W M Cole
Biographic Data
| ID | 17989 |
|---|---|
| NAME | W M Cole |
| GIVEN NAMES | W M |
| FAMILY NAME | Cole |
| SIGNATURE | COLE W M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Utah |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5095-8645 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 44 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 581 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 44 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1967 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 11 |
Human rights and populist wrongs: How populist incumbents threaten democracy, 1990–2023
This paper leverages variation in respect for human rights to intervene in ongoing debates over the consequences of populism for democracy. Compiling data for 103 democratic countries between 1990 and 2023, and using a novel cross-national classification of populist leaders and parties, I examine the relationships between left-wing, centrist, and right-wing populist incumbency and 18 measures of civil, political, and social rights. Two-way fixed-…
Abortion Policies in a Polarizing World Society, 1970 to 2020
This article examines how global contention over reproductive rights influenced national abortion polices over the past half-century. I glean four models of normative contestation in world society and its consequences for diffusion and institutionalization, arguing that a theory of polarization best accounts for developments in norms and policies on abortion. Fixed-effects regression analyses of up to 160 countries between 1970 and 2020 test the …
Destroying Democracy for the People: The Economic, Social, and Political Consequences of Populist Rule, 1990 to 2017
The recent populist wave has raised questions about the implications of populism for democracy. Some scholars express optimism that populism may be a source of democratic revitalization, bringing about sweeping changes in accordance with the majority will. More often, populism is viewed as a threat to liberal democracy, combining calls for radical change with disdain for core democratic institutions and norms. We consider the possibility that the…
Global liberalism, emerging illiberalism, and human rights, 1980 to 2018
The Islamic Human Rights Deficit: Region, Not Religion, Is the Driver
Scholarly research, journalistic accounts, and popular discourses often portray Islam as detrimental to human rights. Governments in Muslim-majority countries are considered especially prone to violating bodily integrity protections, curtailing civil and political liberties, repressing women and LGBT people, and restricting religious freedoms. Using cross-national time-series data for a majority of the world’s countries, this article demonstrates…
Political Ideology and Childhood Vaccination in Cross-National Perspective, 1995 to 2018
Although the Covid-19 pandemic has renewed attention to the problem of vaccine hesitancy, vaccination rates for common childhood vaccines such as measles and pertussis have declined in many countries around the world for over a decade. To investigate the potential role of politicization in this decline, I analyze the relationship between the ideological composition of societies and childhood vaccination rates for measles, diphtheria, pertussis, a…
Individual Empowerment, Institutional Confidence, and Vaccination Rates in Cross-National Perspective, 1995 to 2018
In the past decade, before the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, rates of childhood vaccination against diseases such as measles, diphtheria, pertussis, and tetanus declined worldwide. An extensive literature examines the correlates and motives of vaccine hesitancy-the reluctance or refusal to vaccinate despite the availability of vaccines-among individuals, but little macrosociological theory or research seeks to explain changes in country-level v…
Don't You Be My Neighbor! Perceptions of Homosexuality in Global Cross-Cultural Perspective, 1990 to 2019
The Authors draw on cognitive sociology and attribution theory to infer whether people classify homosexuality as an identity or a behavior. Using six waves of World Values Survey data covering 85 countries, the authors conduct factor and multilevel regression analyses to examine patterns of intolerance toward gay people alongside racialized groups, immigrants, and users of alcohol or illicit substances, in the context of who constitutes an undesi…
Aiding Human Rights? The Effect of U.S., European, and Chinese Development Assistance on Rights Practices in Recipient Countries, 2001 to 2017
Official development assistance (ODA) refers to aid intended to promote economic development and wellbeing in developing countries. The effect of ODA from Western donors continues to be debated, but the impact of aid from non-Western countries such as China is a relatively new field of inquiry and analysis. Using data on Western ODA and a new dataset of “ODA-like” disbursements from China, this article analyzes the relationship between bilateral …
The dialectics of universalism and particularism: World society, religious traditions, and women's political representation, 1960-2013
