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Voting and Human Rights in Democratic Societies

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Abstract

The majority of research on human rights focuses on the consequences of regime-type for human rights violations, and overwhelming evidence suggests that democracies are less likely to violate human rights of their citizens as compared to non-democracies. However, a regime-type perspective is unable to account for disparities in human rights violations within democratic and non-democratic regimes. This paper disaggregates regime-type and analyzes the relationship between citizens’ participation and human rights violations. I argue that a participative citizenry, as captured by high voter turnout, is indicative of an active and vigilant populace who are more likely to hold governments accountable and ensure better human rights protections. The paper tests the relationship between human rights and voter turnout among 89 democratic countries from 1976 to 2008. The findings demonstrate that a participative citizenry enhances governmental respect for human rights.

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Notes

  1. A minimalistic dichotomous measure of democracy is used to classify countries and the data come from Cheibub, Gandhi, and Vreeland (2010). The “Data and Methods” section discusses the measure in greater detail.

  2. The PTS data are discussed in greater detail in the “Data and Methods” section.

  3. Other forms of participation may include protests, membership in civil groups, and contributions to political campaigns, among others. Participation in these activities may require citizens to be more proactive and motivated to influence democratic governance than voting. In the latter, the opportunity to influence politics is presented to the populace.

  4. As mentioned in footnote 3, citizens may find it relatively easier to overcome collective action problems relative to other activities because the voting mechanism is presented to the citizens.

  5. It may be difficult to ascertain if violation of human rights is one of the factors citizens consider while casting their vote. However, why citizens choose to vote for one party/individual over another is a different question. Of relevance here is the consequence of the overall level of voter turnout during elections.

  6. While Stephan and Chenoweth (2008) make this argument with respect to non-violent protests and government repression, their theory could also apply to voter turnout and government repression where voting is also very much a non-violent and legitimate means of participation for citizens in democracies which makes it difficult for political representatives to resort to violence to maintain order in a democratic society.

  7. There are other restrictions on voting too. See Blais et al. (2001) for a thorough discussion of restrictions on voting across democracies.

  8. One way to address this issue in future research is to assess the role of different types of citizens’ participation on human rights performance. This may provide some insight into the role played by different types of activism on governmental protection of human rights.

  9. The time period under analysis is largely guided by data availability. Specifically, the democracy variable that is used for classifying democracies is available until 2008.

  10. The PTS data based on Human Rights Watch reports are not used because the data are missing for several countries and years.

  11. Since elections generally take place every few years, voter turnout data for the preceding election is carried forward until the next election year in order to have a complete dataset.

  12. Appendix Table 8 displays descriptive statistics, and Appendix Table 9 displays the correlation matrix.

  13. I did estimate the relationship between the two with a two-stage least squares regression model to account for simultaneity and compared the findings to the OLS model (discussed in the manuscript). The findings between the two remain the same despite the difference in estimation techniques. This further suggests that OLS is an appropriate way of assessing the relationship between human rights violations and voter turnout.

  14. Holding the control variables at their mean values and the dummy variables at 0 is generally the norm while calculating dynamic effects (Poe and Tate 1994; Williams and Whitte 2012).

  15. In order to avoid multicollinearity, the model does not include the “polity2” variable, which measures the level of democracy and includes political competition (parcomp) as one of its components in its aggregate measure.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Social Sciences & Cultural Studies, Montana State University Billings, 1500 University Drive, Billings, MT, 59101, USA

    Nisha Mukherjee Bellinger

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  1. Nisha Mukherjee Bellinger
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Correspondence to Nisha Mukherjee Bellinger.

Appendix

Appendix

Table 8 Descriptive statistics
Full size table
Table 9 Correlation matrix
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Table 10 Hausman endogeneity test
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Table 11 Findings from 2SLS estimation
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Table 12 Variations in voter turnout
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Bellinger, N.M. Voting and Human Rights in Democratic Societies. Hum Rights Rev 18, 263–282 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12142-017-0451-9

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