Stanford University

Do National Human Rights Institutions Work?

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Abstract: 

Do human rights institutions work? To answer this question we examine the effect of these institutions on two kinds of outcomes: physical integrity rights (freedom from torture, government-sponsored killing, political imprisonment, and the like) and civil and political rights (freedoms of speech, assembly, movement, and religion, as well as voting and workers' rights). Our analysis covers up to 143 countries, including some of the world's worst abusers, over the period 1981 to 2004. We arrive at two main conclusions. First, national human rights institutions improve physical integrity outcomes but not civil and political rights practices. This finding reflects a greater worldwide focus on extreme violations such as torture, but also points to widespread resistance among non-Western governments to "Western" civil and political rights standards. Second, we find that time matters: the establishment of a human rights institution contributed initially to greater reports of physical integrity abuses, but practices improved significantly after only four or five years. These institutions shine a bright spotlight on countries negative practices, making it more likely that abuses are detected and cataloged. Over time, however, they help to curb egregious human rights violations. Our findings suggest that human rights institutions are not just futile exercises in governmental hypocrisy; rather, they work to improve human rights practices regardless of the intent of governments.

Speaker bios: 

Francisco Ramirez is Professor of Education and (by courtesy) Sociology at Stanford University where he is also the Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs in the Graduate School of Education. His current research interests focus on the rise and institutionalization of human rights and human rights education, on the worldwide rationalization of university structures and processes, on terms of inclusion issues as regards gender and education, and on the scope and intensity of the authority of science in society. His comparative studies contribute to sociology of education, political sociology, sociology of gender, and sociology of development. His work has contributed to the development of the world society perspective in the social sciences. Ramirez received his BA in social sciences from De La Salle University in the Philippines and his MA and PhD in sociology from Stanford University. 

His recent publications include “Conditional Decoupling: Assessing the Impact of National Human Rights Institutions” (with W. Cole) American Sociological Review 702-25 2013; “National Incorporation of Global Human Rights: Worldwide Expansion of National Human Rights Organizations, 1966-2004” (with Jeong-Woo Koo).  Social Forces. 87:1321-1354. 2009; “Human Rights in Social Science Textbooks: Cross-national Analyses, 1975-2008” (with J. Meyer and P. Bromley). Sociology of Education 83: 111-134.  2010; “The Worldwide Spread of Environmental Discourse in Social Science Textbooks, 1970-2010 (with P. Bromley and J. Meyer) Comparative Education Review 55, 4; 517-545. 2011; ‘The Formalization of the University: Rules, Roots, and Routes” (With T. Christensen) Higher Education 65: 695-708 2013; and “The World Society Perspective: Concepts, Assumptions, and Strategies” Comparative Education 423-39 2012.

 

Wade Cole is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Utah. His current work focuses on (1) the impact of global human rights norms, treaties, and institutions on a range of country-level practices including bodily integrity rights, civil and political rights, labor rights, women’s rights, racial discrimination, measures of wellbeing, and governmental redistributive efforts; and (2) the rise and possible demise of minority-serving and women’s colleges in the United States, with an interest in how the varied and often contradictory ways that African Americans, American Indians, Hispanics, and women were incorporated into the American polity shaped the emergence, development, and purposes of postsecondary institutions catering to these groups. Cole holds a BA in political science from Western Washington University and a PhD in sociology from Stanford University. 

Recent publications include “Conditional Decoupling: Assessing the Impact of National Human Rights Institutions, 1981 to 2004,” American Sociological Review 78(4):702–725 (with Francisco Ramirez); “Strong Walk and Cheap Talk: The Effect of the International Covenant of Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights on Policies and Practices,” Social Forces 92(1):165–194; “Government Respect for Gendered Rights: The Effect of the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women on Women’s Rights Outcomes, 1981–2004,” International Studies Quarterly 57(2):233–249; and “Human Rights as Myth and Ceremony? Reevaluating the Effectiveness of Human Rights Treaties, 1981–2007,” American Journal of Sociology 117(4):1131–1171. He is also author of Uncommon Schools: The Global Rise of Postsecondary Institutions for Indigenous Peoples (Stanford University Press, 2011).

Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

Wade Cole Assistant Professor of Sociology Speaker University of Utah
Francisco Ramirez Professor of Education and CDDRL faculty Speaker Stanford
Seminars

The Trans-Pacific Partnership and Taiwan's Future Development Strategy

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On October 11 and 12th, the Democracy in Taiwan Project at the Center for Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, in cooperation with the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, will hold its 8th annual conference, on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The TPP is a free trade agreement currently being negotiated by at least nine Pacific Rim countries that has the potential to re-shape economic relations in the region for the coming decades. This conference will bring together policymakers and scholars from Taiwan with leading specialists from other Asian countries and the U.S. to examine the evolution, geopolitics and future of the TPP, and also to consider how Taiwan is responding to the challenge of freer trade and what its strategy for deepening its trade relations and maintaining its economic development should be.

 

Among the issues to be addressed are:

  • How the economic and trading environment of East Asia is evolving, and what Taiwan’s future place will be in that regional environment.
  • The development of the Trans-Pacific Partnership as a potentially far-reaching new economic and strategic framework for the region, including the origins and evolution of the TPP, US participation and China’s response, and the implications for the balance of power in East Asia.
  • Taiwan’s response to the challenge of freer trade to date, including the impact on US-Taiwan relations and domestic constituencies for free trade in Taiwan.
  • The perspectives of other key countries in the region toward the TPP, including Japan, Korea, Singapore, and the People’s Republic of China.

This event is co-sponsored by The Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center

 

Conference Resources

 

Agenda

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Conference Report (full report, abridged report)

 

 

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Liberation technology seminar series debuts on Sept 26

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Vivek Srinivasan
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Seminar series

The Liberation Technology Seminar Series is set to continue this fall with a remarkable set of speakers. The series debuts on Thursday, September 26, 2013 and will continue until December 5, 2013. The last season focused on domestic issues given the debates around SOPA and the use of technology in the U.S. Presidential elections. This emphasis this fall will be tilted towards international initiatives. 

The series will begin with Canada’s effort at direct diplomacy with people abroad using technology and move on to crowd-souring of a law by the Parliament of Finland. Talks will also cover the political impact of the internet in Malaysia, a review of the world’s most ambitious open government project by a state government in India, and an ambitious Stanford project to bring design thinking to accountability projects internationally. On the domestic front, we have timely presentation on mass surveillance in the United States and a discussion on Code for America’s initiatives to build civic engagement by coders. Finally, we are set to have a look at the history of information technology in social initiatives by our own Terry Winograd who retired from the Department of Computer Science last year. 

Students can take this as a one credit course by attending at least seven out of the ten seminars. The course is listed as CS 546 / POLISCI 337S.

Where: Wallenberg Auditorium [Map]

When: Every Thursday 4.30 – 6 pm from Sept 26 – Dec 5 (except Nov 28)

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The Unintended Consequences of Internet Diffusion: Evidence from Malaysia

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Abstract:
Can the introduction of the Internet undermine incumbent power in a semi-authoritarian regime? I examine this question using evidence from Malaysia, where the incumbent coalition lost its 40-year monopoly on power in 2008. I develop a novel methodology for measuring Internet penetration, matching IP addresses with physical locations, and apply it to the 2004 to 2008 period in Malaysia. Using distance to the backbone to instrument for endogenous Internet penetration, I find that areas with higher Internet penetration experience higher voter turnout and higher candidate turnover, with the Internet accounting for one-third of the 11% swing against the incumbent party in 2008. The results suggest that, in the absence of the Internet, the opposition would not have achieved its historic upset in the 2008 elections.
 

Luke Miner recently completed his PhD in economics from the London School of Economics. He was also a postdoctoral fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law in the Liberation Technology Program. He is currently working as a data scientist in the techology sector.

Miner’s research interests are political economy and development economics. In particular, he aims to quantitatively assess the effect of the Internet and new media on political accountability, development, and election outcomes. His past research finds a strong effect of Internet diffusion on results of Malaysia's 2008 elections, where it contributed to the ruling coalition's largest electoral setback in thirty years. His current research looks at the effect of the Internet on the 2008 U.S. presidential elections, in particular as a means of promoting campaign contributions.

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In Sierra Leone, Stanford researchers empower rural poor

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Baomahun, Sierra Leone – Mud huts dot the dusty landscape in this remote part of Sierra Leone. The only visible sign of technology is a community well pumped by young women, some with babies strapped on their backs.

