A shield in battle: the contingent value of human rights treaties to INGOs in autocracies

ABSTRACT

Human rights treaties make a difference under certain circumstances. Advocates find them useful in their work. In autocracies, where the ground is less fertile, human rights agreements can be particularly valuable. I contend that the impact of ratification depends on the type of advocacy organisations present in the autocracy. My theory points to the importance of INGOs expressing a commitment to international values by obtaining consultative status with the United Nations Economic, Social and Cultural Council. I expect that human rights treaties will be a more profitable resource for these advocates in a repressive environment, serving as a shield in a high stakes battle. My primary findings support my expectations. However, the results are not robust to different model specifications. I conclude that distinctions among INGO types have important implications for the impact of treaty ratification, but the consequences may not be what one would expect, and may depend on the form of abuse analysed.

KEYWORDS:

• Human rights
• treaties
• INGOs
• international law
• autocracies
• repression

Acknowledgements

The author thanks Linda Camp Keith, Amanda Murdie and Christopher Fariss for sharing their data and providing extremely helpful guidance. I also thank Banks Miller, Clint Peinhardt, Brandon Kinne, the editors and the anonymous reviewers for valuable comments on this project. An earlier version of this article was presented at the 2016 annual meeting of the International Studies Association.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author .

Notes on contributor

Maureen Stobb, an assistant professor of political science, writes on the implementation and impact of international legal standards. Among her recent works are ‘The Conditioning Effect of EU Membership Status: Understanding Compliance with Legislative Initiatives to Protect Human Trafficking Victims’, with Charlotte McDonald, in Comparative European Politics (2018) and ‘Threat and Suspicion: Scalia's Legacy for A Transnational Judicial Dialogue’. In The Conservative Revolution of Antonin Scalia, ed. David A. Schultz and Howard Schrieber, (Lexington Books 2018).

Notes

1. Emilie Hafner Burton, Brad L. LeVeck, and David G. Victor, ‘How Activists Perceive the Utility of International Law’, The Journal of Politics 78, no. 1 (2016): 167–80.

2. Yonatan Lupu, ‘Legislative Veto Players and the Effects of International Human Rights Agreements’, American Journal of Political Science 59, no. 3 (2015): 578–94; Eric Neumayer, ‘Do International Human Rights Treaties Improve Respect for Human Rights’, Journal of Conflict Resolution 49, no. 6 (2005): 925–53; Beth A. Simmons, Mobilizing for Human Rights: International Law in Domestic Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009).

3. Amanda Murdie, Help or Harm: The Human Security Effects of International NGOs (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014).

4. James Meernik et al., ‘The Impact of Human Rights Organizations on Naming and Shaming Campaigns’, Journal of Conflict Resolution 56, no. 2 (2012): 233–56.

5. Cullen S. Hendrix and Wendy H. Wong, ‘When is the Pen Truly Mighty? Regime Type and the Efficacy of Naming and Shaming in Curbing Human Rights Abuses’, British Journal of Political Science 43, no. 3 (2013): 651–72.

6. Murdie, Help or Harm.

7. Ibid.

8. James R. Vreeland, ‘Political Institutions and Human Rights: Why Dictatorships Enter into the United Nations Convention Against Torture’, International Organization 62, no. 1 (2008): 65–101; Simmons, Mobilizing for Human Rights.

9. Simmons, Mobilizing for Human Rights, 16.

10. Emilie M. Hafner-Burton and Kiyoteru Tsutsui, ‘Justice Lost! The Failure of International Human Rights Law to Matter Where Needed Most’, Journal of Peace Research 44, no. 4 (2007): 407–25; Emilie M. Hafner-Burton, ‘Sticks and Stones: Naming and Shaming the Human Rights Enforcement Problem’, International Organization 62, no. 4 (2008): 689–716.

11. Vreeland, ‘Political Institutions and Human Rights’.

12. Bruce Bueno De Mesquita et al., The Logic of Political Survival (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005).