This study develops a model of macro-cultural identity inspired by the work of George Herbert Mead. The model puts world society theory, which emphasizes the homogenizing effects of 'world culture,' into conversation with civilization-analytic perspectives, which contend that religious and civilizational differences grow increasingly salient over time. The author regards these approaches as dialectically co-implicated. To test the model, the arti…
Conceiving of Contraception: World Society, Cultural Resistance, and Contraceptive Use, 1970–2012
Taking world society theory as our point of departure, we examine the effect of world culture on contraceptive use rates around the world. World-cultural rhetoric frames contraception as a necessity for economic development, a human rights issue, and a women’s health matter. Using data on contraceptive use among married women for a sample of 159 countries over the period from 1970 to 2012, we find that linkages to all three sets of discourses are…
Working to protect rights: Women's civil liberties in cross-cultural perspective
We Comply with a Little Help from Our Friends: Human Rights, Development Aid, and Well-Being
Scholars debate whether human rights treaties and foreign aid are effective in achieving their stated objectives. Using data on more than 100 developing countries over a 20- to 40-year period, we analyze the independent and interactive effects of the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and development assistance (general and health-specific) on three population health outcomes: infant mortality rates, life exp…
Beyond geography: Cultural zones and global patterns of modern-method contraceptive use
To increase understanding of global variation in contraceptive use, we classify countries into "cultural zones" based on religious traditions and geographical regions. Using data for 156 countries, we model modern contraceptive use rates as a function of cultural zones, geographic regions, economic development, women's education, and time. We find that cultural zones explain modern-method contraceptive use better than geographic regions alone, ev…
Political equality for women and the poor: Assessing the effects and limits of world society, 1975–2010
Empirical tests of world society theory routinely analyze the effects of country-level linkages to international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) on countries’ policies and practices. Analysts regard INGOs as “conveyor belts” that transport cultural models and scripts to countries around the globe. We modify this mechanistic interpretation by shifting focus to the broader institutional and cultural environments in which INGOs operate. Using …
Wealth and health revisited: Economic growth and wellbeing in developing countries, 1970 to 2015
Progress without Progressives? The Effects of Development on Women's Educational and Political Equality in Cultural Context, 1980 to 2010
Researchers often attribute diminishing gender inequality to economic development. When different aspects of gender inequality are examined, however, evidence points to both cross-national convergence as well as persistent (or even growing) heterogeneity in women's status. To make sense of this contradiction, we examine the extent to which culture moderates the relationship between economic development and gender inequality. We consider two dimen…
Poor and powerless: Economic and political inequality in cross-national perspective, 1981-2011
The relationship between economic and political inequality has long concerned social scientists, but research remains limited in scope. Most studies focus on isolated cases, highly restricted subsamples, or subunits within countries. Using data for up to 136 countries between 1981 and 2011, this study analyzes whether and how income inequality affects the distribution of political power for, and respect for the civil liberties of, a society's ric…
Does might make right or fight? Coercive capacity, democracy, and human rights, 1975 to 2010
Democracy is generally beneficial for human rights whereas coercive capacity increases government repression. Using data for 161 countries between 1975 and 2010, I consider how different aspects of democracy interact with the size and scope of a country's military apparatus to shape respect for bodily-integrity rights. Does democracy ameliorate the negative effects of coercive capacity? Or, does a strong military overpower the positive impact of …
World polity or world society? Delineating the statist and societal dimensions of the global institutional system
The world society/polity perspective developed by John Meyer, his collaborators, and his students has grown tremendously over the past three decades. It is, however, theoretically and conceptually imprecise in one crucial respect: the very terms by which the perspective is called - 'world polity' and 'world society' - are used interchangeably and indiscriminately. This article proposes the utility of developing an implicit conceptual distinction …
Too much of a good thing? Economic growth and human rights, 1960 to 2010
The Effects of Human Rights on Economic Growth, 1965 to 2010
A long-standing research question asks whether democracy promotes or inhibits development, but relatively few studies explore the developmental consequences of human rights. I analyze the effect of respect for bodily integrity rights and civil liberties on economic growth rates, measured as percentage changes in gross domestic product over pooled five-year intervals, for 138 countries between 1965 and 2010. Bodily integrity rights entail fundamen…
