Book Project
Past Regret, Future Fear: Compliance with International Law
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)
"'Fix for the Future, Not for the Past': Democratic Accountability and Non-Compliance with International Law." Under review. [Working paper]
"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]
"Democratic Lock-in and the American Convention on Human Rights" (with Andrew Moravcsik and Cassandra Emmons). Working paper draft available on request.
"In Defense of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights." Working paper draft available on request.
"The Politics of Punishment: Why Non-Democracies Join the International Criminal Court" (with Leslie Johns). Work in progress.
