When it comes to human rights, it probably won't surprise you that Scandinavian countries perform well by statistical measures, along with Canada and Australia. But did you know that Mozambique, the Philippines, and Rwanda are also considered "overperformers," meaning that they score higher on human rights than expected?
A new book co-written by researchers at Binghamton University and the University of Rhode Island provides a framework for comparing human rights practices around the world and over time, and for developing theories about why some governments violate rights more than others. In addition to turning real-world human rights practices into comparable numbers, Science and the Study of Human Rights also evaluates barriers to improvement and ranks countries of the world on a variety of human rights measures.
"I say this to my classes: If you don't measure something, the impression is that you don't care about it," said SUNY Distinguished Professor of Political Science David Cingranelli, co-director of Binghamton's Human Rights Institute (HRI). "Once you attach numbers to things, you can do all kinds of research that is considered scientific because it uses quantitative methods that are transparent and replicable."
In addition to Cingranelli, authors include Binghamton University Political Science Professor Mikhail Filippov, and associate professors of political science Skip Mark and Ashlea Rundlett at Rhode Island. Mark is the director of the Center for Nonviolence and Peace Studies, and Rundlett directs the master's in International Relations program at Rhode Island.
The book is part of SUNY Press' Human Rights series, which is edited by Cingranelli and Binghamton University English Professor Alexandra Moore, HRI co-director. Cingranelli, Mark and Cornell University postdoctoral scholar P. DeAnne Roark are currently working on another book in the series, Forecasting and Preventing Mass Atrocities.
The field of human rights has historically hinged on case studies rather than statistical data. However, improving human rights research, policy analysis, and public understanding requires systematic evidence. In the book, the authors introduce a range of publicly available human rights indicators, with particular attention to the CIRIGHTS Data Project, directed by Cingranelli, Mark and Filippov. The largest dataset of its kind in the world, CIRIGHTS provides numerical scores that show how well every country protects - or doesn't protect - a wide range of internationally recognized human rights.
On a scale of zero to 100, the average human rights score for governments was just 70, according to their most recent analysis. The United States performed even lower, at 62.5.
In terms of human rights, democracies perform better than non-democracies and rich countries typically outperform poorer ones. Some nations, however, buck the expected trends; the book weighs countries' structural and historical barriers to human rights and names these over- and under-performers. Some countries couldn't be included in the achievement assessment because they lacked information on variables used in the models, including the United States, North Korea, Germany, South Sudan, Venezuela, and eight others.
Are Rwanda and the Philippines truly comparable to Denmark and Sweden? Being named an overachiever doesn't mean that a country is flawless when it comes to protecting civil rights, only that it performs better than expected, according to the rankings.
"In an alternative world, where these countries were wealthier, had less conflict and were surrounded by neighbors who protect human rights, their own human rights would be a lot better, but they're actually doing far better than anyone could expect them to do," Cingranelli explained.
On the other side are underachievers, nations that perform below expectations; these include China, Egypt, Greece, Guyana, Israel, Macedonia, Paraguay, Romania, Russia, the Seychelles, Sudan, Tuvalu, and Iran, the last of which scored zero on human rights measures, Cingranelli pointed out.
The book is designed for scholars, graduate students, governments, and intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations, but will also be of interest to journalists, policymakers, and activists.
"We all have impressions about which countries respect human rights and which do not. The advantage of systematic data is that it forces us to check those impressions against evidence," Rundlett said. "What I hope readers come away with is a sense that human rights are not just abstract principles. We can study how governments behave and compare them systematically."
A last, comprehensive look
Undergraduate and graduate students at Binghamton, Rhode Island, and the University of Connecticut have worked on the CIRIGHTS project, and continue to do so; Mark, Cingranelli, and Filippov are all teaching undergraduate courses this year in which students will help assess countries' human rights practices. Faculty members at University College of London are also participating.
"All the students who take my classes, whether they collect data or are just in the course, learn about the scientific approach and score practices for at least a few countries, to see what the process is like," Cingarelli said. "I hope it teaches them how science can be used to study things that aren't obviously quantifiable, like corruption. We can attach numbers to abstract concepts and then study patterns."
The book, however, may represent a final comprehensive look at available data. The U.S. State Department no longer offers the comprehensive, objective human rights report that forms the core of CIRIGHTS' findings. Continuing the scoring project may be possible using alternative data sources, but that would create comparability problems with past data.
Political scientists often focus on physical integrity rights, which deal with subjects such as torture, disappearances, imprisonment, and judicial process. Reports issued by the State Department still contain information about those subjects, but it's currently unknown how politics may have distorted its presentation. Further research may explore this question.
However, the federal reports still contain usable data on issues such as labor rights. Cingranelli will have his students analyze these reports and issue scores. Researchers will also review reports from previous years to fill in gaps and analyze them in new ways.
"We've started looking at rights that no one else is measuring. We have projects that measure the rights of prisoners and refugees, and we've been doing some work on human trafficking," Mark added. "There's still a lot of information in four decades' worth of reports for rights that we could measure."
Cingranelli admits that in 40 years of political science research, he didn't foresee the global trend toward the de-emphasis of human rights in U.S. political discourse. The United States led the world in drafting and adopting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. As a result, the UDHR strongly resembles the U.S. Bill of Rights.
"It's really important to have these measures now because the whole idea of human rights is under attack," he reflected. "For a while at least, this book will be a last look at what's going on."
