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We explore the impact of foreign direct investment, disaggregated by home (source) country on labor rights outcomes in developing nations. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What explains the large variation in the time taken by different countries to ratify the 1948 Genocide Convention? The costs of ratification would appear to be relatively low, yet many countries have waited for years, and even decades, before ratifying this symbolically important treaty. This study employs a "nested analysis" that combines a large-n event history analysis with a detailed study of an important outlying case in order to explain the main sources of this variation. The initial event history history produces a puzzling finding: countries appear to be less likely to ratify the treaty if relevant peer countries have already done so. We use the case of Japan -- which has not yet ratified the Genocide Convention, despite the predictions of the event history model -- to explore the proposed causes of ratification in more detail. Based on these findings, we suggest that once the norms embodied in a treaty take on a sufficiently "taken-forgranted" character, many countries decide that the costs of ratification outweigh its marginal benefits. The pattern of ratification of the Genocide Convention therefore does not appear to fit the classic model of the "norm cascade" that has been used to explain the adoption of other human rights norms. We conclude with suggestions for how the validity of our theory could be tested through a combination of further large-n and small-n analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does membership in Intergovernmental Organizations (IGOs) affect states' human rights behaviour?  One might expect IGOs with a specific human rights mandate, like the International Labour Organization or the Council of Europe, to have a positive effect on the human rights practices of their member states.  But what about other sorts of IGOs, particularly those with no direct connection to human rights issues?  This study employs cross-national data on abuses of "physical integrity rights" for 132 countries over the period 1982-2000 to test the constructivist hypothesis that IGOs can promote the diffusion of human rights norms by providing venues for inter-state socialization.  Recent empirical work on IGOs has suggested that this sort of socialization effect plays an important role in promoting democracy and can also lead to a more general convergence among states' interests.  The results presented here suggest that IGOs can indeed exert a powerful effect on states' human rights practices as a result of this process, even after controlling for the effects of many other domestic and international variables known to be associated with patterns of human rights abuse. IGOs can therefore bring about changes in states' human rights practices through mechanisms that go beyond the straightforward enforcement of membership conditions. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between international trade and human rights has been extensively debated. Drawing on a panel of 132 countries over the period 1982-2004, this paper examines how bilateral trade linkages influence the human rights practices of exporting countries. In doing so, we study the conditions under which Vogel's "California Effect" might operate in the context of the diffusion of human rights practices. The California Effect suggests that international trade can serve as a vehicle to ratchet up human rights practices in exporting countries if the export destinations themselves have higher human rights standards. Using the IMF's "Direction of Trade" data in conjunction with the Cingranelli-Richards Human Rights Dataset, we investigate the conditions under which the human rights practices of exporting countries are influenced by the human rights practices of their trading partners. We find that the California Effect does indeed operate in the context of human rights, but only in interaction with facilitating political institutions (democracy) in the exporting country. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focuses on the ability of networks of intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) to function as "transmission belts" for the diffusion of norms between states. Specifically, it asks whether the the official mandates of IGOs make a significant diff ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between international trade and human rights has been extensively debated. Drawing on a panel of 75 countries over the period 1995-2003, this paper examines how bilateral trade and investment linkages influence human rights practices. In doing so, we study the conditions under which Vogel's "California Effect" might operate in the context of the diffusion of human rights practices. The California Effect suggests that international trade can serve as a vehicle to ratchet up human rights practices in exporting countries if the export destinations themselves have higher human rights standards. Using the IMF's "Direction of Trade" data in conjunction with the Cingranelli-Richard's Human Rights dataset, we investigate the conditions under which the human rights practices of a given country can be influenced by the human rights practices of its trade partners. We find that the California Effect does operate in the context of human rights, but only in interaction with facilitating political institutions in the exporting country: bilateral trade therefore serves as a mechanism for conveying human rights practices from export destinations to exporting countries only when there is a sufficient level of democracy in the exporting countries to provide the political space for improvements in human rights standards. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have approached the question of how trade affects human rights using measures of overall trade openness, membership in preferential trading agreements, and of characteristics of the export destinations. While the causal story about the effects of ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]