Insincere Commitments: Human Rights Treaties, Abusive States, and Citizen Activism

Appendix

179 Appendix Data are available upon request.Variables in the statistical analysis were constructed in the following manner. GDP: Logged value of GDP measured in millions of US dollars annually. These data come from the International Monetary Fund and are labeled GDP in the regression tables. Legal System: To capture legal system type, I draw on measures from Powell and Mitchell’s (2007) original dataset. Three different variables are included: Civil Law, Common Law, and Mixed Law. Each is coded as a dummy. Human Rights Measures: These are derived from the Cingranelli and Richards Human Rights Dataset (CIRI). Physical Integrity: Included in the Civil and Political Rights and the Torture datasets , this CIRI variable is an additive index constructed from other CIRI variables and is designed to test the degree to which a state respects the physical integrity of its citizens (and refrains from disappearing them and using political imprisonment to silence opposition). Scores range from 8 (full government respect for the physical integrity of citizens) to 0 (no government respect for these rights). Disappearances: Also included in the Civil and Political Rights dataset, disappearances measures the frequency with which people have disappeared, if the political motivation is indeed likely, and whether or not victims have been found. Scores range from a possible 0 (frequent disappearances in a particular year) to 2 (no disappearances in a given year). Extrajudicial Killing: This measure is also from CIRI and ranges from 0 (frequent extrajudicial killings at the hands of the state) to 2 (no extrajudicial killings).This 180 Appendix measure is included in the Civil and Political Rights data set because this practice is explicitly prohibited by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Political Imprisonment: Individuals who are incarcerated by the government for their nonviolent opposition to government policies,religious beliefs,or membership in an ethnic or racial group are captured by this variable. This also comes from CIRI, is included in the Civil and Political Rights dataset, and is scored from a 0 (frequent political imprisonment) to 2 (no political imprisonment). Freedom of Association: The ICCPR guarantees the right to freedom of assembly and association. This CIRI variable measures the extent to which governing authorities have attempted to curtail this right in a given year. Scores are ranged from 0 (association rights are severely limited) to 2 (association rights are virtually unrestricted). Because Cingranelli and Richards include the possibility of government discrimination against association based on race in the construction of this variable, it is also included in the data set covering the Convention on Elimination of Racial Discrimination. This is not an ideal measure of racial discrimination practices but helps to capture some of these dynamics for the sake of drawing very general conclusions. Torture: This also comes from CIRI and is included in the Torture data set. It measures the extent to which torture is used, either by government officials or by private individuals under the direction of government officials. Scores range from a possible 0 (meaning torture was practiced frequently) to 2 (meaning no torture occurred in a given year). Women’s Economic Rights: Included is a measure of women’s economic rights in the Women’s Discrimination dataset. The CIRI data codes this variable as a 0 if systematic economic discrimination against women was built into the law.A score of 3 indicates that there is widespread legal support for the economic rights of women. Women’s Political Rights: This also comes from the CIRI human rights dataset and is included in the Women’s Discrimination dataset. A 0 means that women’s political rights were not guaranteed by law, while a 3 indicates guarantees of women’s political rights in both law and practice. Women’s Social Rights: Like the two variables above, this measures the extent to which women’s social rights were protected and effectively enforced by the government . CIRI assigns a score of 0 if there were no social rights for women and no legal protections for their social rights. A 3 means that there is near total support for women’s social rights in both law and practice. Democratic Transition: This is an interaction variable drawn from Polity IV Project data that captures both how democratic a given country is at the time of ratification and how long that regime has been in place. Appendix 181 Durable: A continuous measure of how many years the current political...