LA VIDA EN LOS TIEMPOS DE LA BIBLIA

Combining “Leader and Ruling Coalition Dataset” (Svolik 2012b) with “Change in Source of Leader Support” (CHISOLS, hereinafter) dataset (Mattes, Leeds, and Matsumura Forthcoming), I create a new complete dataset on ratification records of seven of the nine core United Nations human rights treaties by 432 autocratic leaders from 121 countries, spanning the years 1966 to 2008.24 The seven core UN human rights treaties include the 1966 International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), the 1966 International

Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), the 1984 Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT), the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), and the 1990 International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of the Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families (ICMWR). I exclude the remaining two core UN human rights treaties, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

(CRPD) and the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (ICED), from empirical analyses due to their limited time coverage. The CRPD

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

and ICED were open for signature in December 13 and 20, 2006, respectively, while my dataset ends at 2008. Table 1A.1 in Appendix at the end of Chapter 1 displays a complete list of the nine core UN human rights instruments.

Given that the theoretical focus of this study is individual autocrats rather than autocratic countries, an autocrat enters into the dataset when a first human rights treaty in my dataset opens up for signature25 – 1966, here – or when he starts his tenure, whichever comes earlier. An autocrat exits the year after the ratification of the last available human rights treaties among seven for a given country or the year his tenure is over, whichever occurs earlier. Therefore, an autocrat who inherits the treaty ratification status of seven human rights treaties from his

autocratic or democratic predecessors is dropped from the analysis because I am interested in an autocrat’s own decision to ratify, not his inherited status of ratification. For example, in

Morocco, the moderately liberal Mohammed VI succeeded his father Hassan II in 1999 and inherited his repressive father’s seven ratifications of core human rights treaties. He is dropped from the analysis because no additional human rights treaties were available for him to ratify. On the other hand, Ben Ali came to power following a coup in Tunisia in 1987 and inherited four ratifications of the ICERD, ICCPR, ICESCR, and CEDAW from the authoritarian regime of Habib Bourguiba, which was pro-women’s rights. He stays in the analysis for the possible ratification of the three remaining treaties, and he indeed ratified the CAT and CRC during his tenure. The units of analysis are a country-year for the time series and cross-sectional analyses as well as a leader for cross-sectional analysis in this chapter.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

25 _{Although the ICERD had been open for signature on December 21, 1965, there is no country that}

ratified in 1965. Thus, I treat the year 1966 as the year when the first set of treaties, the ICERD, ICCPR, and ICESCR, in my dataset was open for signature.

Dependent Variable

The dependent variable is a count of ratification incidence of the seven human rights agreements in a given year. This ranges from 0 (no ratification) to 7 (ratification of all seven treaties). This dependent variable enables me to examine why an autocrat ratifies multiple human rights agreements simultaneously in a given year as well as why autocrats ratify multiple human rights treaties during their tenure. For the analysis of the latter question, this yearly count dependent variable is collapsed by an individual autocrat to represent the maximum count of ratified human rights agreements during an autocrat’s tenure. This modified count dependent variable also ranges from 0 (none) to 7 (ratifications of all seven treaties). Ratification information was drawn from the United Nations Treaty Series Online Collection database (UNTS 2016).

Independent Variable

The main independent variable is a Change in Leader Support Coalition from that of Predecessor (SOLS Change) drawn from the CHISOLS data (Mattes et al. Forthcoming). This variable captures whether an autocrat has a political and societal support base enabling him to achieve and retain, distinct from his predecessor. This binary variable is coded 1 for an autocrat with a different leader support coalition than his predecessor, and zero otherwise. Among 432 autocrats in the dataset, 41% involve SOLS change while 59% do not. This distribution of SOLS changes is largely consistent with that of the complete sample of leadership changes in autocracies in the original CHISOLS data where 45% are associated with SOLS changes and 55% are not (Mattes et al. Forthcoming, 286).

Control Variables

I include a battery of control variables, which have been associated with human rights treaty commitment in previous studies. I expect these variables to be associated with multiple human rights treaty ratifications.

First of all, I expect that autocrats ratify fewer human rights treaties when fewer are available. Thus, I control for the number of available human rights treaties in a leader-year. Using the leader as a unit of analysis, I collapse this variable to be the maximum available number of human rights treaties when an autocrat comes into power.

The existing literature on commitment to human rights treaties demonstrates that the benefits and costs of treaty commitment affect state decisions to join international human rights treaties. In studies on autocratic commitment (Conrad 2014; Vreeland 2008), autocratic

countries with multiparty systems are found to be more likely to ratify the Convention against Torture to appease domestic oppositions. Assuming that similar motives prompt autocrats to extend their liberalization policies beyond anti-torture commitments to all other human rights issues, I expect that autocracies with multiparty system ratify more human rights treaties. Drawing from Vreeland (2008) and Conrad (2014), I employ a legalistic definition to see whether multiple parties are allowed de jure. I create a binary variable, indicating 1 if multiple parties are legally allowed, and 0 if not, drawn from Cheibub, Gandhi, and Vreeland’s dataset (2010). This variable captures the legal presence of opposition in autocracies.

