THE STRATEGIC DETERMINANTS OF U.S. HUMAN RIGHTS REPORTING: EVIDENCE FROM THE COLD WAR

This paper uses a country-level panel data set to test the hypothesis that the United States biases its human rights reports of countries based on the latters' strategic value. We use the difference between the U.S. State Department's and Amnesty International's reports as a measure o...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of the European Economic Association 2009-04, Vol.7 (2-3), p.446-457
Main Authors: Qian, Nancy, Yanagizawa, David
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Amnesty
Bias
Business and economics
Cold War
Cold wars
Comparative analysis
Countries
Developing countries
Economic strategies
Economics
Ekonomi
Favoritism
Human rights
Human rights violations
International alliances
Nationalekonomi
Panel data
Political history
SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP
SOCIAL SCIENCES
Strategic planning
Treaties
U.S.A
Using the Media for Economic Development
Voting
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Summary:This paper uses a country-level panel data set to test the hypothesis that the United States biases its human rights reports of countries based on the latters' strategic value. We use the difference between the U.S. State Department's and Amnesty International's reports as a measure of U.S. "bias." For plausibly exogenous variation in strategic value to the U.S., we compare this bias between U.S. Cold War (CW) allies to non-CW allies, before and after the CW ended. The results show that allying with the U.S. during the CW significantly improved reports on a country's human rights situation from the U.S. State Department relative to Amnesty International.
ISSN:1542-4766
1542-4774
1542-4774
DOI:10.1162/JEEA.2009.7.2-3.446