Delayed but not derailed: legislative compliance with European Court of Human Rights judgments

ABSTRACT

Legislative changes can be crucial for implementing human rights. This article investigates how the need for legislative changes influences compliance with European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) judgments. I argue that the need for legislative changes might influence compliance politics in two ways. First, ECtHR interference with the will of elected parliaments is controversial in several European states. Such controversy might increase the risk of defiance of judgments requiring legislative changes. Second, the greater number of veto players needed to pass legislative is likely to delay compliance. Using original implementation data, I show that the need for legislative changes tends to delay compliance, but does not increase the risk of long-term defiance. The ECtHR's ability to eventually prompt legislative changes is not smaller than its ability to induce other reforms. I also find that delays associated with the need for legislative changes are greater in states with greater numbers of ideologically diverse veto players, in states with a proportional electoral system, and in states without domestic judicial review.

KEYWORDS:

• European Court of Human Rights
• compliance
• legislative changes
• implementation
• event history analysis

ORCID

Øyvind Stiansen http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6276-8689

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Øyvind Stiansen is a PhD candidate at the Department of Political Science and PluriCourts Centre of Excellence at the University of Oslo. His research focuses on compliance with judgments from the European Court of Human Rights as well as judicial politics in the European Court of Human Rights.

Notes

1. See e.g. paragraph 335 of the 2012 judgment in the case of Artavia Murillo et al. v. Costa Rica.

2. Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, ‘National Parliaments: Guarantors of Human Rights in Europe’, Resolution 1823, 2011,

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4. Yonatan Lupu, ‘Legislative Veto Players and the Effects of International Human Rights Agreements’, American Journal of Political Science 59, no. 3 (2015): 578–94.

5. Courtney Hillebrecht, Domestic Politics and International Human Rights Tribunals: The Problem of Compliance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014); Courtney Hillebrecht, ‘The Power of Human Rights Tribunals: Compliance with the European Court of Human Rights and Domestic Policy Change’, European Journal of International Relations 20, no. 4 (2014): 1100–23.

6. Øyvind Stiansen and Erik Voeten, The Georgetown/PluriCourts European Court of Human Rights Database, 2017.

7. e.g. Dinah Shelton, ‘The Boundaries of Human Rights Jurisdiction in Europe’, Duke Journal of Comparative and International Law 13 (2003): 147; Rachel Cichowski, ‘Mobilisation, Litigation and Democratic Governance’, Representation 49, no. 3 (2013): 326.

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9. Matthew E.K. Hall, The Nature of Supreme Court Power (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Alexandra Huneeus, ‘Courts Resisting Courts: Lessons from the Inter-American Court's Struggle to Enforce Human Rights’, Cornell International Law Journal 44, no. 3 (2011): 493–533.

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27. Hillebrecht, Domestic Politics and International Human Rights Tribunals: The Problem of Compliance; Hillebrecht, ‘The Power of Human Rights Tribunals’; Voeten, ‘Domestic Implementation of European Court of Human Rights Judgments’.

28. Hillebrecht, ‘The Power of Human Rights Tribunals’, 1107.

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31. de Londras and Dzehtsiarou, ‘Mission Impossible?’, 474, emphasis in original.

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35. Bates, ‘Democratic Override (or Rejection) and the Authority of the Strasbourg Court’, 276.

36. David Davis, ‘Britain Must Defy the European Court of Human Rights on Prisoner Voting as Strasbourg is Exceeding Its Authority: Turning Criticism into Strength’, in The European Court of Human Rights and its Discontents, ed. Spyridon Flogaitis, Tom Zwart, and Julie Fraser (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2013).

37. Gerards, ‘The Netherlands: Political Dynamics, Institutional Robustness’, 332–3.

38. Marie Simonsen, ‘Giske har ytringsfrihet, sl˚ar Støre fast’, Dagbladet, 2009, 366–7; Reiersten, ‘Norway: New Constitutionalism, New Counter-Dynamics?’

39. Guiseppe Martinico, ‘Italy: Between Constitutional Openness and Resistance’, in Criticism of the European Court of Human Rights. Shifting the Dynamics of the Convention System: Counter-Dynamics at the National and EU level, ed. Patricia Popelier, Sarah Lambrecht, and Koen Lemmens (Intersentia, 2016), 182.

40. e.g. Roger D. Congleton, ‘On the Merits of Bicameral Legislatures: Policy Stability within Partisan Polities’, Jahrbuch für Neue Politische Okonomië 22 (2003): 29–49.

41. Tsebelis, ‘Decision Making in Political Systems’.

42. Binder, ‘Legislative Productivity and Gridlock’.

43. ⁴³Huneeus, ‘Courts Resisting Courts’, 517.

44. Donald and Leach, ‘The Role of Parliaments Following Judgments of the European Court of Human Rights’, 87–8.

45. Karen J. Alter, The New Terrain of International Law: Courts, Politics, Rights (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014).