I also include independent judiciary from the Cingranelli-Richard (CIRI) Human Rights dataset (2014) to address the cost of treaty ratification (Hill 2015; Powell and Staton 2009; Conrad and Ritter 2013). This variable shows whether the judiciary is independent of other sources of power. In the presence of an independent judiciary, I expect the ex post ratification

costs to be higher. This ordinal variable ranges from 0 (not independent) to 2 (generally independent).

Human rights conditions on the ground can be another source of ex post costs for

autocrats, which are often considered worse on human rights than their democratic counterparts. To measure actual human rights practices, I mainly rely on the Latent Human Rights Protection Scores (v.2) (Fariss 2014; Schnakenberg and Fariss 2014). This measure is limited to the level of protection of physical integrity rights while my empirical analyses concern seven human rights treaties across different human rights issue areas from physical integrity rights to minority rights. Drawing from Fariss and Schnakenberg (2013), however, I assume that human rights violations across specific human rights issues are largely interdependent. This latent physical integrity variable addresses rising concerns that the dominant two existing measures of human rights practices -- the Political Terror Scale (PTS) (Gibney et al. 2012) and the CIRI Human Rights Data (CIRI) (Cingranelli et al. 2014) -- fail to account for dynamic changes in how monitoring agencies like Amnesty International and the U.S. State Department interpret available information about repression over time (Fariss 2014; Clark and Sikkink 2013). This continuous variable ranges from -2.94 (more abuse) to 3.90 (more respect).

Common law variable is added to the model to account for one of the domestic

institutional ratification barriers, which impose ex ante ratification costs (Simmons 2009a). We would expect that autocratic countries with common law systems face more domestic

institutional constraints on ratifying a higher number of human rights treaties. I use the English Common Law legal origin from the Quality of Government Dataset (Teorell et al. 2015), which extends La Porta, López-de-Silanes, Shleifer and Vishny (1999), and made it a dummy variable, indicating 1 if a common law country and 0 otherwise.

The cultural argument posits that Islamic countries are often negatively associated with Western values, especially with regard to the rights of women and children (Cole 2005). Thus, Islamic countries may be less likely to join human rights treaties driven by Western countries (Wotipka and Ramirez 2008). The Quality of Government Dataset (Teorell et al. 2015) extending La Porta et al. (1999) also provides this indicator, referring to the population’s percentage of Muslims in the year 1980 (See Vreeland 2008, 89).

Last, in order to control for the diffusion effects of ratification among autocrats

(Goodliffe, Hawkins, and Vreeland 2009), I include regional autocratic ratification scores. These indicate the yearly rate of ratifications of seven human rights treaties among autocracies within the same region with a given autocracy.

For the analysis of multiple ratifications during an autocratic tenure, I include an additional variable for years in power. Given the dependent variable is a count in nature, we expect that autocrats who stay in power longer have a better chance of ratifying a higher number of human rights treaties than those who lose power after a couple of years. Thus, I control for the number of years since a given autocrat entered office. Information on the start and end dates of autocratic leaders are drawn from Svolik (2012a).

For an extra test to explore when an autocrat ratifies multiple human rights treaties during his tenure, I include an indicator variable of new leader and its interactive term with SOLS change. It is coded 1 if it is less than four years since an autocrat enters into power and 0 otherwise (Brownlee 2007, 597). I expect that autocrats who transitioned with leader support coalition changes from their predecessors ratify multiple human rights treaties only after those initial years. Data is drawn from Svolik (2012a).

For robustness checks, I include the following control variables. Autocratic sub-regime type may affect the likelihood of human rights treaty ratifications as well as changes in domestic political and societal support coalitions. In line with Way and Weeks (2014) on the pursuit of nuclear weapons, von Stein argues that personalist autocracies more readily ratify human rights agreements (2014). On the other hand, changes in leader support coalitions is conditioned by autocratic sub-regime types, according to Mattes et al. (forthcoming). I include a binary

variable, coded 1 if a personalist regime and 0 if otherwise. Geddes, Wright, and Frantz (2014) provide this variable.

I also include trade as a percent of GDP (logged) and foreign aid (logged) as well as the presence of civil war to account for the possible impact of international pressures and domestic inability to pursue memberships in human rights treaties. The two economic factor variables come from the World Development Indicators (World Bank 2014). The UCDP/PRIO Conflict Database (Themnér and Wallersteen 2013) provides the ordinal indicator of civil war, and I switch it to a binary variable, indicating 1 if any internal armed conflicts and 0 if no internal armed conflict. All data are drawn from Teorell et al. (2015).