A tale of two worlds: The interstate system and world society in social science textbooks, 1950–2011
There is a great and longstanding divide in visions of the international arena. Some assert that states are the most relevant actors in international politics, and others emphasise the importance of non-state actors as vehicles through which shared ideas and identities are enacted. Typically, cross-national scholarship adopts one of these positions and seeks to support the attendant theoretical claims; our approach is entirely different. We treat…
Human Rights and the Individual: Cross-Cultural Variation in Human Rights Scores, 1980 to 2010
This study analyzes patterns of cross-cultural variability and convergence in two categories of human rights: bodily integrity (protection from torture, extrajudicial killing, and other forms of physical repression) and civil liberties (the freedoms of expression, assembly, movement, and religion). Countries are delineated into twelve cultural zones based primarily on predominant religious tradition and secondarily on geographical region. The cor…
Managing to mitigate abuse: Bureaucracy, democracy, and human rights, 1984 to 2010
Hundreds of millions of people live in weak states that are functionally incapable of protecting their citizens, yet few studies consider the implications of state weakness for human rights practices. Using data for 134 countries between 1984 and 2010, I construct a factor-analytic score of bureaucratic capacity and use it to analyze two categories of human rights: bodily integrity and civil liberties. Results from multivariate regression analyse…
Sovereignty Relinquished? Explaining Commitment to the International Human Rights Covenants, 1966-1999
This article examines whether the content of the International Human Rights Covenants and the costs associated with their ratification influence the decision of countries to join. The author evaluates three theoretical perspectives-rationalism, world polity institutionalism, and the clash of civilizations-with data for more than 130 countries between 1966 and 1999. Rationalists contend that treaty ratification is tightly coupled with internal sov…
Mind the Gap: State Capacity and the Implementation of Human Rights Treaties
According to recent studies, international human rights treaties are ineffective, counterproductive, or else beneficial for only those countries that tend to respect human rights regardless of treaty membership. Analysts often attribute gaps between human rights principles and practices to willful disobedience, self-interested defection, and ineffective enforcement. Using two-stage regression models to analyze compliance with the International Co…
Government Respect for Gendered Rights: The Effect of the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women on Women’s Rights Outcomes, 1981-20041
Using two-stage least-squares regression models, I analyze the effect of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) on rated levels of respect for women's rights. The results show that CEDAW has a strong positive effect on women's political rights, no effect on economic rights, and a partially negative effect on social rights. Detailed analyses of political outcomes reveal that CEDAW membership was asso…
Conditional Decoupling: Assessing the Impact of National Human Rights Institutions, 1981 to 2004
National human rights institutions, defined as domestic but globally legitimated agencies charged with promoting and protecting human rights, have emerged worldwide. This article examines the effect of these organizations on two kinds of human rights outcomes: physical integrity rights and civil and political rights. We analyze cross-national longitudinal data using regression models that account for the endogeneity of organizational formation. O…
Human Rights as Myth and Ceremony? Reevaluating the Effectiveness of Human Rights Treaties, 1981-2007
Much research has shown human rights treaties to be ineffective or even counterproductive, often contributing to greater levels of abuse among countries that ratify them. This article reevaluates the effect of four core human rights treaties on a variety of human rights outcomes. Unlike previous studies, it disaggregates treaty membership to examine the effect of relatively "stronger" and "weaker" commitments. Two-stage regression analyses that c…
Hard and Soft Commitments to Human Rights Treaties, 1966–2000 1
What factors determine whether and how deeply countries will commit to the international human rights regime? Using data for up to 142 countries between 1966 and 2000, this article analyzes patterns of membership to the International Human Rights Covenants. The analysis produced two main conclusions. First, the potential costs associated with joining a treaty, rather than its substantive content, motivates the decision to join. Treaties that prot…
A Civil Religion for World Society: The Direct and Diffuse Effects of Human Rights Treaties, 1981–2007 1