13. Treaty commitments can be used to obtain foreign aid, preferential trade agreements, or simply more legitimacy in the international community. Hendrix and Wong, ‘When is the Pen Truly Mighty?’; Oona A. Hathaway, ‘Why Do Countries Commit to Human Rights Treaties’?, Journal of Conflict Resolution 51, no. 4 (2007): 588–621. Among autocracies, signing a treaty alone is associated with prolonged tenure in office. James R. Hollyer and B. Peter Rosendorff, ‘Why Do Authoritarian Regimes Sign the Convention against Torture? Signaling, Domestic Politics and Non-compliance’, Quarterly Journal of Political Science 6, no. 3–4 (2011): 275–327. Autocratic leaders are therefore as likely to commit when they abuse human rights as when they do not, and are more likely to ratify and continue to violate human rights. Vreeland, ‘Political Institutions and Human Rights’; Hafner-Burton, ‘Sticks and Stones’; Simmons, Mobilizing for Human Rights; Neumayer, ‘Do International Human Rights Treaties Improve Respect for Human Rights’?

14. Linda Camp Keith, ‘The United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights: Does It Make a Difference in Human Rights Behavior’? Journal of Peace Research 36, no. 1(1999): 95–118; Linda Camp Keith, Political Repression: Courts and the Law (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010); Steven C. Poe and Neil C. Tate, ‘Repression of Human Rights to Personal Integrity in the 1980s: A Global Analysis’, The American Political Science Review 88, no. 4 (1994): 853–72; Steven C. Poe, Neil Tate, and Linda Camp Keith, ‘Repression of the Human Right to Personal Integrity Revisited: A Global Cross-National Study Covering the Years 1976–1993’, International Studies Quarterly 43 (1999): 291–313; Oona A. Hathaway, ‘Why Do Countries Commit to Human Rights Treaties’?, Journal of Conflict Resolution 51, no. 4 (2002): 1935–2042; Emilie M. Hafner-Burton and Kiyoteru Tsutsui, ‘Human Rights in a Globalizing World: The Paradox of Empty Promises’, American Journal of Sociology 110, no. 5 (2005): 1373–411; Neumayer, ‘Do International Human Rights Treaties Improve Respect for Human Rights?’; Simmons, Mobilizing for Human Rights; Yonatan Lupu, ‘Best Evidence: The Role of Information in Domestic Judicial Enforcement of International Human Rights Agreements’, International Organization 67 (2013): 469–503; Lupu, ‘Legislative Veto Players’; Daniel Hill, ‘Estimating the Effect of Human Rights Treaties on State Behavior’, The Journal of Politics 72, no. 4 (2010):1161–74.

15. Lupu, ‘Legislative Veto Players’.

16. Tom Ginsburg and Tamir Moustafa, Rule by Law: The Politics of Courts in Authoritarian Regimes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Emilia Justyna Powell and Jeffrey K. Staton, ‘Domestic Judicial Institutions and Human Rights Treaty Violation’, International Studies Quarterly 53 (2009): 149–74.; Lupu, ‘Best Evidence’; Courtenay R. Conrad and Emily Hencken Ritter, ‘Treaties, Tenure and Torture: The Conflicting Domestic Effects of International Law’, The Journal of Politics 75, no. 2 (2013): 397–409.

17. Hathaway, ‘Do Human Rights Treaties Make a Difference’?; Simmons, Mobilizing for Human Rights; Xinyuan Dai, ‘The “Compliance Gap” and the Efficacy of International Human Rights Institutions’, in The Persistent Power of Human Rights: From Commitment to Compliance, ed. Thomas Risse Stephen C. Ropp and Kathryn Sikkink (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 85–103. Organised domestic civil society includes service/advocacy organisations controlled by professional staff and funded by external donors, and grassroots organisations such as unions, cooperatives, and community organisations. Dean Chahim and Aseem Prakash, ‘NGOization, Foreign Funding, and the Nicaraguan Civil Society’, Voluntas 25 (2014): 487–513. Examples of the latter would include domestic NGOs in South Africa providing legal services to help end racial discrimination, and professional NGO leaders in Cambodia with close ties to government lobbying officials. Lucrecia Seafield, ‘South Africa: The Interdependence of All Human Rights’ in Human Rights under African Constitutions, ed. Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003) 295–341; David Suarez and Jeffrey H. Marshall, ‘Capacity in the NGO Sector: Results from a National Survey in Cambodia’, Voluntas 25 (2014): 176–200.

