Rodwan Abouharb | University College London (original) (raw)
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Papers by Rodwan Abouharb
Respect for human rights represents self-imposed restraints on the behavior of a government. Thes... more Respect for human rights represents self-imposed restraints on the behavior of a government. These limits signify both a domestic norm and a state that has decided to settle political disputes through nonviolent methods. When these governments interact in the international system, we suspect that their basic norms of behavior will remain and generate relatively peaceful interactions. We test this contention on pairs of all states from 1980 to 2001 and find that joint respect for human rights decreases the probability of conflict. This relationship is maintained even when one controls for the effect of democracy and its influence on the human rights record of states.
Social Sciences, 2019
We contribute to the research stream emphasizing the competition between international organizati... more We contribute to the research stream emphasizing the competition between international organizations and citizens for influence over the domestic policy choices of national politicians. Drawing upon previous theoretical and empirical work on the common agency problem, we contend that the joint influence of a country’s memberships in multiple international governmental organizations (IGOs) generates consistent, unintended, disruptive effects, which reduces domestic accountability and can worsen the quality of a domestic government. Even if we assume that joining any particular IGO is beneficial for member states, the competing demands of multiple IGO memberships could undermine the quality of their governments. Our comparative, cross-national empirical findings support this theoretical expectation. Countries participating in a larger number of IGOs tend to have poorer scores on five widely used indicators of the quality of a domestic government. Future research should identify the ty...
World Affairs
... Patrick Regan examined 139 con flicts, with and without interventions, during the post-World ... more ... Patrick Regan examined 139 con flicts, with and without interventions, during the post-World War II period and reports that those with interventions last considerably longer than those without, but it could be that states simply choose to intervene in the longer running conflict. ...
The impact of the IMF and the World Bank, 2005
World Trade Review, 2013
On 16 December 2011, Russia gained the approval of 153 other member states to join the World Trad... more On 16 December 2011, Russia gained the approval of 153 other member states to join the World Trade Organization (WTO). During its arduous eighteen-year accession, Russian officials reformed a wide range of laws and policies that could affect trade.1Russia made these changes because senior Russian officials believed that improved governance would pay off in greater foreign investment, and that investment in turn would stimulate economic growth.2President Vladimir Putin acknowledged ‘countries compete in the attractiveness of their business climate … quality of state institutions and effectiveness of the court and legal system’. Ivan Tchakarov, chief economist at the Russian brokerage Renaissance Capital, asserted ‘By becoming a WTO member, Russia will have to import … rules and regulations that will address the very issues that foreign investors usually complain about, like corruption, the protection of minority shareholders, the independence of the judiciary.’3
The Journal of Politics, 2006
The Review of International Organizations, 2008
Journal of Peace Research, 2007
Systematic data on annual infant mortality rates are of use to a variety of social science resear... more Systematic data on annual infant mortality rates are of use to a variety of social science research programs in demography, economics, sociology, and political science. Infant mortality rates may be used both as a proxy measure for economic development, in lieu of energy consumption or GDP-per-capita measures, and as an indicator of the extent to which governments provide for the economic and social welfare of their citizens. Until recently, data were available for only a limited number of countries based on regional or country-level studies and time periods for years after 1950. Here, the authors introduce a new dataset reporting annual infant mortality rates for all states in the world, based on the Correlates of War state system list, between 1816 and 2002. They discuss past research programs using infant mortality rates in conflict studies and describe the dataset by exploring its geographic and temporal coverage. Next, they explain some of the limitations of the dataset as well...
Journal of Human Rights, 2013
International Studies Quarterly, 2011
International Studies Quarterly, 2006
Social Sciences, 2020
This paper examines the effect of international trade on strike activity within the United States... more This paper examines the effect of international trade on strike activity within the United States since World War II. Globalization may influence strike activity through its effects on the bargaining position of labor. Alternatively, if labor and management take their changed bargaining positions into account, the rate of change in openness could create greater uncertainty in negotiations between them and lead to more strikes as a result. Empirical analysis of strike activity in the 50 states over this period supports the argument concerning uncertainty in the bargaining process. Import competition may also indirectly reduce strike activity by decreasing union density.
