Civil society actors are important in several accounts of why states comply with their international obligations, particularly in the human rights field. For judgments from the international human rights judiciary, there is, however, little systematic evidence of compliance being influenced by civil society. This paper outlines two different ways civil society may support compliance with judgments from human rights courts. A robust domestic civil society may increase the chances of successful domestic enforcement of compliance. Such a role for civil society is in line with enforcement theories and recent accounts of the political nature of compliance processes that follow international court judgments. However, civil society interest may also play a more facilitative role through putting compliance on the agenda and providing information on how compliance can best be achieved. There are thus theoretical reasons to expect better compliance by countries with a robust civil society and by countries where decision-making processes are more responsive to civil society influence. The theoretical expectations are assessed empirically using shared frailty Cox regression models on data on compliance with judgments from the European Court of Human Rights and recent country level civil society data from the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project.
