Dissertation and Book Project
Past Regret, Future Fear: Compliance with International Law
[Job market paper]
[Job market paper]
Members of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. Shading illustrates variation in the number of compliance orders received from the Court; darker shades indicate more compliance orders.
Why do democratic governments that support human rights sometimes defy the rulings of international human rights courts? In my dissertation, I examine this question in the context of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, a regional court that operates in Latin America. I argue that non-compliance results from (1) high capacity constraints that limit leaders' ability to comply; and from (2) democratic leaders responding to voter preferences against compliance. Although human rights scholars generally assume that voters support compliance, I find that attitudes toward compliance are not so uniform when the military is implicated. Justice for human rights violations often necessitates confronting the abuses of the past, which some voters would prefer to leave alone. Despite the abuses committed by military officials in recent dictatorships, the military is still a trusted institution in many Latin American states. Leaders thus face a dilemma when they receive judgments from the Inter-American Court: do they follow international law, or do they choose the policies that voters want? I show that the leader's decision to comply is a function of the public's preferences on the actor implicated by compliance and the leader's need to be accountable to the public. As the need for accountability increases, the leader becomes more responsive to the public's -- as opposed to her own -- preferences. Thus, if the public supports compliance, the leader is more likely to comply as the need for accountability increases; however, if the public does not support compliance, the leader is less likely to comply.
I test my theory using quantitative and qualitative methods. I construct an original dataset of all rulings from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights through 2014 and measure compliance using Court-issued monitoring reports. I combine these data with measures of indicators for democratic (elections) and undemocratic (military coups) threats to the leader's power, including a discrete measure of proximity to next election and public opinion data from two cross-national surveys. I use event history analysis to model the leader's time to compliance. My results show that leaders are more likely to comply when they face an increased need for accountability to domestic actors, and that these effects are tempered by the popularity of the implicated actors. For example, when the military -– the most frequent culprit –- is at fault for a human rights violation, the probability of compliance decreases as public support for the military increases. I supplement my statistical work with evidence from semi-structured interviews with attorneys and judges, and an in-depth case study on member-states' responses to court rulings on the necessary repeal of amnesty laws. My findings suggest the importance of incorporating the public's preferences into existing models of international law.
I test my theory using quantitative and qualitative methods. I construct an original dataset of all rulings from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights through 2014 and measure compliance using Court-issued monitoring reports. I combine these data with measures of indicators for democratic (elections) and undemocratic (military coups) threats to the leader's power, including a discrete measure of proximity to next election and public opinion data from two cross-national surveys. I use event history analysis to model the leader's time to compliance. My results show that leaders are more likely to comply when they face an increased need for accountability to domestic actors, and that these effects are tempered by the popularity of the implicated actors. For example, when the military -– the most frequent culprit –- is at fault for a human rights violation, the probability of compliance decreases as public support for the military increases. I supplement my statistical work with evidence from semi-structured interviews with attorneys and judges, and an in-depth case study on member-states' responses to court rulings on the necessary repeal of amnesty laws. My findings suggest the importance of incorporating the public's preferences into existing models of international law.
Other projects
Settle or Litigate? Consequences of Institutional Design in the Inter-American System of Human Rights Protection. Review of International Organizations (2021)
Why do states engage in settlements with victims of human rights violations? Although the friendly settlement procedure has been on the books at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights since 1992, states did not begin utilizing the procedure in earnest until nearly ten years later -- why? I argue that state behavior -- the choice to settle or litigate -- at the Inter-American Commission is driven in part by two features of the institution's design: (1) optional jurisdiction of the Inter-American Court and (2) a 2001 rules change that reduced the level of discretion over submission of cases to the court. Using an original dataset of petitions at the Inter-American Commission, I show that states engaged in more settlements in response to the increased cost of litigation, but that these changes are limited to states under the Inter-American Court's jurisdiction. Moreover, as a positive, perhaps unintended, consequence, states' levels of compliance with the Commission's non-binding recommendations also increased after the rules change. My findings indicate that it is possible for institutions to achieve more desirable or efficient outcomes by changing the rules of the game.
From "Is It Identified?" to "How Much Confounding Would It Take?" The Sensitivity-Based Approach to Observational Studies (with Chad Hazlett). Under review.
[Working paper] [Poster presented at PolMeth 2018]
[Working paper] [Poster presented at PolMeth 2018]
What causes some civilians to support peace while others do not after violent conflict? The 2016 referendum for a peace agreement with the FARC in Colombia has spawned a growing literature studying determinants of support for peace, focusing largely on the effects of (i) prior exposure to violence and (ii) political affiliation with the deal's champion. However, as with many substantively important questions regarding real world effects, observational studies are unable to rule out confounding, leaving defensible causal claims beyond reach. We demonstrate what progress can be made in these circumstances by a sensitivity-based approach, which shifts away from arguing whether an effect "is identified" (i.e. that confounding bias is exactly zero) to instead evaluate and discuss precisely how strong confounding would need to be to alter the study's conclusions. Employing newly available sensitivity analysis tools for linear regression, we find that the relationship between exposure to violence and support for peace can be overturned by even very weak confounders. By contrast, the relationship between prior political affiliation with the deal's champion and support for peace would require very powerful confounding to explain away. We also show how sensitivity analyses can be conducted using only the published regression results of prior studies, producing similar conclusions. Beyond this case, we argue that wider adoption of the sensitivity-based approach would facilitate greater transparency, improve productive scrutiny for both readers and reviewers, and facilitate valid investigation of important questions for which identification is imperfect.
