| Do regional human rights courts influence respect for rights? Conventional wisdom suggests that absent hard enforcement mechanisms, international legal obligations have little influence on state behavior. International human rights courts arguably represent legal bodies posing greater challenges to state sovereignty and greater constraints on state behavior than other international human rights legal mechanisms. As a result, the literature suggests that states are unlikely to delegate to these regional legal bodies and delegation only occurs when (rights-respecting) states expect little change in behavior. However, states have increasingly delegated authority to regional human rights courts over time and these regional legal bodies continue to experience unprecedented growth in activity. Despite growth in the authority and activity of regional human rights courts, we know relatively little about their effectiveness, or the extent to which regional human rights courts influence respect for rights. In this study, I argue that the executive, as the final authority on human rights policy within the state, plays a primary role in regional court implementation and effectiveness. While the executive faces various incentives not to adhere to adverse regional court decisions, the executive often also faces various incentives to adhere to adverse decisions of the court (by adopting or implementing a policy of respect for rights), which may trump executive incentives to evade adverse regional court decisions. In this study, I explore direct threats to executive political survival, including international and domestic pressure placed on the executive to adhere to adverse regional court decisions. I also explore indirect threats to executive political survival for failing to adhere to adverse regional court decisions, including expectation of adherence by the domestic legislature and judiciary, as well as executive expectation of civil society mobilization. I then empirically examine the role of threats to executive political survival in generating executive incentives to adhere to an adverse decision through a policy of respect for rights, or the effectiveness of the regional human rights court, using cross-national statistical analysis of regional court decisions in both Europe and the Americas. |
