Do Non–Human Rights Regimes Undermine the Achievement of Economic and Social Rights?

M. Rodwan Abouharb, David L. Cingranelli, and Mikhail Filippov

There is little systematic research examining the international factors that make governments more or less willing to make efforts to protect the economic and social rights (ESR) of their citizens (Cardenas 2007; Bauhr and Nasiritousi 2012; Hafner-Burton 2012; Goodman and Jinks 2013; Minkler 2013). In this chapter we demonstrate for the first time that the longer a government's participation in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) (United Nations 1966), the greater its level of respect for ESR. This finding is consistent with the "mechanisms, actors, and pathways" (MAPs) framework of human rights realization outlined in the introduction of this book. That model emphasizes that a variety of domestic and international forces help hold states accountable for their violations of human rights norms. Participation in the ICESCR engages states in a give-and-take process that promotes human rights accountability. However, it is not simply ratification of human rights treaties that leads to greater protection of human rights; it is engagement with transnational networks and the iterative use of both instrumental and communicative strategies that drives the gradual incorporation of human rights norms into state practices and structures. Consistent with our previous research (Abouharb and Cingranelli 2006, 2007, 2009), statistical analysis confirms that the longer a government's participation in International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank program lending, the worse its record of respect for ESR. Moreover, we find that the greater the number of international regimes in which a government participates, the worse its respect for ESR.

In order to explain theoretically the difference in the effects of participation in different international regimes, we adopt a principal–agent approach, focusing on the accountability of politicians to citizens (Haglund and Aggarwal 2011; Cingranelli, Fajardo-Hayward, and Filippov, 2014). We emphasize the agency losses that can occur when international regimes compete with citizens for the attention of policy makers. As national governments become responsible to more international regimes they sometimes become less accountable to their own populations. This is particularly damaging to human rights realization when some of these international regimes, like the program-lending regime, ask governments to prioritize policies which come at the expense of domestic demands to realize ESR. In contrast, membership in other international regimes like the ICESCR reinforces domestic demands for better realization of ESR by increasing international pressure on governments to realize these rights.

Our argument contrasts with the traditional account and underlying assumption in much of the international relations literature that participation in international regimes is only beneficial to national governments and that they serve various purposes which improve governance, lock in good behavior, and advance economic and social outcomes. We argue that the ESR benefits of international regimes are far more conditional on the mix of international regimes that countries join, that is, whether these regimes help reinforce domestic preferences for better ESR outcomes or divert governments to prioritize other goals instead. One of the implications of our research is that membership in multiple regimes has contrasting and often contradictory effects on the domestic realization of ESR.

Our account of the problems created when multiple principals direct the activities of a single agent is consistent with a growing literature that points to similar problems in many substantive policy areas—especially environmental and economic development policy (Oberthür and Gehring 2006; McNeill and St. Clair 2009). States are joining intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) at an increasing rate. Each organization joined has its own set of norms and rules. Governments that participate in many IGOs can choose how to allocate their attention among the demands of their citizens, the demands of particular international regimes, and among the various tasks required by any particular international regime. They can play one regime off against another, and they can also choose to interpret particular regime norms in a variety of ways (Raustiala and Victor 2004). Such choices maximize the discretion of agents, increase agency loss from citizen preferences to politicians, and, in general, lead to less-than-optimal social and economic outcomes. An important lesson that emerges from the study of the interplay of international regimes, therefore, is that international regimes are not self-contained entities (Young et al. 2008). The...