International Complaints Mechanism, Civil Society Organizations, and State Respect for Human Rights

How do international human rights complaints mechanisms influence respect for human rights? Complaints mechanisms allow individual citizens to make human rights violations known to international organizations. In response, international organizations send public letters naming the alleged violation and contextualizing it in international law. Some researchers find that these letters positively affect governments' human rights behavior, while others identify inconsistent effects. We argue that when governments make programmatic appeals to win political support, they benefit from guaranteeing the human rights universally since every citizen is in the selectorate. By contrast, clientelistic governments are not rewarded for protecting everyone's human rights because their power builds on preferential treatment of specific groups. Therefore, governments making programmatic rather than clientelistic appeals are more likely to implement human rights reforms in response to publicized complaints. We test our theory at both the country level and the individual level using multiple identification strategies, including instrumental variables. Our cross-country evidence suggests that international human rights organizations' responses to individual complaints positively correlate with respect for physical integrity rights, especially when governments pursue a programmatic rather than clientelistic agenda. Our findings highlight that while personalized attention to victims of human rights abuses is not without risks, it may contribute to improving human rights respect under certain conditions.