Reevaluating the presidential runoff rule: Does a provision promote the protection of human rights?

Abstract

In recent years, an increasing number of democracies have adopted a runoff rule to elect their president. Some have argued, however, that the benefits of such a rule are dubious at best. In this article, I seek to counter this claim, as I posit that a runoff rule promotes the protection of human rights by reducing outcomes that are negatively associated with high government respect for human rights. Using ordered logistic regression and an analysis of predicted probabilities, I find that democratic presidential elections held using a runoff rule produce presidents that are less likely to be associated with lower government respect for human rights, and more likely to be associated with greater government respect for human rights. I conclude by suggesting that politicians should consider embracing a presidential runoff rule, as its adoption could be a relatively easy way to reduce repression.

The effect of copartisan justice ministers on human rights in presidential democracies

“…In other words, since Polity IV’s XCONST measure was designed to estimate executive constraints across all countries, it does not fully capture the variation within specifically presidential democracies , which is the focus of this article. As such, I follow recent articles [ 79 , 80 ] in using Doyle and Elgie’s ([ 78 ]: 734) quantification of “the constitutional power of presidents,” which I have inverted and refer to as presidential constraints . The inclusion of this variable as a control is particularly important to this article’s research question as “judges are less likely to invalidate legislation or governmental actions in countries possessing strong presidents” ([ 81 ]: 435).…”

“…Continuing on, Poe and Tate ([ 71 ]: 859) note that “regimes are more coercive when they are involved in civil conflict.” The measure of civil conflict I utilize is drawn from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program [ 82 ]; the use of this particular dataset is common within the human rights literature (e.g. [ 75 , 79 , 80 , 83 ]). My civil conflict variable is coded as ‘0’ for each country-year with less than 25 battle-related deaths, ‘1’ for each country-year where there were between 25 and 999 battle-related deaths, and finally ‘2’ for each country-year where there were more than 999 battle-related deaths.…”

Nationalism and human rights: A replication and extension

“…In other words, rather than using the PCSE model promoted by Yazici [1], Long and Freese ([9]: 309) point to McCullagh [10] who pioneered the use of ordered logistic regression. Indeed within the broader human rights literature, models that similarly use CIRI scores as the dependent variable seem to most commonly use ordered logit models (see for instance: [11–15]). As such, in Table 2, I present the results of three order logit regressions.…”

The effect of two-round presidential elections on human rights

“…Although some human rights studies have opted to use either the Freedom House or Polity measures to identify which regimes are democratic, this is controversial as both Freedom House and Polity base their classification-in part-on how regimes respect human rights; therefore, using either measure would partially control for my outcome variable [76]. Poe and Tate ([59]: 856), argue that democracy "must be defined in terms that allow independent operationalization of the concept," and in light of this advice, I (and many others [14,27,73,[76][77][78][79][80][81][82][83][84]) have opted to use Cheibub, Gandhi, and Vreeland's [75] typology, as their DD dataset defines democracy in a way that does not incorporate state human rights practices. Per the DD dataset, a regime is considered to be a 'democracy' when the president is elected, the legislature is elected, there is more than one party competing in elections, and an alternation under identical electoral rules has taken place ([75]: 69).…”

“…For my primary dependent variable, I follow my previous article [14] in utilizing the Cingranelli-Richards (CIRI) Physical Integrity Rights Index [85], which is an additive nine-point index of four ordinal indicators of government respect for physical integrity rights: the rights of all human beings to be protected from torture, extrajudical killing, disappearance, and political imprisonment. CIRI scores ranges from '0' (no respect for any of the four physical integrity PLOS ONE rights) to '8' (full respect for all of them).…”