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Abstract:
The number of international human rights regimes has risen dramatically in recent decades, as has the number of countries that are party to at least one of them. This development has sparked a heated debate over why states choose to enter regimes designed to establish and monitor compliance with human rights standards. In this paper, we argue that entering a human rights regime can yield substantial benefits for states in the midst of a democratic transition. Emerging democracies can use the sovereignty costs stemming from participation in such a regime to lock in liberal policies and to signal their intention to consolidate democratic institutions and practices. Moreover, nascent democracies often respond to inducements from other more established democracies to join such organizations. These states are more likely than others to seek out and accept the sovereignty costs arising from human rights regimes. In addition to democratizing countries, stable democracies may also enter these regimes in response to domestic political pressures and in support of broader foreign policy goals. Using a new data set on human rights regimes, we generate some of the first cross-national evidence on why states seek membership. Our results reveal that states engaged in a democratic transition are most likely to join human rights IOs. Stable democracies are less likely than democratizing countries and there is only scattered evidence that democracies are more likely than other states to enter such organizations. These results accord with our argument that human rights IOs impose greater sovereignty costs on members than treaties, creating incentives for democratizing states that want to promote human rights at home to enter such organizations. By contrast, there is little variation in the extent to which different types of governments join UN human rights treaties because membership imposes fewer costs on the participating countries.
human rights, international law, international organization, democratization, signal, commitment
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