Estimating the Effects of Human Rights Treaties on State Behavior
Estimating the Effects of Human Rights Treaties on State Behavior
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DOI：
10.1017/s0022381610000599
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发表时间：
2010-10-01
影响因子：
3.1
通讯作者：
Hill, Daniel W., Jr.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Hill, Daniel W., Jr.
尽管研究表明，协调经济和安全政策的国际制度可以改变国家行为，但研究人权条约对国家行为的影响的研究发现，这些协议对遏制镇压行为几乎没有作用。然而，这些研究忽略了这样一个事实，即已知会影响镇压做法的若干国家层面的特征也会影响一个国家对人权制度作出正式承诺的可能性。作出承诺的国家和没有作出承诺的国家可能具有不同的国内体制特征。在批准国和非批准国之间的系统异质性使得很难推断如果一个国家没有对有关条约作出承诺，将在该国观察到的镇压程度。本文采用匹配技术来解决这一问题，并允许对人权条约对镇压行为的影响进行更有效的推断。人权条约的影响是在联合国五项核心人权条约中的三项的背景下审查的。结果很有趣；批准《禁止酷刑公约》以及在较小程度上批准《公民权利和政治权利国际公约》与减少对人身完整权利的尊重有关，而批准《消除对妇女歧视公约》则对遵守妇女权利产生积极影响。这些发现表明，需要建立更多针对条约的理论。
Though research suggests that international regimes that coordinate economic and security policy can alter state behavior, research examining the effect of human rights treaties on state behavior has found that these agreements do little to curb repressive practices. However, those studies neglect to account for the fact that several of the state-level characteristics which are known to affect repressive practices also influence the likelihood of a state making a formal commitment to the human rights regime. States that commit and states that do not are likely to have different domestic institutional features. Systematic heterogeneity across ratifiers and nonratifiers makes it difficult to infer the level of repression that would have been observed in a state had it not committed to the treaty in question. This paper employs matching techniques that address this problem and allow for more valid inferences about the effects of human rights treaties on repressive practices. The impact of human rights treaties is examined in the context of three of the five core UN human rights treaties. The results are quite interesting; ratification of the CAT and, to a lesser extent, the ICCPR is associated with reduced respect for physical integrity rights while ratification of the CEDAW has a positive impact on observance of women's rights. These findings suggest that more treaty-specific theory building is needed.