Much research has concluded that human rights treaties have a null or negative effect on governments’ human rights practices. This article reexamines the influence of human rights treaties, with a focus on two kinds of treaty effects: direct—the effect of treaties on the countries that ratified them; and diffuse—the effect of treaties on countries regardless of ratification. My analysis of two prominent human rights treaties finds that they often…
Individual Empowerment, Institutional Confidence, and Vaccination Rates in Cross-National Perspective, 1995 to 2018
In the past decade, before the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, rates of childhood vaccination against diseases such as measles, diphtheria, pertussis, and tetanus declined worldwide. An extensive literature examines the correlates and motives of vaccine hesitancy-the reluctance or refusal to vaccinate despite the availability of vaccines-among individuals, but little macrosociological theory or research seeks to explain changes in country-level v…
International Human Rights and Domestic Income Inequality: A Difficult Case of Compliance in World Society
Much research finds that human rights treaties fail to improve domestic practices unless governments are held accountable in some fashion. The implication is that noncompliance can be attributed to insincere commitments and willful disobedience. I challenge this claim for a core but overlooked treaty: the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). Few analysts have studied the ICESCR because its terms are difficult …
World polity or world society? Delineating the statist and societal dimensions of the global institutional system
The world society/polity perspective developed by John Meyer, his collaborators, and his students has grown tremendously over the past three decades. It is, however, theoretically and conceptually imprecise in one crucial respect: the very terms by which the perspective is called - 'world polity' and 'world society' - are used interchangeably and indiscriminately. This article proposes the utility of developing an implicit conceptual distinction …
No News Is Good News: Human Rights Coverage in the American Print Media, 1980-2000
Several studies have analyzed media representations of human rights practices, but none has systematically examined whether those representations lead to skewed perceptions of repression or abuse. This phenomenon, referred to in the literature as the “information paradox,” poses serious problems for scholars attempting to gauge the extent of human rights violations or to evaluate measures taken to remediate them. This article considers whether in…
Institutionalizing a global anti-corruption regime: Perverse effects on country outcomes, 1984–2012
A global anti-corruption movement rapidly mobilized and institutionalized during the mid-1990s. Using data for 119 countries between 1984 and 2012, I examine the effects of this movement on rated levels of perceived corruption. Results from multivariate regression analyses show that the global surge in anti-corruption organizing, monitoring, and legalization was paradoxically associated with an increase in rated levels of corruption, over and abo…
When All Else Fails: International Adjudication of Human Rights Abuse Claims, 1976-1999
Although interest in the consolidation and expansion of the international human rights regime has grown in recent years, little attention is accorded to the formal procedures that allow individuals aggrieved by states to appeal directly to an international audience. Using data for 82 countries between 1976 and 1999, this article examines the political and cultural factors that produce cross-national variation in the propensity of individuals to f…
Wealth and health revisited: Economic growth and wellbeing in developing countries, 1970 to 2015
Poor and powerless: Economic and political inequality in cross-national perspective, 1981-2011
The relationship between economic and political inequality has long concerned social scientists, but research remains limited in scope. Most studies focus on isolated cases, highly restricted subsamples, or subunits within countries. Using data for up to 136 countries between 1981 and 2011, this study analyzes whether and how income inequality affects the distribution of political power for, and respect for the civil liberties of, a society's ric…
Managing to mitigate abuse: Bureaucracy, democracy, and human rights, 1984 to 2010
Hundreds of millions of people live in weak states that are functionally incapable of protecting their citizens, yet few studies consider the implications of state weakness for human rights practices. Using data for 134 countries between 1984 and 2010, I construct a factor-analytic score of bureaucratic capacity and use it to analyze two categories of human rights: bodily integrity and civil liberties. Results from multivariate regression analyse…
Political equality for women and the poor: Assessing the effects and limits of world society, 1975–2010
Empirical tests of world society theory routinely analyze the effects of country-level linkages to international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) on countries’ policies and practices. Analysts regard INGOs as “conveyor belts” that transport cultural models and scripts to countries around the globe. We modify this mechanistic interpretation by shifting focus to the broader institutional and cultural environments in which INGOs operate. Using …