The roads leading to Baomahun are gutted and torn, crossing over vast mineral deposits that helped fuel a decade-long civil war. Sierra Leone is rich in resources, but cursed with corruption and greed that stalls its progress.

A team of Stanford researchers pull up to the village in four-wheel drive vehicles, stiff and sweaty after the long trip from the capital city of Freetown. They are welcomed by a group of laughing children who closely inspect the foreign visitors, a rare site in a village that is largely untouched by the modern world.

Led by Jeremy M. Weinstein, an associate professor of political science and senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, the graduate students are working with Timap for Justice, an organization based in Sierra Leone that uses community-based paralegals to serve the interests of the rural poor. During the week-long trip, Timap's paralegals are taking the Stanford team to villages like Baomahun to get a first-hand account of how natural resource concessions impact poor communities.

The students are part of Rebooting Government – a new course Weinstein teaches at Stanford's Hasso Plattner Institute of Design to come up with new approaches to solving complex governance challenges around the world.

“There is a huge opportunity to leverage the ingenuity and diverse skill-set of Stanford students to support the work of local innovators who are tackling really difficult governance problems in their own environments,” said Weinstein who also leads the Center for African Studies at Stanford. “And the tools of human-centered design help our students and partners think about these problems in a fundamentally different way.”

The resource curse

Timap's lead paralegal, Abdulai Tommy, introduces the Stanford team to a group of village leaders, landowners and miners assembled in an outdoor community center. The team is late and their audience is visibly impatient. But they are eager to tell their stories – to be heard.

The town chief points a calloused hand towards a modern building perched on a hill above the village.

"The mining compound shines in brightness 24/7 while we live here in darkness," he said. "How is it that the land belongs to us and they enjoy themselves while we do not enjoy anything?"

Ramya Parthasarathy, a Ph.D. student in political science, scribbles notes while an unemployed miner describes the poor working conditions and low wages he was paid - as little as 2 USD per day - for back-breaking labor. Looking at the ground, he confesses that he can hardly support his family after being sacked from his job months ago.

The student team is here to collect the information they need to design new tools and approaches for Timap's work empowering rural communities who confront the powerful interests of foreign mining and agricultural companies. The race by foreign

A young girl drinking water from a well in Baomahun village. Photo Credit: The Author

companies for natural resource wealth in the developing world continues to foster corruption and undermine rural livelihoods, and the Stanford course is envisioning new approaches to address these challenges. 

An advertisement posted in the community center warns against the dangers of illegal mining. It is sponsored by Amara Mining, the U.K.-owned company that has been mining gold in Baomahun for 10 years.

The town chief mentions a cholera outbreak that killed 15 people a few months ago. He blames Amara Mining for contaminating the ground water.

As the afternoon sun beats down on the parched land, a young girl quenches her thirst with water drawn from the town well.

Disrupting the system

Amara Mining is just one of a handful of small-scale mining companies in Sierra Leone that Stanford research shows buy mineral rights for cheap and give little in return. Concession agreements are often signed by government officials in Freetown, and village landowners are forced to accept the terms and conditions.

Little - if any - of the resource wealth or social services promised in these agreements trickle down to villages like Baomahun where 80 percent of the population cannot read the contracts written in English.   

Computer science student Kevin Ho and his team envision using mobile phones to connect landowners who are separated by distance and poor infrastructure. They can share information on mining contracts and negotiations through SMS messages and voice activated alerts can be triggered for those who cannot read.

Organizing landowners associations to increase communication and mobilization can give them the bargaining power they need to pressure mining companies like Amara for more.

A innovator in justice reform

In a country of six million, there are just a dozen resident attorneys to serve Sierra Leone's rural population.

In 2003, Simeon Koroma left a comfortable job in private practice to start Timap for Justice, which translates to "Stand-Up for Justice" in the local Krio language. He was inspired to find an alternative to the formal legal system, which is so overburdened that some detainees wait several years for a judge to hear their case.

Simeon Koroma (right) talks with his chief paralegal in Yele village. Photo Credit: Michael Lindenberger

With the majority of citizens seeking justice through informal or customary channels, Koroma created a network of paralegals to provide mediation and advisory services.

