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Are Human Rights Practices Improving?

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  • CINGRANELLI, DAVID
  • FILIPPOV, MIKHAIL

Abstract

Has government protection of human rights improved? The answer to this and many other research questions is strongly affected by the assumptions we make and the modeling strategy we choose as the basis for creating human rights country scores. Fariss (2014) introduced a statistical model that produced latent scores showing an improving trend in human rights. Consistent with his stringent assumptions, his statistical model heavily weighted rare incidents of mass killings such as genocide, while discounting indicators of lesser and more common violations such as torture and political imprisonment. We replicated his analysis, replacing the actual values of all indicators of lesser human rights violations with randomly generated data, and obtained an identical improving trend. However, when we replicated the analysis, relaxing his assumptions by allowing all indicators to potentially have a similar effect on the latent scores, we find no human rights improvement.

Suggested Citation

  • Cingranelli, David & Filippov, Mikhail, 2018. "Are Human Rights Practices Improving?," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 112(4), pages 1083-1089, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:112:y:2018:i:04:p:1083-1089_00
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    Cited by:

    1. Sara Kahn-Nisser, 2021. "For better or worse: Shaming, faming, and human rights abuse," Journal of Peace Research, Peace Research Institute Oslo, vol. 58(3), pages 479-493, May.
    2. Bjørnskov, Christian & Pfaff, Katharina, 2021. "Differences matter: The effect of coup types on physical integrity rights," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 69(C).
    3. Joshua Holzer, 2020. "The effect of copartisan justice ministers on human rights in presidential democracies," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(9), pages 1-17, September.

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