This timely book presents a practical framework for conceptualizing and analyzing human rights issues such as repression, compliance, and transitional justice in an increasingly fraught climate for human rights globally. Emerging and established experts advance quantitative and mixed-methods research, showcasing innovative ways of measuring and evaluating multifaceted concepts.
Chapters cover a broad range of salient topics including state repression, civil society activism, compliance with international law, and transitional justice. Emphasizing that rigorous research is driven by substance, not methods, the contributing authors explain how they measure concepts that are vital to human rights research. They showcase diverse forms of evidence in descriptive and analytical studies, as well as guidance for using cutting-edge techniques like machine learning and text analysis, charting a path for future empirical human rights research.
Innovations in Human Rights provides students and scholars with an essential toolkit they can incorporate into their learning, research, and teaching of human rights, international law, international organizations, and research methods.
Arvustused
Zvobgo and Parente have compiled an excellent volume for scholars looking to move beyond annual studies of statewide human rights practices or delve deeper into the institutions meant to improve those practices. Anyone seeking to study the causes and consequences of human rights outcomes should read this book. -- K. Chad Clay, University of Georgia, USA In order to protect human rights it is first necessary to understand the extent to which such rights are being protected. Empirical human rights research is indeed undergoing a renaissance - and the essays in this outstanding collection will help bring this to a whole new level. -- Mark Gibney, University of North Carolina-Asheville, USA
Contents
1 Advancing empirical human rights research 1
Kelebogile Zvobgo and Francesca Parente
2 Detecting repression with machine learning and text analysis 14
Rebecca Cordell
3 Studying non-state actor participation in international
organizations using bureaucratic data 31
Rachel J. Schoner
4 Applying game theory and case evidence to understand
international law 43
Genevieve Bates
5 Using newspaper coverage to examine the local effects of
international organizations 57
Stephen Chaudoin
6 Assessing quasi-judicial bodies enforcement of international
human rights law 69
Andreas J. Ullmann
7 Predicting time to compliance with international court
judgments 82
Aníbal Pérez-Liñán
8 Uncovering the uneven application of domestic reparations
laws 96
Claire Greenstein
9 Measuring repression through restrictions on civil society 114
Andrew Heiss
10 Moving forward: challenges and opportunities for
measurement in human rights 126
Francesca Parente and Kelebogile Zvobgo
References 134
Edited by Kelebogile Zvobgo, Mansfield Associate Professor of Government and Director, International Justice Lab, William & Mary, USA and Francesca Parente, Assistant Professor of Political Science and Director, Reiff Center for Human Rights and Conflict Resolution, Christopher Newport University, USA