46. Xinyuan Dai, ‘Why Comply? The Domestic Constituency Mechanism’, International Organization 59, no. 2 (2005): 363–98.

47. Bogdan Dragos and Alina Mungiu-Pippidi, ‘The Reluctant Embrace: The Impact of the European Court of Human Rights in post-communist Romania’, in The European Court of Human Rights. Implementing Strasbourg's Judgments on Domestic Policy, ed. Dia Anagnostou (Edinburgh University Press, 2013), 78–9.

48. Sarah Lambrecht, ‘Assessing the Existence of Criticism of the European Court of Human Rights’, in Criticism of the European Court of Human Rights. Shifting the Dynamics of the Convention System: Counter-Dynamics at the National and EU level, ed. Patricia Popelier, Sarah Lambrecht, and Koen Lemmens (Intersentia, 2016), 534–50.

49. Huneeus, ‘Courts Resisting Courts’.

50. see also Daniel Naurin and Øyvind Stiansen, ‘Judicial Dissent and Compliance with Inter-American Court of Human Rights Judgments’, Unpublished Working Paper, 2017.

51. Huneeus, ‘Courts Resisting Courts’.

52. Agent of the Government of Turkey, ‘Communication from Turkey Concerning the Unal Tekeli group of Cases Against Turkey’, Action Report Presented to the Committee of Ministers, 2016.

53. Nils Butenschøn, Øyvind Stiansen, and Kåre Vollan, Power-Sharing in Conflict-Ridden Societies (London/New York: Ashgate/Routledge, 2015), 145–6, 311.

54. Golub and Steunenberg, ‘How Time Affects EU Decision-making’, 157–8; Steunenberg and Kaeding, ‘“As Time Goes by”: Explaining the Transposition of Maritime Directives’, 438–9.

55. Georg Vanberg, The Politics of Constitutional Review in Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

56. Donald, ‘Parliaments as Compliance Partners in the European Convention on Human Rights System’, 99.

57. Davis, ‘Britain Must Defy the European Court of Human Rights on Prisoner Voting as Strasbourg is Exceeding Its Authority’.

58. Mikael Rask Madsen, ‘Rebalancing European Human Rights: Has the Brighton Declaration Engendered a New Deal on Human Rights in Europe?’, Journal of International Dispute Settlement, 2017.

59. Katja Achermann and Klaus Dingwerth, ‘The Politicization of the European Court of Human Rights: A Comparison of Austria and Switzerland’, Unpublished Working Paper Prepared for the Workshop ‘The Political and Legal Theory of International Tribunals’, University of Oslo, 18–19 June 2018, 2018.

60. Lambrecht, ‘Assessing the Existence of Criticism of the European Court of Human Rights’.

61. Tsebelis, ‘Decision Making in Political Systems’; George Tsebelis, Veto players: How political Institutions Work (Princeton University Press, 2002); Binder, ‘The Dynamics of Legislative Gridlock, 1947–96’, Henisz, ‘The Institutional Environment for Economic Growth’; Henisz, ‘The Institutional Environment for Infrastructure Investment’.

62. Hillebrecht, ‘The Power of Human Rights tribunals’.

63. Conrad and Moore, ‘What Stops the Torture?’

64. Arend Lijphart, Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999).

65. Tsebelis, ‘Decision Making in Political Systems’, 290.

66. Committee of Ministers, ‘Cusan and Fazzo v. Italy: State of Execution’, Notes from the Department for the Execution of ECtHR Judgments, 2017.

67. Pippa Norris, ‘Choosing Electoral Systems: Proportional, Majoritarian and Mixed Systems’, International Political Science Review 18, no. 3 (1997): 304.

68. There is of course great variation in the degree of fragmentation that different proportional systems produce, relating for instance to the number of constituencies and thresholds. On average proportional systems will, however, tend to produce greater fragmentation than majority- or plurality-based systems.

69. Øyvind Stiansen and Erik Voeten, The Georgetown/PluriCourts European.

70. Voeten, ‘Domestic Implementation of European Court of Human Rights Judgments’, 231; Sharanbir Grewal and Erik Voeten, ‘Are New Democracies Better Human Rights Compliers?’, International Organization 69, no. 2 (2015): 502.

71. Øyvind Stiansen and Erik Voeten, The Georgetown/PluriCourts European.

72. Grewal and Voeten, ‘Are New Democracies Better Human Rights Compliers?’

73. Ibid.

74. Başak Çali and Anne Koch, ‘Foxes Guarding the Foxes? The Peer Review of Human Rights Judgments by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe’, Human Rights Law Review 14, no. 2 (2014): 301–25.

75. Tom Barkhuysen and Michiel L. Van Emmerik, ‘A Comparative View on the Execution of Judgments of the European Court of Human Rights’, in European Court of Human Rights, Remedies and Execution of Judgments, ed. Theodora Christou and Juan P. Raymond (2005), 3.

