Autocratization and the Change in Countries' Multilateral Human Rights Foreign Policy

The incapability of international human rights regime to resolve crises in recent years, largely caused by the dramatic shift of member states’ foreign policy on human rights, constitutes a sharp contrast with its active role before. While the global trend of autocratization should be responsible for this shift. This paper aims to examine the relationship between autocratization and the change in a country’s foreign policy on human rights in the UN, a topic none of previous literature has specifically focused on. Drawing insights from previous studies on the effect of autocratization and democratization on international cooperation and country’s foreign policy, this study will also explore this relationship in different circumstances of autocratization, such as the pace of autocratization and the initial democracy level. This exploration contributes new research perspectives for future autocratization studies. Theoretically, the paper proposes a framework to elucidate how domestic regime changes can influence a country’s foreign policy preferences, based on two theoretical traditions: liberalism and constructivism. Empirically, the paper employs a combination of large-N regression analysis encompassing all member states of UN in the time period from 2013 to 2022 on its General Assembly voting patterns and financially contributions to OHCHR, and an illustrative case study of Philippines under Rodrigo Duterte’s administration to enhance the robustness of the results. The paper suggests that autocratization does indeed lead to a more conservative foreign policy stance on human rights for a country, manifesting as a decreased likelihood to condemn human rights violators and contribute to international human rights organizations, while the magnitude of autocratization and the initial democracy level have more nuanced effects on the relationship.