BASIC HUMAN RIGHTS‐DOES REGIME MATTER?

Abstract

This paper argues that government performance in securing basic economic and political rights (basic human rights) is an eminently political phenomenon and that much of the cross‐national variation can be adequately explained by two key regime type variables—political competitiveness and political openness. Both components prove analytically more powerful than commonly advanced economistic explanations centered around economic development, economic growth, income equality and international trade. Conceptualizing basic human rights as subsistence and security rights and operationalizing regime type in terms of competitiveness and participation addresses several important problems associated with empirical human rights and regime research. After exploring the relationship between regime type and basic human rights practices in some 100 countries, several multivariate regression models are introduced which not only explain a substantial portion of the variation in basic human rights practices, but which also demonstrate the central importance of regime type compared to the above economic variables.