THE STRATEGIC DETERMINANTS OF US HUMAN RIGHTS REPORTING: EVIDENCE FROM THE COLD WAR

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Qian, Nancy; Yanagizawa, David
• 署名单位: Brown University; Stockholm University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC ASSOCIATION
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1542-4766
• DOI: 10.1162/JEEA.2009.7.2-3.446
• 发表日期: 2009
• 页码: 446-457
• 关键词: foreign-aid

摘要

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. (JEL: P16)