Institutionalizing shame: The effect of Human Rights Committee rulings on abuse, 1981-2007
Accrediting Culture: An Analysis of Tribal and Historically Black College Curricula
Using data gleaned from catalogs and bulletins for a sample of 28 tribal, 33 historically black, and 30 'mainstream' colleges, the author analyzes the number of courses that focus explicitly and exclusively on African American or American Indian cultural perspectives-'ethnocen-tric' content-in 1992 and 2002. Negative binomial regression analyses of course counts indicate that tribal colleges offer nearly 10 times as many 'ethnocentric' courses as…
Human Rights and the Individual: Cross-Cultural Variation in Human Rights Scores, 1980 to 2010
This study analyzes patterns of cross-cultural variability and convergence in two categories of human rights: bodily integrity (protection from torture, extrajudicial killing, and other forms of physical repression) and civil liberties (the freedoms of expression, assembly, movement, and religion). Countries are delineated into twelve cultural zones based primarily on predominant religious tradition and secondarily on geographical region. The cor…
Does respect for human rights vary across ‘civilizations’? A statistical reexamination
The cultural content of international human rights standards has inspired much discussion and debate, but cross-cultural levels of compliance with these standards remains understudied. Using Samuel Huntington’s controversial ‘clash-of-civilizations’ thesis as a point of departure, this article analyzes whether human rights practices differ systematically across dominant cultural and religious traditions, with a focus on two sets of rights: bodily…
Individuals v. states: The correlates of Human Rights Committee rulings, 1979–2007
Abortion Policies in a Polarizing World Society, 1970 to 2020
This article examines how global contention over reproductive rights influenced national abortion polices over the past half-century. I glean four models of normative contestation in world society and its consequences for diffusion and institutionalization, arguing that a theory of polarization best accounts for developments in norms and policies on abortion. Fixed-effects regression analyses of up to 160 countries between 1970 and 2020 test the …
Does might make right or fight? Coercive capacity, democracy, and human rights, 1975 to 2010
Democracy is generally beneficial for human rights whereas coercive capacity increases government repression. Using data for 161 countries between 1975 and 2010, I consider how different aspects of democracy interact with the size and scope of a country's military apparatus to shape respect for bodily-integrity rights. Does democracy ameliorate the negative effects of coercive capacity? Or, does a strong military overpower the positive impact of …
Destroying Democracy for the People: The Economic, Social, and Political Consequences of Populist Rule, 1990 to 2017
The recent populist wave has raised questions about the implications of populism for democracy. Some scholars express optimism that populism may be a source of democratic revitalization, bringing about sweeping changes in accordance with the majority will. More often, populism is viewed as a threat to liberal democracy, combining calls for radical change with disdain for core democratic institutions and norms. We consider the possibility that the…
Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide and the Metabolism of Ethanol and Acetaldehyde
The effects of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (nad) on ethanol and acetaldehyde metabolism were studied in a series of experiments: (1) Pairs of male albino rats (109–244 g), maintained with a normal ad lib. diet, were injected intraperitoneally with an aqueous solution (10% w/ v) of ethanol-1-14C at concentrations of 0.05%, 0.1% or 0.2% of body weight. One of each pair was then injected through a tail vein with a saline solution of 2 mg of na…
Sovereignty Relinquished? Explaining Commitment to the International Human Rights Covenants, 1966-1999
This article examines whether the content of the International Human Rights Covenants and the costs associated with their ratification influence the decision of countries to join. The author evaluates three theoretical perspectives-rationalism, world polity institutionalism, and the clash of civilizations-with data for more than 130 countries between 1966 and 1999. Rationalists contend that treaty ratification is tightly coupled with internal sov…
When All Else Fails: International Adjudication of Human Rights Abuse Claims, 1976-1999
Although interest in the consolidation and expansion of the international human rights regime has grown in recent years, little attention is accorded to the formal procedures that allow individuals aggrieved by states to appeal directly to an international audience. Using data for 82 countries between 1976 and 1999, this article examines the political and cultural factors that produce cross-national variation in the propensity of individuals to f…
Accrediting Culture: An Analysis of Tribal and Historically Black College Curricula
