The Effectiveness of US Human Rights Policy, 1973–1980

Abstract

Abstract The history of US human rights policy in Latin America provides useful case studies of the interplay between ‘control’ and ‘consent’ aspects of democratization. It presents a preliminary analysis of the influence of US human rights policy on human rights practices and democratization in Argentina, Guatemala, and Uruguay in the 1970s and early 1980s, focusing primarily on the Carter period. In each of these cases, the US policy attempted to influence the domestic human rights situation by linking the improvement of human rights practices to the provision of military or economic aid. But, the nature of the pressures applied and the responses thereto were quite different in the three countries, reflecting the importance of ‘consent’ issues, determined by the state of democratic transition achieved within the country concerned, in modifying the effects of ‘control’ pressures.