18. This approach can be characterised as complementing Simmons’ theory concerning domestic mobilisation. It emphasises the role of external actors, such as INGOs, while Simmons focuses on the importance of domestic political actors. Simmons, Mobilizing for Human Rights. I follow Murdie in considering an organisation ‘international’ when it has ‘international interests, goals or objectives, even if the organization is only active in a very defined or limited geographical area’. Murdie, Help or Harm, 25.

19. Repression is defined as the threat or use of physical force to impose costs on and deter opposition. Christian Davenport, ‘State Repression and Political Order’, Annual Review of Political Science 10 (2007): 1–23.

20. Lupu, ‘Legislative Veto Players’. This study focused on the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

21. For example loss of employment, salary reductions, and, at the most extreme, death threats. Ginsburg and Moustafa, Rule by Law.

22. Emily Hencken Ritter and Courtenay R. Conrad, ‘Human Rights Treaties and Mobilized Dissent against the State’, Review of International Organizations, http://faculty.ucmerced.edu/eritter/Ritter/treatydissent.html (accessed May 9, 2017). Dissatisfied citizens are less likely to voice their opposition when they do not perceive a significant marginal change in constraints on the regime.

23. Margaret Keck and Katherine Sikkink, Activists beyond Borders (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998).

24. Neumayer, ‘Do International Human Rights Treaties Improve Respect for Human Rights?’ (Neumayer finds that ratification of the ICCPR and CAT are each associated with reductions in repression in states with greater citizen membership in INGOs); Simmons, Mobilizing for Human Rights; Keck and Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders.

25. The transnational advocacy model builds on Putnam’s two-level game analysis. Robert Putnam, ‘Diplomacy and Domestic Politics: The Logic of Two-Level Games’, International Organization 42, no. 3 (1988): 427–60. For more detail on the TAN model, see Keck and Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders; Jutta Joachim, ‘Framing Issues and Seizing Opportunities: The UN, NGOs and Women’s Rights’, International Studies Quarterly 47, no. 2 (2003): 247–74; Sidney Tarrow, The New Transnational Activism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Dai, ‘Compliance Gap and Efficacy of Human Rights Institutions’.

26. Anja Jetsche and Andrea Liese, ‘The Power of Human Rights a Decade After: From Euphoria to Contestation’? in The Persistent Power of Human Rights: From Commitment to Compliance, ed. Thomas Risse, Stephen C. Ropp and Kathryn Sikkink (New York: Cambridge University Press 2013), 26–42.

27. Keck and Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders.

28. Thomas Risse and Kathryn Sikkink, ‘The Socialization of International Human Rights Norms into Domestic Practices: Introduction’, in The Power of Human Rights: International Norms and Domestic Change, ed. Thomas Rosse, Stephen C. Ropp and Kathryn Sikkink (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 1–38; Neumayer, ‘Do International Human Rights Treaties Improve Respect for Human Rights’; Simmons, Mobilizing for Human Rights; Keck and Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders; Tarrow, The New Transnational Activism; Dai, ‘Compliance Gap and Efficacy of Human Rights Institutions’.

29. Katerina Tsetsura, ‘Challenges in Framing Women’s Rights as Human Right’s at the Domestic Level: A Case Study of NGOs in the Post-Soviet Countries’, Public Relations Review 39 (2013): 406–16, 407.

30. Joachim, ‘Framing Issues and Seizing Opportunities’.

31. Rebecca J. Cook, ‘Women’s International Human Rights Law: The Way Forward’, Human Rights Quarterly 15, no. 2 (1993): 230–61.

32. Hafner-Burton and Tsutsui, ‘Human Rights in a Globalizing World’; Neumayer, ‘Do International Human Rights Treaties Improve Respect for Human Rights’; Simmons, Mobilizing for Human Rights; Amanda M. Murdie and Tavishi Bhasin, ‘Aiding and Abetting: Human Rights INGOs and Domestic Protest’, Journal of Conflict Resolution 55, no. 2 (2011): 163–91; Amanda M. Murdie and David R. Davis, ‘Shaming and Blaming: Using Events Data to Assess the Impact of Human Rights INGOs’, International Studies Quarterly 56 (2012): 1–16; Keith, Political Repression; Murdie, Help or Harm; Meernik et al., ‘Impact of Human Rights Organizations on Naming and Shaming Campaigns’. My focus on INGO shaming is not intended to imply that support from other actors outside the state is less important; shaming by international organisations, public figures, third party states, and MNCs independently magnifies the effect of the spotlight. Murdie, Help or Harm; Murdie and Davis, ‘Shaming and Blaming’.

