Responsible Companies: Evidence from Russia and Bulgaria, 93 J. Bus. Ethics 583 (2010).
67. James C. Franklin, Shame on You: The Impact of Human Rights Criticism on Political Repression in Latin America, 52 Int'l Stud. Q. 187 (2008)
68. Emilie M. Hafner-Burton, Sticks and Stones: Naming and Shaming the Human Rights Enforcement Problem, 62 Int'l Org. 689 (2008)
69. Murdie & Davis, supra note 6.
70. NGOs and Human Rights, supra note 3;
71. Welch, supra note 5
72. Clifford Bob, The Marketing of Rebellion: Insurgents, Media, and International Activism (2005).
73. Bob, supra note 14
74. Murdie & Davis, supra note 6.
75. Kurt Schock, Unarmed Insurrections: People Power Movements in Nondemocracies 70-71 (2005).
76. Celeste A. Wallander, Ukraine's Election: The Role of One International NGO (2005), available at http://csis.org/files/media/csis/pubs/0503_ukraine_en.pdf
77. Andrew Wilson, Ukraine's Orange Revolution, NGOs and the Role of the West, 19 Cambridge Rev. Int'l Aff. 21, 27 (2006)
78. Michael McFaul, Ukraine Imports Democracy: External Influences on the Orange Revolution, Int'l Sec., Fall 2007, at 45.
79. Yearbook of Int'l Org., supra note 3.
80. Richard Pierre Claude, Global Human Rights Education: The Challenges for Nongovernmental Organizations, in Human Rights Education for the Twenty-first Century (George J. Adreopoulous & Richard Pierre Claude eds., 1999).
81. Welch, supra note 5, at 51.
82. Human Rights Education Network, About Us, available at http://hrea.org/index.php?doc_id=97.
83. The Power of Human Rights, supra note 6
84. Obiora Chinedu Okafor, Legitimizing Human Rights NGOs: Lessons from Nigeria (2006).
85. Okafor, supra note 21, at 171-173.
86. The Power of Human Rights, supra note 6
87. Clark, supra note 4.
88. Hans Peter Schmitz, From Lobbying to Shaming: The Evolution of Human Rights Activism Since the 1940s (unpublished paper prepared for the International Studies Association Meeting 2002), available at http://isanet.ccit.arizona.edu/noarchive/schmitz.html
89. Coalitions Across Borders: Transnational Protest and The Neoliberal Order (Joe Bandy & Jackie Smith eds., 2005)
90. Bob, supra note 14
91. James Ron, Howard Ramos & Kathleen Rodgers, Transnational Information Politics: NGO Human Rights Reporting, 1986-2000, 49 Int'l Stud. Q. 557, 559 (2005)
92. Franklin, supra note 13
93. Hafner-Burton, supra note 13.
94. Stephen C. Ropp and Kathryn Sikkink, International Norms and Domestic Politics in Chile and Guatemala, in The Power of Human Rights, supra note 6, at 172+183
95. Angelina Snodgrass Godoy, Lynchings and the Democratization of Terror in Postwar Guatemala: Implications for Human Rights, 24 Hum. Rts. Q. 640 (2002)
96. Kathryn Sikkink, Mixed Signals: U.S. Human Rights Policy and Latin America 192 (2004).
97. For example, in our dataset on HRO shaming in Reuters, Guatemala is targeted directly by HROs in at least eight stories in 1990.
98. Keck & Sikkink, supra note 4
99. The Power of Human Rights, supra note 6.
100. Sikkink, Mixed Signals, supra note 25, at 195.
101. Murdie & Davis, supra note 6.
102. Clark, supra note 4, at 104-105.
103. Id. at 71.
104. Keck & Sikkink, supra note 4
105. Brysk, supra note 7.
106. Keck & Sikkink, supra note 4.
107. Id.
108. Thomas Risse & Kathryn Sikkink, The Socialization of International Human Rights Norms into Domestic Practices: Introduction, in The Power of Human Rights, supra note 6, at 1+17.
109. Id. at 25.
110. Id. at 28 (internal quotation omitted).
111. Id. at 29
112. Eric Neumayer, Do International Human Rights Treaties Improve Respect for Human Rights? 49 J. Conflict Res. 925, 930-931 (2005).