Journal of Human Rights, 2016
Political leaders not only assess the costs and benefits of repression but also act strategically... more Political leaders not only assess the costs and benefits of repression but also act strategically in their use of particular repression types. Choices amongst repression types depend partly upon leaders being held responsible for their particular actions. The codification of the international human rights regime indicated by broad ratification of the core International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights increases the likelihood of criminal responsibility, and political leaders who repress but want to avoid accountability for their actions respond strategically. These governments refrain from extrajudicial killing, which is easier to link to the government, relying instead on forced disappearances, a violation that is more difficult to tie to the incumbent regime. Using a sample of 194 countries from 1981 to 2009, we find that decreases in the use of extrajudicial killing in International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights member states are associated with increases in the us...
Previous research generally ignores the costs of international cooperation. Using the principal-a... more Previous research generally ignores the costs of international cooperation. Using the principal-agent framework, we draw attention to the agency loss that occurs domestically when multiple international actors simultaneously influence national policy makers. We contribute to the literature by emphasizing the potentially negative consequences of competition between international organizations and citizens for influence over domestic politicians. Drawing upon previous theoretical and empirical work on the multipleprincipals-common-agent problem, we hypothesize that the joint influence of a country’s memberships in multiple international governmental organizations (IGOs) generates consistent, unintended, disruptive effects on governance. The empirical part of the paper applies our theoretical expectations to indicators of the quality of domestic governance. The results support our argument and show that the disruptive effect is strongest in less democratic countries. Previous research ...
Scholars and policymakers have long believed that the interdependence encouraged by trade relatio... more Scholars and policymakers have long believed that the interdependence encouraged by trade relations encourages trust and peaceful relations. In this article, we examine the role of the GATT/WTO (and the trade it supposedly encourages) in conflict zones. We show that policymakers have used several avenues under the WTO to discuss and address human rights in member states during periods of conflict and post-conflict recovery. We then focus on how policymakers can achieve greater coherence among trade and human rights policies in conflict zones.
Respect for human rights represents self-imposed restraints on the behavior of a government. Thes... more Respect for human rights represents self-imposed restraints on the behavior of a government. These limits signify both a domestic norm and a state that has decided to settle political disputes through nonviolent methods. When these governments interact in the international system, we suspect that their basic norms of behavior will remain and generate relatively peaceful interactions. We test this contention on pairs of all states from 1980 to 2001 and find that joint respect for human rights decreases the probability of conflict. This relationship is maintained even when one controls for the effect of democracy and its influence on the human rights record of states.
Social Sciences, 2019
We contribute to the research stream emphasizing the competition between international organizati... more We contribute to the research stream emphasizing the competition between international organizations and citizens for influence over the domestic policy choices of national politicians. Drawing upon previous theoretical and empirical work on the common agency problem, we contend that the joint influence of a country’s memberships in multiple international governmental organizations (IGOs) generates consistent, unintended, disruptive effects, which reduces domestic accountability and can worsen the quality of a domestic government. Even if we assume that joining any particular IGO is beneficial for member states, the competing demands of multiple IGO memberships could undermine the quality of their governments. Our comparative, cross-national empirical findings support this theoretical expectation. Countries participating in a larger number of IGOs tend to have poorer scores on five widely used indicators of the quality of a domestic government. Future research should identify the ty...
World Affairs
... Patrick Regan examined 139 con flicts, with and without interventions, during the post-World ... more ... Patrick Regan examined 139 con flicts, with and without interventions, during the post-World War II period and reports that those with interventions last considerably longer than those without, but it could be that states simply choose to intervene in the longer running conflict. ...
