From rhetoric to reality: The role of domestic actors in diffusing international human rights norms.

摘要

A significant amount of scholarly attention has been devoted to determining the effectiveness of international human rights standards at promoting justice. As law, these standards should empower people to demand respect for their rights and inform judicial decision-making. Key domestic actors within organized civil society and the judiciary play a role in translating the rhetoric into reality. This research aims to paint a more detailed picture of the actors within each state that interpret and promote these global standards. First, I identify characteristics of domestic advocacy organizations making them likely to mobilize in response to ratification of a human rights treaty, and find that the impact of human rights law is conditioned on the number of these organizations within a state. Second, I examine the extent to which increases in the number of these organizations are associated with improvements in respect for women's rights. I find that a rise in their number is associated with the promotion of women's rights, but the effect is conditioned on the presence of an independent judiciary. Finally, I study domestic judicial applications of these standards. I investigate U.S. judges' interpretations of the Alien Tort Statute, which allows individuals to file civil suits against human rights abusers in United States courts. I find that U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals justices are influenced by both fundamental norms of international human rights law and U.S. strategic interests. The findings of this research fill a gap in the literature concerning domestic determinants of international human rights treaty compliance and deepen our understanding of the influence of judicial policy preferences in foreign affairs cases. Studying these phenomena at two levels of analysis, I am able to address numerous dimensions of these puzzles simultaneously. I draw connections between broad declarations of human rights norms and the choices of important individual actors.