113. This process occurs when states act consistently with their tactical concessions. However, states may act inconsistently with their concessions, as when an increase in human rights violations follows a state's human rights treaty ratification. For more information on inconsistent behavior, see id.
114. Risse & Sikkink, The Socialization of International Human Rights Norms into Domestic Practices, supra note 35, at 34.
115. Id. at 33.
116. Emilie M. Hafner-Burton & Kiyoteru Tsutsui, Human Rights in a Globalizing World: The Paradox of Empty Promises, 110 Am. J. Soc. 1373 (2005)
117. Todd Landman, Protecting Human Rights: A Compa rative Study 59 (2005)
118. Neumayer, supra note 38.
119. Cardenas, supra note 7. Cardenas, however, when not accounting for endogeneity, does not find a robust effect of specifically human rights INGOs within a state on human rights. See Amanda Murdie, Signals without Borders: The Conditional Impact of INGOs (Aug. 2009) (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Emory University) (on file with author).
120. Franklin, supra note 13
121. Hafner-Burton, supra note 13
122. Murdie & Davis, supra note 6.
123. Hafner-Burton, supra note 13.
124. Id. at 700.
125. Franklin, supra note 13.
126. Id. at 203.
127. Murdie & Davis, supra note 6
128. Brysk, supra note 7
129. Thomas Rissen & Kathryn Sikkink, The Socialization of International Human Rights Norms into Domestic Practices: Introduction, in The Power of Human Rights, supra note 6, at 1, 33.
130. Murdie & Davis, supra note 6.
131. Clark, supra note 4, at 141.
132. Anja Jetschke, Linking the Unlinkable International Norms and Nationalism in Indonesia and the Philippines, in The Power of Human Rights, supra note 6, at 134, 172.
133. Sieglinde Gränzer, Changing Discourse: Transnational Advocacy Networks in Tunisia and Morocco, in The Power of Human Rights, supra note 6, at 109, 128-129.
134. Id.
135. Id. at 129.
136. Keck & Sikkink, supra note 4
137. The Power of Human Rights, supra note 6.
138. Keck & Sikkink, supra note 4, at 20+23+26.
139. Elizabeth Heger Boyle, Fortunata Songora & Gail Foss, International Discourse and Local Politics: Anti-Female-Genital-Cutting Laws in Egypt, Tanzania, and the United States, 48 Soc. Prob. 524 (2001)
140. Elizabeth Heger Boyle, Female Genital Cutting: Cultural Conflict in the Global Community 67-72 (2002)
141. Bob, supra note 14, at 28-32.
142. R. Charli Carpenter, Setting the Advocacy Agenda: Theorizing Issue Emergence and Nonemergence in Transnational Advocacy Networks, 51 Int'l. Stud. Q. 99, 99-100 (2007).
143. Thomas Risse, Transnational Actors and World Politics, in Handbook of International Relations 255 (Walter Carlsnaes, Thomas Risse, & Beth Simmons eds., 2002)
144. Risse & Sikkink, The Socialization of International Human Rights Norms into Domestic Practices, supra note 35
145. Keck & Sikkink, supra note 4.
146. Risse & Sikkink, The Socialization of International Human Rights Norms into Domestic Practices, supra note 35, at 25.
147. See United Nations Decade for Human Rights Education, supra note 1.
148. Ted Robert Gurr, Why Men Rebel 22 (1970).
149. Abudullahi An-Na'im, Toward a More People-Centered Human Rights Movement, in Human Rights: From the Frontiers of Research 33 (Diana Amnéus & Goran Gunner eds., 2002)
150. Bob, supra note 14, at 184-186
151. Hafner-Burton, supra note 13.
152. Clark, supra note 4.
153. WVS Research Group, Codebooks for World Values Survey (2000), available at http://www.worldvaluesurvey.org/wvs/articles/folders_published/survey_2000/files/root_q_2000.pdf.
154. Id.
155. David L. Cingranelli & David L. Richards, CIRI Variables List and Short Description (2010), available at http://ciri.binghamton.edu/documentation.asp.