33. Colin M. Barry, K. Chad Clay and Michael E. Flynn, ‘Avoiding the Spotlight: Human Rights Shaming and Foreign Direct Investment’, International Studies Quarterly 57 (2013): 532–44.

34. Hendrix and Wong, ‘When is the Pen Truly Mighty’?

35. Hendrix and Wong, ‘When is the Pen Truly Mighty’, 5. The measure employed was a dichotomous indicator of autocracy (−6 and below on the POLITY scale coded as 1, and −5 or above coded as 0). Employing continuous measures of the degree of democracy, authors have found that INGO shaming’s impact increases as a state dependent on trade becomes more democratic. Murdie, Help or Harm. Others have found that the impact of INGO shaming combined with that of other actors is not contingent on the level of democracy. Hafner-Burton, ‘Sticks and Stones’. Thus, it is important to make a sharp distinction between autocracies and non-autocracies when discussing the impact of INGO advocacy.

36. Hendrix and Wong, ‘When is the Pen Truly Mighty’? The authors argue their finding is not due to selection bias in naming and shaming because Amnesty International does not disproportionately target countries with improving human rights records. Later research supports the idea that INGOs strategically substitute for a lack of favorable domestic conditions, at least with regard to environmental INGOs. Amanda M. Murdie and Johannes Urpelainen, ‘Why Pick on Us? Environmental INGOs and State Shaming as a Strategic Substitute’, Political Studies 62, (2015): 353–72.

37. Sticks and Stones’. Evidence indicates that shaming of treaty ratifiers by one INGO (Amnesty International) combined with targeting by other international actors (IOs and the media) is associated with increased repression of political rights. This finding may be rooted in the combined measure of shaming employed, as additional research indicates that regimes increase repression of empowerment rights in response to shaming by the UNHCR. Courtenay R. Conrad and Jaqueline DeMerrit, ‘Unintended Consequences: The Effect of Advocacy to End Torture on Empowerment Rights Violations’, in Examining Torture: Empirical Studies of State Repression, ed. Tracy Lightcap and James Pfiffner (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2014), 159–83.

38. Murdie and Bhasin, ‘Aiding and Abetting’; Murdie and Davis, ‘Shaming and Blaming’; Amanda M. Murdie, Amanda, ‘The Ties that Bind: A Network Analysis of Human Rights INGOs’, British Journal of Political Science 44, no. 1 (2014a): 1–27; Murdie, Help or Harm.

39. Murdie, Help or Harm.

40. An NGO with consultative status can enter UN premises, attend international conferences and meetings, make written and oral statements at these events, organise additional meetings, and have opportunities to network and lobby. United Nations. Working with ECOSOC: An NGOs Guide to Consultative Status. New York: United Nations, 2011, http://csonet.org/content/documents/Brochure.pdf (accessed May 9, 2017).

41. Ibid.

42. Lebovic and Voeten, ‘The Politics of Shame’; United Nations Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights. Welcome to the Human Rights Council. New York: United Nations, 2015, http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/Pages/AboutCouncil.aspx (accessed May 9, 2017).

43. Murdie’s work also suggests that ECOSOC consultative status makes it easier for INGOs to form network ties to other INGOs, and that more network ties are associate a greater advocacy output. Murdie, Help or Harm. Case studies have linked network centrality to greater influence in setting a transnational advocacy network’s issue agenda. Charlie Carpenter, ‘Vetting the Advocacy Agenda: Network Centrality and the Paradox of Weapons Norms’, International Organization 65, no. 1 (2011): 69–102.

44. Murdie, Help or Harm, 183 (‘Í do not focus on treaty adherence … ’).

45. Sally Engle Merry, ‘Transnational Human Rights and Local Activism: Mapping the Middle’, American Anthropologist 108, no. 1 (2006): 38–51.

