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New Publication: On the causal (in)significance of legal status: a comparative analysis of compliance with binding and non-binding human rights decisions in Europe and the Americas
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New publication by Andreas Ullmann! In this article, Andreas Ullmann and his co-author Andreas von Staden examine the effectiveness of binding and non-binding international human rights instruments in practice. While the literature on institutional design has already discussed the advantages and disadvantages of legally binding and non-binding instruments in detail, an empirical comparative analysis of their relative effectiveness in promoting compliance has been lacking until now. The study uses the jurisdictionaloverlap between the legally binding judgments of regional human rights courts in Europe and the Americas and the non-binding “views” of UN treaty bodies to close this research gap.
Theoretically, the authors expect the rule of law to play a central role in implementation: the rule of law should increase compliance with judgments compared to the “views” of UN treaty bodies. Using exact matching and survival analysis, these hypotheses are tested using an original dataset that includes information on judgments and opinions against the same states. The results confirm that legal bindingness significantly increases the probability of full compliance. Surprisingly, the authors find that the positive effect of legal bindingness on compliance is weaker in states with weaker rule of law.