Using data gleaned from catalogs and bulletins for a sample of 28 tribal, 33 historically black, and 30 'mainstream' colleges, the author analyzes the number of courses that focus explicitly and exclusively on African American or American Indian cultural perspectives-'ethnocen-tric' content-in 1992 and 2002. Negative binomial regression analyses of course counts indicate that tribal colleges offer nearly 10 times as many 'ethnocentric' courses as…
Hard and Soft Commitments to Human Rights Treaties, 1966–2000 1
What factors determine whether and how deeply countries will commit to the international human rights regime? Using data for up to 142 countries between 1966 and 2000, this article analyzes patterns of membership to the International Human Rights Covenants. The analysis produced two main conclusions. First, the potential costs associated with joining a treaty, rather than its substantive content, motivates the decision to join. Treaties that prot…
No News Is Good News: Human Rights Coverage in the American Print Media, 1980-2000
Several studies have analyzed media representations of human rights practices, but none has systematically examined whether those representations lead to skewed perceptions of repression or abuse. This phenomenon, referred to in the literature as the “information paradox,” poses serious problems for scholars attempting to gauge the extent of human rights violations or to evaluate measures taken to remediate them. This article considers whether in…
Mandated multiculturalism: An analysis of core curricula at tribal and historically black colleges
Individuals v. states: The correlates of Human Rights Committee rulings, 1979–2007
Ethnocentric Curricula and the Politics of Minority Incorporation at Tribal and Historically Black Colleges
Recent studies have analyzed the diffusion of ethnic studies programs at colleges and universities in the United States. This article explores a different trend: the infusion of “ethnocentric” content—perspectives that explicitly and exclusively focus on one ethnic group—throughout the curriculum at tribal, historically Black, and mainstream colleges and universities. Descriptive and multivariate regression analyses indicate that ethnocentric cou…
A Civil Religion for World Society: The Direct and Diffuse Effects of Human Rights Treaties, 1981–2007 1
Much research has concluded that human rights treaties have a null or negative effect on governments’ human rights practices. This article reexamines the influence of human rights treaties, with a focus on two kinds of treaty effects: direct—the effect of treaties on the countries that ratified them; and diffuse—the effect of treaties on countries regardless of ratification. My analysis of two prominent human rights treaties finds that they often…
Human Rights as Myth and Ceremony? Reevaluating the Effectiveness of Human Rights Treaties, 1981-2007
Much research has shown human rights treaties to be ineffective or even counterproductive, often contributing to greater levels of abuse among countries that ratify them. This article reevaluates the effect of four core human rights treaties on a variety of human rights outcomes. Unlike previous studies, it disaggregates treaty membership to examine the effect of relatively "stronger" and "weaker" commitments. Two-stage regression analyses that c…
Institutionalizing shame: The effect of Human Rights Committee rulings on abuse, 1981-2007
Strong Walk and Cheap Talk: The Effect of the International Covenant of Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights on Policies and Practices
Economic and social rights are understudied, and the core international treaty covering these rights—the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR)—has rarely been analyzed. This paper examines the effect of the ICESCR on (1) labor rights in law and practice and (2) the constitutionalization of socioeconomic rights. Membership in the ICESCR paradoxically improves de facto labor practices but not de jure labor rights …
Does respect for human rights vary across ‘civilizations’? A statistical reexamination
The cultural content of international human rights standards has inspired much discussion and debate, but cross-cultural levels of compliance with these standards remains understudied. Using Samuel Huntington’s controversial ‘clash-of-civilizations’ thesis as a point of departure, this article analyzes whether human rights practices differ systematically across dominant cultural and religious traditions, with a focus on two sets of rights: bodily…
Government Respect for Gendered Rights: The Effect of the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women on Women’s Rights Outcomes, 1981-20041
Using two-stage least-squares regression models, I analyze the effect of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) on rated levels of respect for women's rights. The results show that CEDAW has a strong positive effect on women's political rights, no effect on economic rights, and a partially negative effect on social rights. Detailed analyses of political outcomes reveal that CEDAW membership was asso…
Conditional Decoupling: Assessing the Impact of National Human Rights Institutions, 1981 to 2004
National human rights institutions, defined as domestic but globally legitimated agencies charged with promoting and protecting human rights, have emerged worldwide. This article examines the effect of these organizations on two kinds of human rights outcomes: physical integrity rights and civil and political rights. We analyze cross-national longitudinal data using regression models that account for the endogeneity of organizational formation. O…
