Are New Democracies Better Human Rights Compliers?

Abstract

Recent literature suggests that new democracies are more likely than advanced liberal democracies to make binding commitments to international human rights institutions. Are new democracies also better at following through on these commitments? Put differently: does their greater willingness to join international institutions reflect a credible commitment to human rights reform or is it just ‘cheap talk?’ This research note analyzes this question using a new dataset of over 1000 leading European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) cases. Since new democracies face judgments that are more difficult to implement than mature democracies, we employ a genetic matching algorithm to balance the dataset. After controlling for bureaucratic and legal capacity, new democracies do implement similar ECtHR judgments on average more quickly than mature democracies but this effect disappears the longer a judgment remains pending. The incentives new democracies have to uphold credible commitments are thus not always sufficient to overcome more structural impediments to human rights reform.