Explaining Commitment: States and the Convention against Torture
نویسندگان
چکیده
Why do states commit to international human rights treaties that may limit state sovereignty? Existing arguments focus on either the fear of domestic democratic instability or on international norms. We focus instead on the variation in three kinds of costs that states must pay to commit: policy change, unintended consequences, and limited flexibility. We use a discrete time-duration model to test all of these explanations on state commitment to the international Convention Against Torture, one of the most important international human rights treaties. We find strong evidence for the importance of norms and all three types of costs, but no evidence supporting state desires to lock in the benefits of democracy in the face of domestic democratic instability.
منابع مشابه
The medical aspects of the UN Convention against Torture.
Introduction The Committee against Torture (CAT), is one of seven treaty bodies in the UN system. Table 1 gives an overview of the treaty bodies: when they entered into force, the number of experts and the number of State Parties to the Convention. A treaty body is “a committee of independent experts appointed to monitor the implementation by States Parties of the core international human right...
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