46. Merry, ‘Transnational Human Rights and Local Activism’; Cook, ‘Women’s International Human Rights Law’; Charles Epp, The Rights Revolution: Lawyers, Activists and Supreme Courts in a Comparative Perspective (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998).

47. Merry, ‘Transnational Human Rights and Local Activism’.

48. Cook, ‘Women’s International Human Rights Law’.

49. Alison Brysk, Changing Hearts and Minds: Sexual Politics and Human Rights’, in The Persistent Power of Human Rights: From Commitment to Compliance, ed. Thomas Risse, Stephen C. Ropp and Kathryn Sikkink (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 259–74.

50. Ibid.

51. Epp, Rights Revolution. Although a considerable number of qualitative studies indicate that judicial support structures are important, a quantitative examination of the theory found no evidence that a support structure is a necessary condition for increases in rights cases on courts’ agendas. Raul A. Urribarri et al., ‘Explaining Changes to Rights Litigation: Testing a Multivariate Model in a Comparative Framework’, Journal of Politics 73, no. 2 (2011): 391–405. Urribarri et al. examined data from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, India, Australia, the Philippines and South Africa. The authors call for more research on this link. A direct test of the importance of INGOs for agenda setting is beyond the scope of this analysis.

52. Tamir Moustafa, The Struggle for Constitutional Power: Law, Politics and Economic Development in Egypt (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 6.

53. Hafner-Burton, LeVeck and Victor, ‘How Activists Perceive the Utility of International Law’.

54. Simmons, Mobilizing for Human Rights.

55. Keck and Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders.

56. Simmons, Mobilizing for Human Rights. Signature also has the potential to strengthen efforts, but effects are most likely when the commitment is binding because it is the strongest.

57. Microstates are excluded to avoid problems that stem from equating them to states with populations above 100,000. Comparison tests concerning treaty effects in democracies include only countries scoring +6 or higher on the Polity2 variable.

58. Peter A. Kennedy, A Guide to Econometrics, Sixth Edition (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008).

59. See, for example, Lupu, ‘Legislative Veto Players’; Murdie, Help or Harm; Hendrix and Wong, ‘When is the Pen Truly Mighty’; Lupu, ‘Best Evidence’; Barry, Clay and Flynn, ‘Avoiding the Spotlight’; Murdie and Davis, ‘Shaming and Blaming’; Hill, ‘Estimating the Effect of Human Rights Treaties on State Behavior’.

60. David Cingranelli, David L. Richards, and K. Chad Clay. 2014. The CIRI Human Rights Dataset. Version 2014.04.14, http://www.humanrightsdata.com (accessed February, 9 2015).

61. Parallel analyses were conducted with the Political Terror Scale (PTS) measure of repression of physical integrity rights. Several foundational studies employed this variable, including Poe, Tate and Keith, ‘Repression of the Human Right to Personal Integrity Revisited’, and Neumayer, ‘Do International Human Rights Treaties Improve Respect for Human Rights’. This scale takes into account the substitutability of the tools of repression. Reed M. Wood and Mark Gibney, ‘The Political Terror Scale (PTS): A Re-introduction and a Comparison to CIRI’, Human Rights Quarterly 32, no. 2 (2010): 367–400. The results were consistent with those employing the CIRI aggregate measure.

62. Political imprisonment measures government incarceration of people because of their speech, religious beliefs, non-violent religious practices or opposition to the regime, or membership in a group. Torture is defined as the ‘purposeful infliction of extreme pain, whether mental or physical, by government officials or by private individuals at the instigation of government officials’. David Cingranelli and David L. Richards, ‘The Cingranelli-Richards (CIRI) Human Rights Data Project Coding Manual Version 5.20.14’, http://www.humanrightsdata.com/p/data-documentation.html (accessed February 9, 2015). It is described as ‘cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment’. Cingranelli and Richards, ‘CIRI Manual’, 18. Disappearances are defined as ‘cases in which people have disappeared and political motivation may be likely’, and the victims have not been found (Cingranelli and Richards, ‘CIRI Manual’, 12). Extrajudicial killings are ‘killings by government officials without due process of law’, including ‘murders by private groups if instigated by the government’ (Cingranelli and Richards, ‘CIRI Manual’, 7).