Koroma spent the spring in residency with the Program on Social Entrepreneurship at FSI's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. The program is designed for grassroots leaders who want to re-engage in academia to enrich their work and deepen their impact. It also provides students the opportunity to connect with practitioners inside the classroom to work on concrete projects with partners like Timap.

Koroma was a natural partner to Weinstein when he was developing the new course as Timap works in rural areas like Baomahun that are hurt by resource concessions.

"This experience has generated new solutions that Timap has not thought about before, and helped to refine some of our strategies and approaches to supporting communities most affected by mining concessions," said Koroma, who returned to Sierra Leone in June to begin implementing some of the ideas.   

Listen first - design later

The following day, Jonny Dorsey - an MBA student at Stanford's Graduate School of Business - meets with the bauxite mining company Vimetco where a worker strike has halted operations for nearly a week. Dorsey learns the company is operating at a significant loss for the year. The general manager expresses a deep distrust towards the miners who he accuses of theft and trying to make "a quick buck."

Ibrahim Dowa cleans bauxite waste for Vimetco. He talks about the low pay, unsafe conditions and casual employment policies at the mine. He has joined the worker strike and threatens to block the roads if he doesn't receive more money and a stable work contract.

Listening to the needs and experiences of both stakeholders leads the Stanford team to propose creating company liaisons - drawn from the community - to mediate conflicts and ease tensions between the companies and workers.

"Immersing ourselves in the lives, hopes and desires of the individuals we met in several villages gave us unexpected insights that we would never have guessed sitting at Stanford," said Aaswath Raman, a Ph.D. student in applied physics. "Our empathy building work revealed a reservoir of latent power and resolve among village residents that formed the foundation of our idea of community liaisons."

Sparking new ideas

Michael Lindenberger, a journalist and Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford's School of Communication, strolls through Yoni village where Agri Capital is operating a farm cultivating Vietnamese rice. Children with distended bellies kick around a deflated soccer ball clouding the air with red dust.

The town chief presents the Agri Capital contract to a Timap paralegal explaining how the company receives just one bushel of rice in return for each acre the company farms. The chief, whose tattered clothes drape over his frail body, describes how the village was not consulted on the terms of the contract. The little rice they have received is dirty.

"Not fit to eat,” he says.

Koroma shakes his head as he scans the 14-page contract. The signatures of the landowners are absent from the contract that negotiated 3,000 acres of their land for filthy rice.  

The chief turns to Koroma and with a deflated expression cries. "We are suffering, he says. "Just looking to survive."

Professor Jeremy Weinstein (left) shakes hands with the Paramount Chief in Bumpe chiefdom. Photo Credit: Michael Lindenberger

Koroma is hopeful that organizing landowners into local associations may give them the power to demand more.

While there is no silver bullet to solve the range of issues facing rural communities in Sierra Leone, it is Weinstein's hope that the course will spark new ideas to long-standing problems.

"If we can get students excited about the possibility of making governments work better for people – and do some good through our class-based projects – we’ll be able to focus Stanford’s innovation energy on some of the world’s most important problems," he says.

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Poorly Governed Resource-Dependent States: Policy Options for the New Administration

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Many resource dependent states have to varying degrees, failed to provide for the welfare of their own populations, could threaten global energy markets, and could pose security risks for the United States and other countries.  Many are in Africa, but also Central Asia (Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan), Southeast Asia (Cambodia, Burma, East Timor), and South America (Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador) Some have only recently become – or are about to become – significant resource exporters.  Many have histories of conflict and poor governance.  The recent boom and decline in commodity prices – the largest price shock since the 1970s – will almost certainly cause them special difficulties.  The growing role of India and China, as commodity importers and investors, makes the policy landscape even more challenging.

We believe there is much the new administration can learn from both academic research, and recent global initiatives, about how to address the challenge of poorly governed states that are dependent on oil, gas, and mineral exports.  Over the last eight years there has been a wealth of new research on the special problems that resource dependence can cause in low-income countries – including violent conflict, authoritarian rule, economic volatility, and disappointing growth.  The better we understand the causes of these problems, the more we can learn about how to mitigate them.

There has also been a new set of policy initiatives to address these issues: the Kimberley Process, the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, the World Bank’s new “EITI plus plus,” Norway’s Oil for Development initiative, and the incipient Resource Charter.  NGOs have played an important role in most of these initiatives; key players include Global Witness, the Publish What You Pay campaign, the Revenue Watch Institute, Oxfam America, and an extensive network of civil society organizations in the resource-rich countries themselves.

