Lobbying, Access Points, and the Protection of Human Rights in Democracies

Abstract

Why do some democracies better protect human rights than other democracies? Although research shows that democracies engage in fewer human rights abuses than nondemocracies, we know less about what explains the variation in respect for rights among democracies. Using Access Point Theory, we argue that the number of points of access for interest groups in democracies leads to better protection of physical integrity rights but has weaker or no effects on worker rights. By increasing the amount of access provided to interest groups, lobbying becomes cheaper which enables human rights organizations to lobby for better rights protection but, on worker rights, also enables businesses to lobby against those protections. We examine these expectations using data on all democracies from 1980 to 2002, as well as a new latent measure of worker rights constructed using item response theory.

¿Por qué algunas democracias protegen mejor los derechos humanos que otras? Aunque la investigación muestra que las democracias cometen menos abusos contra los derechos humanos que las no democracias, existe una menor cantidad de información referente a los motivos que explican la variación en el respeto de los derechos entre las democracias. Argumentamos, mediante el uso de la teoría del punto de acceso, que el número de puntos de acceso existentes para los grupos de interés en las democracias provoca una mejor protección de los derechos en materia de integridad física, pero que tiene efectos más débiles, o incluso nulos, sobre los derechos de los trabajadores. Al aumentar el grado de acceso que se proporciona a los grupos de interés, la presión política se vuelve menos onerosa, lo que permite a las organizaciones de derechos humanos presionar en favor de una mejor protección de los derechos. Sin embargo, en lo que se refiere a los derechos de los trabajadores, esto también permite a las empresas presionar contra esas protecciones. Estudiamos estas expectativas utilizando tanto datos procedentes de todas las democracias desde 1980 hasta 2002, como una nueva medida, latente, de derechos económicos que fue creada utilizando la teoría de respuesta al ítem.

Pourquoi certaines démocraties protègent-elles mieux les droits de l’Homme que d’autres? Bien que la recherche montre que les démocraties présentent moins de violations des droits de l’Homme que les pays non démocratiques, nous ne savons pas très bien expliquer les variations relatives aux droits dans les démocraties. À l’aide de la théorie des points d’accès (Access Point Theory), nous affirmons que plus le nombre de points d’accès des groupes d’intérêts dans les démocraties augmente, meilleure est la protection de l’intégrité physique des droits, mais que les effets sur les droits des travailleurs sont minimes, voire inexistants. En augmentant l’accès fourni aux groupes d’intérêts, le lobbying coûte moins cher. Les organisations des droits de l’Homme peuvent donc promouvoir plus facilement la protection des droits, mais, s’agissant des droits des travailleurs, les entreprises peuvent également faire pression contre ces protections. Nous analysons ces prédictions à l’aide de données sur toutes les démocraties entre 1980 et 2002, ainsi qu’une nouvelle mesure latente des droits économiques créée à l’aide de la théorie des réponses aux items.

Keywords:

• Access points
• democracy
• human rights

Notes

1 Figure 1 presents a box plot summarizing the PIR scores for OECD democracies from Fariss (2014).

2 As currently constructed, APT applies only to democracies. Future work might extend it to nondemocracies where we might expect it to have similar effects among those countries.

3 Human rights violation in democracies are often described as a result of principal-agent problems where agents violate rights despite policy makers not wanting them to do so, as in Conrad and Moore (2010). However, policymaking is still relevant both because democratic principals do sometimes order rights violations and because the legislature is involved in oversight of agents.

4 Access points are typically created by constitutional provisions or elements of the electoral law. That these features create access points are incidental to their existence. It is unlikely that there is endogeneity between number of access points and human rights since countries’ decisions on such institutional elements are typically based on broader concerns than human rights protection.

5 We assume here for simplicity that all access points are equal in power and receptivity to different interests and in different issue areas. Ehrlich (2011, 40–43) discusses how APT can generalize to different levels of power and receptivity for different access points.

6 An exception may exist during times of conflict where pro-national security groups may lobby for a reduction in PIR to better fight the conflict. Conrad and Moore (2010) find democracies torture more during times of conflict, though they do not ascribe this to lobbying. We control for conflict in our empirical models below to take this into account. There could be another exception in multiethnic societies where racism or xenophobia might drive calls for abuses of minorities. We do not directly control for this, though, as Conrad and Moore mention, these calls will likely be more intense when a conflict with these groups exist.

7 We also reconducted all of the analyses after using multiple imputation on the 1980–2000 data. Results were robust to this strategy as reported in the supplementary analyses.

8 In the online appendix, we conduct many robustness checks, including using year fixed effects, accounting for uncertainty in the latent variables, and using different dependent variables, such as the component measures in the two latent variables and splitting the latent worker’s rights variable into different de jure and de facto rights. The effect of access points on PIR is robust, remaining significant in all specifications. The effect of access points on workers’ rights is more fragile and is insignificant in many of these tests, reinforcing the finding that access points has less influence on these rights.