The impact of the IMF and the World Bank, 2005
World Trade Review, 2013
On 16 December 2011, Russia gained the approval of 153 other member states to join the World Trad... more On 16 December 2011, Russia gained the approval of 153 other member states to join the World Trade Organization (WTO). During its arduous eighteen-year accession, Russian officials reformed a wide range of laws and policies that could affect trade.1Russia made these changes because senior Russian officials believed that improved governance would pay off in greater foreign investment, and that investment in turn would stimulate economic growth.2President Vladimir Putin acknowledged ‘countries compete in the attractiveness of their business climate … quality of state institutions and effectiveness of the court and legal system’. Ivan Tchakarov, chief economist at the Russian brokerage Renaissance Capital, asserted ‘By becoming a WTO member, Russia will have to import … rules and regulations that will address the very issues that foreign investors usually complain about, like corruption, the protection of minority shareholders, the independence of the judiciary.’3
The Journal of Politics, 2006
The Review of International Organizations, 2008
Journal of Peace Research, 2007
Systematic data on annual infant mortality rates are of use to a variety of social science resear... more Systematic data on annual infant mortality rates are of use to a variety of social science research programs in demography, economics, sociology, and political science. Infant mortality rates may be used both as a proxy measure for economic development, in lieu of energy consumption or GDP-per-capita measures, and as an indicator of the extent to which governments provide for the economic and social welfare of their citizens. Until recently, data were available for only a limited number of countries based on regional or country-level studies and time periods for years after 1950. Here, the authors introduce a new dataset reporting annual infant mortality rates for all states in the world, based on the Correlates of War state system list, between 1816 and 2002. They discuss past research programs using infant mortality rates in conflict studies and describe the dataset by exploring its geographic and temporal coverage. Next, they explain some of the limitations of the dataset as well...
Journal of Human Rights, 2013
International Studies Quarterly, 2011
International Studies Quarterly, 2006
Social Sciences, 2020
This paper examines the effect of international trade on strike activity within the United States... more This paper examines the effect of international trade on strike activity within the United States since World War II. Globalization may influence strike activity through its effects on the bargaining position of labor. Alternatively, if labor and management take their changed bargaining positions into account, the rate of change in openness could create greater uncertainty in negotiations between them and lead to more strikes as a result. Empirical analysis of strike activity in the 50 states over this period supports the argument concerning uncertainty in the bargaining process. Import competition may also indirectly reduce strike activity by decreasing union density.
Journal of Human Rights, 2016
Political leaders not only assess the costs and benefits of repression but also act strategically... more Political leaders not only assess the costs and benefits of repression but also act strategically in their use of particular repression types. Choices amongst repression types depend partly upon leaders being held responsible for their particular actions. The codification of the international human rights regime indicated by broad ratification of the core International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights increases the likelihood of criminal responsibility, and political leaders who repress but want to avoid accountability for their actions respond strategically. These governments refrain from extrajudicial killing, which is easier to link to the government, relying instead on forced disappearances, a violation that is more difficult to tie to the incumbent regime. Using a sample of 194 countries from 1981 to 2009, we find that decreases in the use of extrajudicial killing in International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights member states are associated with increases in the us...
Previous research generally ignores the costs of international cooperation. Using the principal-a... more Previous research generally ignores the costs of international cooperation. Using the principal-agent framework, we draw attention to the agency loss that occurs domestically when multiple international actors simultaneously influence national policy makers. We contribute to the literature by emphasizing the potentially negative consequences of competition between international organizations and citizens for influence over domestic politicians. Drawing upon previous theoretical and empirical work on the multipleprincipals-common-agent problem, we hypothesize that the joint influence of a country’s memberships in multiple international governmental organizations (IGOs) generates consistent, unintended, disruptive effects on governance. The empirical part of the paper applies our theoretical expectations to indicators of the quality of domestic governance. The results support our argument and show that the disruptive effect is strongest in less democratic countries. Previous research ...
Scholars and policymakers have long believed that the interdependence encouraged by trade relatio... more Scholars and policymakers have long believed that the interdependence encouraged by trade relations encourages trust and peaceful relations. In this article, we examine the role of the GATT/WTO (and the trade it supposedly encourages) in conflict zones. We show that policymakers have used several avenues under the WTO to discuss and address human rights in member states during periods of conflict and post-conflict recovery. We then focus on how policymakers can achieve greater coherence among trade and human rights policies in conflict zones.