Some of these initiatives have been remarkably successful.  The campaign against ‘blood diamonds,’ through the Kimberley Process, has reduced the trade in illicit diamonds to a fraction of its former level, and may have helped curtail conflicts in Angola, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.  Many other initiatives are so new they have not been have not been carefully evaluated.

This workshop is designed to bring together people in the academic and policy worlds to identify lessons from this research, and from these policy initiatives, that can inform US policy towards resource-dependent poorly states in the new administration.

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Global democracy leaders to assemble at Stanford this summer

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In July, Stanford's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) will welcome its ninth class of Draper Hills Summer Fellows hailing from 24 countries around the world. The program is an integral part of the CDDRL's effort to train practitioners who are working on the front lines of political change in places where democracy is underdeveloped or at risk.

The 2013 class was selected from over 500 applicants and represents some of the most courageous and innovative democracy leaders around the world. Their experience and track record of success earned them a spot in this highly competitive program.

From Burma to Ukraine, the 2013 fellows are leading organizations and programs - often at tremendous odds - to advance democratic practices, combat corruption and uphold human rights.

For 11 years Zing Mar Aung was a political prisoner in Burma for her involvement in the pro-democracy movement. After her release in 2009, Mar Aung dedicated her energy to building Burmese civil society by co-founding a number of civil society organizations - including the Yangon School of Political Science - to increase civic engagement. In recognition of her contributions, Mar Aung received the International Women of Courage Award in 2012 by former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

As the Russian government tightens its grip on civil society, the country's only independent polling center - the Levada Center - has come under attack. Working as a researcher and public commentator, Denis Volkov frequently publishes opinion pieces on the protest movements and serves as a spokesperson for Levada. Labeled as a "foreign agent" by the Russian government, the Levada Center fears closure for its independent analysis and authoritative voice.

Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi commands a significant online presence with upwards of a quarter million Twitter followers. In the height of the Arab Spring, Al Qassemi - who hails from the United Arab Emirates- became a leading commentator on Arab politics and reform for a growing online audience. In 2011, Time magazine chose Al Qassemi's Twitter feed (@SultanalQassemi) amongst its 140 Best Twitter Feeds list. His analysis is also published in Middle East-based newspapers, as well as Foreign Policy, The Guardian and The Financial Times.

The three-week fellowship program begins on July 22 and is taught by a team of interdisciplinary Stanford faculty members who include leading political scientists, lawyers and economists who are pioneering innovative research in the field of democratic development. 

One of the few programs of its kind in academia, the Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program combines the rich experiences of practitioners with academic training to maximize the impact of their work to advance democratic change.

Fellows live together on the Stanford campus where they connect with peers, exchange experiences and participate in shared activities. The program is funded by the generous support of Bill and Phyllis Draper and Ingrid von Mangoldt Hills.

The program will accept applications to the 2014 program beginning in September.

To learn more about the 2013 Draper Hills Summer Fellows and their innovative work, please click here. 

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A Typological Analysis of Democratic Legitimacy: the Asian Cases

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A well-known puzzle in the study of Asian democratization is the inverse relationship between the level of democracy and the support for the "D" word. According to the latest Asian Barometer survey, Thailand, China, Vietnam, Mongolia, and Cambodia have a much higher level of overt support for democracy than those well-recognized democracies such as Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. To unravel this puzzle, the authors develop a new regression method for the two-dimensional typological analysis including the "D" word and the liberal democratic attitude. Four ideal types of democratic orientation are defined and analyzed: Consistent Democrats (high support for democracy, high liberal democratic value), Critical Democrats (low support for democracy, high liberal democratic value), Non-Democrats (low support for democracy, low liberal democratic value), and Superficial Democrats (High support for democracy, low liberal democratic value). Different from most of the regression methods, the dependent variables in typological regression include the radius and the azimuth and therefore transform the categorical nature of the two-by-two typology into distinctive types with a continuous character. The preliminary result indicates the high support rate of the "D" word in those less democratic countries is associated with a phenomenon that the word "democracy" has lost its distinctive semantic meaning and could embrace all desirable political values, covering any variety of political systems in the world.

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