156. Results also remain substantively and statistically similar when either the Political Terror Scale (State Department) or the Political Terror Scale (Amnesty International) is used. For Hypothesis 1, our main result-that human rights performance alone has no influence on human rights opinion-holds. For Hypothesis 2, the key independent variable-the interaction term between human rights performance and increased shaming-is not statistically significant at conventional levels but does include a 95% confidence interval in the expected direction. For Hypothesis 3, the results hold for both increased HRO shaming and HRO membership. These results are available by request (amurdie@ksu.edu).
157. Reed M. Wood & Mark Gibney, The Political Terror Scale (PTS): A Re-Introduction and a Comparison to CIRI, 32 Hum. Rts. Q. 367-400 (2010).
158. Cingranelli & Richards, supra note 67.
159. Id.
160. Murdie & Davis, supra note 6.
161. Yearbook of Int'l Org., supra note 3
162. Murdie & Davis, supra note 6.
163. Gary King & Will Lowe, An Automated Information Extraction Tool For International Conflict Data with Performance as Good as Human Coders: A Rare Events Evaluation Design, 57 Int'l Org. 617 (2003).
164. Murdie & Davis, supra note 6.
165. Murdie & Davis, supra note 6
166. Murdie, supra note 42.
167. Keck & Sikkink, supra note 4
168. The Power of Human Rights, supra note 6.
169. Poe & Tate, supra note 11.
170. Carlson & Listhaug, supra note 8.
171. Thomas Brambor, William Roberts Clark & Matt Golder, Understanding Interaction Models: Improving Empirical Analyses, 14 Pol. Analysis 63, 64+66 (2006).
172. Poe & Tate, supra note 11.
173. The World Bank, World Development Indica tors: 2010 (2010) available at http://data.worldbank.org/sites/default/files/wdi-final.pdf.
174. Conway W. Henderson, Population Pressures and Political Repression, 74 Soc. Sci. Q. 322 (1993).
175. Amanda Murdie and David R. Davis, Problematic Potential: The Human Rights Consequences of Peacekeeping Interventions in Civil Wars, 32 Hum. Rts. Q. 49 (2010).
176. Centre for the Study of Civil War, Uppsala Conflict Data Program, Peace Research Institute Oslo, UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Dataset v4-2009, available at http://www.pcr.uu.se/research/ucdp/datasets/ucdp_prio_armed_conflict_dataset
177. Poe & Tate, supra note 11
178. Christian Davenport & David A. Armstrong II, Democracy and the Violation of Human Rights: A Statistical Analysis from 1976 to 1996, 48 Am. J. Pol. Sci. 538 (2004).
179. Monty G. Marshall & Keith Jaggers, Polity IV Project: Political Regime Characteristics and Transitions, 1800-2010 (2007), available at http://www.systemicpeace.org/polity/polity4.htm.
180. Endogeneity is not a statistical issue with this specification, as evidenced by a nonsignificant Durbin-Wu-Hausmann test when utilizing the specification outlined in Murdie, supra note 42.
181. A list of the country-years used in this sample is available by request (amurdie@ksu.edu). The country coverage is remarkably diverse, including both high performing democracies and dictatorships with low human rights scores in the sample.
182. Gurr, supra note 62.
183. Golfo Alexopoulos, Stalin's Outca sts: Aliens, Citizens, and the Soviet State, 1926- 1936, at 77-79 (2003)
184. Stalin's Terror: High Politics and Mass Repression in the Soviet Union (Barry McLoughlin & Kevin McDermott eds., 2003).
185. Murdie, supra note 42.
186. Jackie Smith & Dawn Wiest, The Uneven Geography of Global Civil Society: National and Global Influences on Transnational Association, 84 Soc. Forces 621 (2005)
187. Yearbook of Int'l Org., supra note 3.
188. Murdie, supra note 42.
189. All our results are robust to the inclusion of controls for freedom of the press. These results are also available by request (amurdie@ksu.edu).
190. United Nations Decade for Human Rights Education, supra note 1.
191. Keck & Sikkink, supra note 4
192. The Power of Human Rights, supra note 6.