63. Christopher Fariss, ‘Respect for Human Rights has Improved over Time: Modeling Changing Standards of Accountability’, American Political Science Review 108, no. 2 (2014): 297–318; Ann Marie Clark and Kathryn Sikkink, ‘Information Effects and Human Rights Data: Is the Good News about Increased Human Rights Information Bad News for Human Rights Measures’?, Human Rights Quarterly 35, no. 3 (2013): 539–68.

64. Fariss, ‘Respect for Human Rights has Improved over Time’; Clark and Sikkink, ‘Information Effects and Human Rights Data’.

65. Fariss, ‘Respect for Human Rights has Improved over Time’.

66. Ibid.

67. David Cingranelli and Mikhail Filippov, ‘Are Human Rights Practices Improving’? American Political Science Review, (2018) 1–7, doi:10.1017/S0003055418000254; David L. Richards, ‘The Myth of Information Effects in Human Rights Data: Response to Ann Marie Clark and Kathryn Sikkink’, Human Rights Quarterly 38 (2016): 477–92; Ann Marie Clark and Kathryn Sikkink, ‘Response to David L. Richards’, Human Rights Quarterly 38 (2016): 493–6.

68. Cingranelli and Filippov, ‘Are Human Rights Practices Improving’?

69. Email from Christopher Fariss dated June 18, 2018.

70. Murdie, Help or Harm.

71. Ibid.

72. James H. Lebovic and Erik Voeten. ‘The Politics of Shame: The Condemnation of Country Human Rights Practices in the UNCHR’, International Studies Quarterly 59, no. 50 (2006): 861–88.

73. Poe, Tate and Keith, ‘Repression of the Human Right to Personal Integrity Revisited’; Keith, Political Repression; Lupu, ‘Legislative Veto Players’.

74. Keith, Political Repression; Murdie, Help or Harm.

75. Keith, Political Repression.

76. Neumayer, ‘Do International Human Rights Treaties Improve Respect for Human Rights’?

77. Keith, Political Repression.

78. The use of a single, ordinal variable, rather than two dichotomous variables, enables measurement of the effect of increasing levels of judicial independence.

79. Lupu, ‘Legislative Veto Players’.

80. Poe, Tate and Keith, ‘Repression of the Human Right to Personal Integrity Revisited’.

81. Neumayer, ‘Do International Human Rights Treaties Improve Respect for Human Rights’?

82. Axel Dreher, Martin Gassebner, and Lars-H.R. Siemers, ‘Globalization, Economic Freedom, and Human Rights’, Journal of Conflict Resolution 56, no. 3 (2012): 516–46. The authors employed extreme bounds analysis and estimated over 22,000 regressions. War, population, gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, and democracy were also identified as the most important. I include indicators for these factors in my models.

83. Benjamin Appel, ‘In the Shadow of the International Criminal Court: Does the ICC Deter Human Rights Violations’?, Journal of Conflict Resolution 62, no. 1 (2018): 3–28.

84. Neumayer, ‘Do International Human Rights Treaties Improve Respect for Human Rights’?

85. Murdie, Help or Harm.

86. In addition, following the logic of strategic substitution, I could see an increase in INGOs in states where repression is severe, but not so extreme as to prevent the organisations from functioning, because INGOs have chosen locations in which they believe they can have the most impact. Murdie and Urpelanien, ‘Why Pick on Us’.

87. Thomas Brambour, William Roberts Clark and Matt Golder, ‘Understanding Interaction Models: Improving Empirical Analyses’, Political Analysis 14 (2006):63–82.

88. Confidence intervals indicate an increase in probability of severe repression, with variance in the rate of that increase.

89. Peter Kennedy, ‘Oh No! I Got the Wrong Sign! What Should I Do’? Simon Fraser University Department of Economics Discussion Papers, 2002, http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/stuff_for_blog/oh_no_I_got_the_wrong_sign.pdf (accessed June 26, 2018)

90. Cingranelli and Filippov, ‘Are Human Rights Practices Improving’, 6. As noted above, the authors suggest that the variable may weigh mass killings more than torture and political imprisonment, the more common abuses.