Institutionalizing a global anti-corruption regime: Perverse effects on country outcomes, 1984–2012
A global anti-corruption movement rapidly mobilized and institutionalized during the mid-1990s. Using data for 119 countries between 1984 and 2012, I examine the effects of this movement on rated levels of perceived corruption. Results from multivariate regression analyses show that the global surge in anti-corruption organizing, monitoring, and legalization was paradoxically associated with an increase in rated levels of corruption, over and abo…
Mind the Gap: State Capacity and the Implementation of Human Rights Treaties
According to recent studies, international human rights treaties are ineffective, counterproductive, or else beneficial for only those countries that tend to respect human rights regardless of treaty membership. Analysts often attribute gaps between human rights principles and practices to willful disobedience, self-interested defection, and ineffective enforcement. Using two-stage regression models to analyze compliance with the International Co…
International Human Rights and Domestic Income Inequality: A Difficult Case of Compliance in World Society
Much research finds that human rights treaties fail to improve domestic practices unless governments are held accountable in some fashion. The implication is that noncompliance can be attributed to insincere commitments and willful disobedience. I challenge this claim for a core but overlooked treaty: the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). Few analysts have studied the ICESCR because its terms are difficult …
The Effects of Human Rights on Economic Growth, 1965 to 2010
A long-standing research question asks whether democracy promotes or inhibits development, but relatively few studies explore the developmental consequences of human rights. I analyze the effect of respect for bodily integrity rights and civil liberties on economic growth rates, measured as percentage changes in gross domestic product over pooled five-year intervals, for 138 countries between 1965 and 2010. Bodily integrity rights entail fundamen…
A tale of two worlds: The interstate system and world society in social science textbooks, 1950–2011
There is a great and longstanding divide in visions of the international arena. Some assert that states are the most relevant actors in international politics, and others emphasise the importance of non-state actors as vehicles through which shared ideas and identities are enacted. Typically, cross-national scholarship adopts one of these positions and seeks to support the attendant theoretical claims; our approach is entirely different. We treat…
Human Rights and the Individual: Cross-Cultural Variation in Human Rights Scores, 1980 to 2010
This study analyzes patterns of cross-cultural variability and convergence in two categories of human rights: bodily integrity (protection from torture, extrajudicial killing, and other forms of physical repression) and civil liberties (the freedoms of expression, assembly, movement, and religion). Countries are delineated into twelve cultural zones based primarily on predominant religious tradition and secondarily on geographical region. The cor…
Managing to mitigate abuse: Bureaucracy, democracy, and human rights, 1984 to 2010
Hundreds of millions of people live in weak states that are functionally incapable of protecting their citizens, yet few studies consider the implications of state weakness for human rights practices. Using data for 134 countries between 1984 and 2010, I construct a factor-analytic score of bureaucratic capacity and use it to analyze two categories of human rights: bodily integrity and civil liberties. Results from multivariate regression analyse…
Does might make right or fight? Coercive capacity, democracy, and human rights, 1975 to 2010
Democracy is generally beneficial for human rights whereas coercive capacity increases government repression. Using data for 161 countries between 1975 and 2010, I consider how different aspects of democracy interact with the size and scope of a country's military apparatus to shape respect for bodily-integrity rights. Does democracy ameliorate the negative effects of coercive capacity? Or, does a strong military overpower the positive impact of …
World polity or world society? Delineating the statist and societal dimensions of the global institutional system
The world society/polity perspective developed by John Meyer, his collaborators, and his students has grown tremendously over the past three decades. It is, however, theoretically and conceptually imprecise in one crucial respect: the very terms by which the perspective is called - 'world polity' and 'world society' - are used interchangeably and indiscriminately. This article proposes the utility of developing an implicit conceptual distinction …
Political science (39 works) · Law (38 works) · Sociology (30 works) · Politics (28 works) · Human rights (24 works) · Law (22 works) · Economics (21 works) · Development economics (12 works) · Law and economics (11 works) · Political Conflict and Governance (11 works)