Department of Sociology, University of Utah, 380 S. 1530 E., Room 301, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, United States.
Soc Sci Res. 2012 May;41(3):539-54. doi: 10.1016/j.ssresearch.2011.12.003. Epub 2011 Dec 21.
What motivates compliance with "toothless" international human rights norms? This article analyzes the effectiveness of procedures that allow individuals to petition an international human rights body, the Human Rights Committee, alleging state abuse of their treaty-protected rights under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Using methodological tools that account for selection biases arising from a country's decision to authorize petitions and its subsequent propensity to be targeted by abuse claims, I find that basic civil rights and religious freedoms improved after states were found to have violated their human rights treaty obligations, whereas physical integrity abuses such as disappearances and extrajudicial killing were somewhat more impervious to change. These findings are interpreted with reference to the concept of "coupling" as borrowed from organizational sociology, and their implications for treaty design and enforcement are considered.
是什么促使人们遵守“无牙”的国际人权规范？本文分析了使个人能够向国际人权机构——人权事务委员会申诉的程序的有效性，这些申诉指控国家侵犯了他们根据《公民权利和政治权利国际公约》所享有的条约保护的权利。本文使用方法工具，考虑到一国决定授权申诉以及随后被滥用申诉指控针对的倾向所产生的选择偏差，发现基本公民权利和宗教自由在国家被认定违反其人权条约义务后得到了改善，而人身完整性侵犯，如失踪和法外杀戮，则较为难以改变。这些发现参考了组织社会学借来的“耦合”概念进行了解释，并考虑了它们对条约设计和执行的影响。
