Human Rights Treaties and Domestic Politics

Abstract

Mobilizing for Human Rights: International Law in Domestic Politics. By Beth Simmons. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 451 pp., $28.99 paperback (ISBN-13: 978-0-521-71232-3). Understanding why legally sovereign governments would ever choose to ratify human rights treaties has vexed scholars for some time. To prohibit torture, a government need not ratify the Convention Against Torture. Unilateral policy changes would directly alter the domestic protection of human rights and yet governments frequently choose to make global public commitments to their citizens’ human rights by ratifying human rights treaties. So why do they ever commit? Do governments learn to value liberal, Western norms (Wotipka and Ramirez 2008)? Are governments coerced to sign on the dotted line by more powerful countries (Goldsmith and Posner 2005)? Does their anticipated ability to comply shape the initial decision to commit (Hathaway 2002; Goodliffe and Hawkins 2006)? Beth Simmons’ book, Mobilizing for Human Rights , makes an important contribution to this lively debate about factors motivating government ratification of human rights treaties. She argues that treaty ratification is rationally expressive—ratification may reflect a government's genuine desire to implement the terms of a treaty, but this decision is shaped by the expected costs and consequences that ratification might involve. …