76. Øyvind Stiansen and Erik Voeten, The Georgetown/PluriCourts European.

77. This operationalisation thus assumes that new legislation is only adopted when necessary. This assumption is in line with claims made in the literature that states will typically opt for minimal compliance even when they are inclined to honor the judgment Andreas von Staden, ‘Rational Choice within Normative Constraints: Compliance by Liberal Democracies with the Judgments of the European Court of Human Rights’, available at SSRN 2000024, 2012, 10. Yet, it may be problematic if legislative changes are enacted even if compliance could have been achieved without them. The available data do, however, not allow separating such cases from cases where legislative changes were strictly needed.

78. Michael Coppedge et al., V-Dem Country-Year Dataset v8, Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project, 2018.

79. Henisz, ‘The Institutional Environment for Economic Growth’; Henisz, ‘The Institutional Environment for Infrastructure Investment’.

80. Cesi Cruz, Philip Keefer, and Carlos Scartascini, ‘Database of Political Institutions Codebook, 2015 Update’, Updated Version of Thorsten Beck, George Clarke, Alberto Groff, Philip Keefer, and Patrick Walsh, 2001. ‘New Tools in Comparative Political Economy: The Database of Political Institutions’, World Bank Economic Review 15, no. 1 (2016 September): 165–76.

81. Grewal and Voeten, ‘Are New Democracies Better Human Rights Compliers?’, 507–8.

82. The PRS Group, ‘International Country Risk Guide Methodology’, 2012, 5–7.

83. Monty G. Marshall, Keith Jaggers, and Ted Robert Gurr, ‘Polity IV Project: Political Regime Characteristics and Transitions, 1800–2004, Datasets Users’ Manual’, Center for Global Policy, 2004.

84. Grewal and Voeten, ‘Are New Democracies Better Human Rights Compliers?’

85. Øyvind Stiansen and Erik Voeten, ‘Backlash and Judicial Restraint: Evidence from the European Court of Human Rights’, Working Paper available at SSRN, 2018.

86. Keller and Marti, ‘Reconceptualizing Implementation: The Judicialization of the Execution of the European Court of Human Rights’ Judgments’.

87. Çali and Koch, ‘Foxes Guarding the Foxes? The Peer Review of Human Rights Judgments by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe’.

88. Dia Anagnostou, ‘Introduction’, in The European Court of Human Rights. Implementing Strasbourg's Judgments on Domestic Policy, ed. Dia Anagnostou (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013), 7–8.

89. Janet M. Box-Steffensmeier and Bradford S. Jones, Event History Modeling. A Guide for Social Scientists (Cambridge: Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

90. Voeten, ‘Domestic Implementation of European Court of Human Rights Judgments’, 232.

91. Jonathan Golub, ‘Survival Analysis’, in The Oxford Handbook of Political Methodology, ed. Janet M. Box Steffensmeier, Henry E. Brady, and David Collier (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).

92. Box-Steffensmeier and Jones, Event History Modeling. A Guide for Social Scientists.

93. Janet M. Box-Steffensmeier and Christopher J.W. Zorn, ‘Duration Models and Proportional Hazards in Political Science’, American Journal of Political Science 45 (2001): 972–88; Amanda A Licht, ‘Change Comes with Time: Substantive Interpretation of Nonproportional Hazards in Event History Analysis’, Political Analysis 19 no. 2 (2011): 227–43.

94. Patricia Grambsch and Terry Therneau, ‘Proportional Hazards Tests and Diagnostics Based on Weighted Residuals’, Biometrika 81, no. 3 (1994): 515–26.

95. Box-Steffensmeier and Zorn, ‘Duration Models and Proportional Hazards in Political Science’.

96. Licht, ‘Change Comes with Time: Substantive Interpretation of Nonproportional Hazards in Event History Analysis’.

97. Ibid. The relative hazard is given by exp(β₁+ β₂ln(t)). See Golub and Steunenberg, ‘How Time Affects EU Decision-making’ and Licht, ‘Change Comes with Time: Substantive Interpretation of Nonproportional Hazards in Event History Analysis’, 5 for further mathematical detail.

98. Ibid., 288.

99. Henisz, ‘The Institutional Environment for Economic Growth’; Henisz, ‘The Institutional Environment for Infrastructure Investment’.

100. Hillebrecht, Domestic Politics and International Human Rights Tribunals: The Problem of Compliance; Hillebrecht, ‘The Power of Human Rights Tribunals’; Voeten, ‘Domestic Implementation of European Court of Human Rights Judgments’; Grewal and Voeten, ‘Are New Democracies Better Human Rights Compliers?’

101. Keller and Marti, ‘Reconceptualizing Implementation: The Judicialization of the Execution of the European Court of Human Rights’ Judgments’.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Norges Forskningsråd [grant number 223274].