Autocracies’ Counterintuitive Delegation Preferences to International Human Rights Organizations

Autocracies sustain their power primarily due to human rights violations. Therefore, autocracies would not be expected to delegate authority to international human rights organizations (IOs) that reveal human rights abuses and contribute to democratization processes. I observe, however, that some autocracies support even the highest level of authority delegation. Namely, they decide to delegate authority to human rights monitoring bureaucracies instead of shutting them down. To solve this puzzle, I ask: “Under what conditions do autocracies prefer to delegate authority to international human rights organizations?” I argue that if autocracies targeted monitoring missions to their rival states in the past, then autocracies should prefer to delegate authority to monitoring bureaucracies. Intrusive monitoring missions in rival states (usually democracies) imply re-allocation of scarce monitoring resources away from repressive authoritarian regimes and entail reputational and sovereignty costs. These should in turn motivate autocracies to delegate authority to IOs during reform processes. Reform processes of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and the UN Human Rights Council (UN HRC) revealed that delegation preferences of some autocracies and democracies converge. Democracies delegate to strong monitoring bureaucracies whereas selected autocracies support relatively strong monitoring bureaucracies. The convergence of delegation preferences reminds of convergence of domestic institutions. On the domestic level, democracies create independent institutions and autocracies began to build semi-independent institutions recently. Democracies are told to export their domestic system of checks and balances as they delegate to strong IOs. I analyze if this assumption applies to autocracies as well. I expect the independent variables targeting of monitoring missions and export of domestic institutions to explain autocracies’ delegation preferences to relatively strong monitoring bureaucracies. The third independent variable called regime consolidation shall explain scenarios where autocracies strived to dissolve monitoring bureaucracies in order to create intergovernmental or self-reporting mechanisms instead. The consolidation varies from dictatorships to hybrid regimes. The more a regime is consolidated, the less authority it is expected to delegate. To test these assumptions, I employ an ordered logit model that analyzes all autocratic members of the OSCE, UN HRC and African Union (AU). The model controls for economic strength and extent of repression. The qualitative analysis employs descriptive process tracing to explicate the underlying causal mechanism. It scrutinizes the relationship of autocracies and the monitoring bureaucracy Special Procedures of the UN HRC that operates in states that are and even are not parties to international human rights treaties. The conference paper will integrate preliminary empirical results. The paper reveals how autocracies organize in “own” regional organizations to make use of monitoring bureaucracies of IOs with mixed membership of democracies and autocracies. I elaborate that many monitoring bureaucracies of IOs were originally called into life by democracies to surveil autocracies. Due to influence exerted by autocracies, democracies also get scrutinized. Therefore, monitoring bureaucracies gained authority over more states thanks to autocracies. In summary, my analysis contributes to the broader question on the relationship of member states and IOs.