Yes, Human Rights Practices Are Improving Over Time

Abstract

To document human rights, monitoring organizations establish a standard of accountability, or a baseline set of expectations that states ought to meet in order to be considered respectful of human rights. If the standard of accountability has meaningfully changed, then the categorized variables from human rights documents will mask real improvements. Cingranelli and Filippov question whether the standard of accountability is changing and whether data on mass killings are part of the same underlying conceptual process of repression as other abuses. These claims are used to justify alternative models, showing no improvement in human rights. However, by focusing on the coding process, the authors misunderstand that the standard of accountability is about how monitoring organizations produce documents in the first place and not how academics use published documents to create data. Simulations and latent variables that model time in a substantively meaningful way validate the conclusion that human rights are improving.

Pacem in Terris: Are Papal Visits Good News for Human Rights?

“…In a first step, we demonstrate the evolution of human rights around a typical visit by the pope. For this purpose, we estimate a linear regression model where the dependent variable is the first difference of a continuous latent human rights indicator by Fariss (2014Fariss ( , 2019. We include as independent variables the level of human rights protection in the previous year, country and year fixed effects, and 21 dummy variables identifying the year of a visit as well as the fifteen years before and the five years after.…”

“…Note: Estimated lags and leads with 95% confidence intervals around a papal visit. The dependent variable is the first difference of a continuous indicator for the level of human rights protection by Fariss (2019). The model includes country and year fixed effects.…”

“…Table 2, but with an added interaction term between a dummy variable for democratic countries and the treatment indicator for a pope visit. 6,403 Note: The dependent variable is the first difference of a continuous indicator for the level of human rights protection by Fariss (2019). OLS coefficient estimates are shown with standard errors in parentheses clustered on the country level.…”

“…+ p<0.1, * p<0.05, ** p<0.01, *** p<0.001. 6,403 Note: The dependent variable in the second stage is the first difference of a continuous indicator for the level of human rights protection by Fariss (2019). ETM coefficient estimates are shown with standard errors in parentheses clustered on the country level.…”

“…Description and source Human Rights Latent human rights protection score. Source: Fariss (2019), v3.01.…”