The Political Economy of Human Rights
The IDCR is leading a project on the Political Economy of Human Rights.
The project comprises researchers from Middlesex University, the University of Loughborough, and the University of Essex.
The project adopts the view that human rights advocacy can be advanced through systematic analysis of data combined with legal analysis in ways that draw on the tools of the disciplines of economics, political science, and international relations.
The aims and objectives of the project are to:
- provide a greater understanding of the spatial and temporal variation in human rights
- to specify formal models for understanding the public goods aspects of human rights
- to understand the appeal of human rights through the logic of market analysis
- to analyse the economic benefits of greater rights protection
The project team includes:
- Professor Todd Landman, Director of the IDCR
- Professor David Kernohan, Head of Department of Economics and Statistics, Middlesex University
- Professor Joshua Castellino, Head of Department of Law, Middlesex University
- Dr Terence Huw Edwards, Lecturer, School of Business and Economics, University of Loughborough
- Tulio Antonio-Cravo, PhD Candidate, School of Business and Economics, University of Loughborough
- Anita Gohdes, PhD Candidate, Socio-Economic and Statistical Studies, Humboldt University of Berlinand Consultant to the Benetech Human Rights Data Analysis Group.
Papers and outputs:
- Relativising Human Rights presents a system for country ranking of human rights practices that takes into account other defining features of countries, including levels of democracy, conflict, development, inequality, population size and regional variation. Presented at the 2010 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington DC, 1-4 September 2010.
- The Market for Human Rights presents an exploration in applying market logic to the protection of human rights at the domestic level and as a mechanism for explaining the diffusion of demand for rights of the kind currently being winessed in the Middle east and North Africa. It also explores the idea of a ‘Vernon Product Cycle’ to the evolution of human rights standards.
- Good Neighbours Matter is an econometric analysis of the diffusion of human rights protection. Using gravity modeling popular in trade analysis, the paper shows that the relative position to large countries with good human rights record affects the protection of human rights in neighbouring countries. Global and regional analyses show these different neighbourhood effects. Results from preliminary modelling have been published in Exchange Magazine from International Business and Diplomatic Exchange and are part of a conference on Democracy and Autocracy at the German Development Institute 1-2 March 2011.
International Political Economy of Globalisation and Cross-Border Effects
Goodenough College, 28 April 2011
IDCR Director Professor Todd Landman presented preliminary results on the spatial diffusion of human rights from the work being carried out under the auspcies of this project at a conference held at Goodenough College on ‘The Political Economy of Globalisation and Cross-Border Effects’. Terence Huw Edwards from the University of Loughborough organised the conference and Professor David Kernohan from Middlesex University participated. This paper and others from the project will next be presented in South Korea in June at a confrerence on War, Peace and Human Rights after the Cold War organised by the International Political Studies Association (IPSA).
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