Papers by Ryan Welch
Politics and Policy, 2023
We evaluate the determinants of officer support for their agency participating in the 1033 Progra... more We evaluate the determinants of officer support for their agency participating in the 1033 Program: a program that facilitates the flow of military hardware to local law enforcement agencies. In doing so, we provide insight into why officers demand such equipment, which, in turn, may partially explain patterns of program participation and equipment usage. We utilize a series of random forest models to examine survey data collected from officers in a large police department, finding that being White and exhibiting animus toward minority communities are highly predictive of officer support across models. Our findings validate long-held public concerns regarding the distributional patterns and consequences of 1033 transfers: concerns that have led to a number of proposed policy changes at the state and federal levels meant to restrict program usage (e.g., EO-13688, HR-1694, MO HB-330). Policy makers should consider how out-group animus may drive distributional patterns and usage when considering policy reform.
Journal of Conflict Resolution, 2023
Does police militarization influence government use of repression? While comparative work examine... more Does police militarization influence government use of repression? While comparative work examines police militarization, violence, human rights abuses, and torture, it does not integrate militarized police within existing theories of repression. Connecting police militarization and repression, this article argues that police militarization increases the police's perception of threat as well as their coercive capacity, thereby increasing their willingness to repress. As such, we hypothesize police militarization increases repression. To evaluate the theory, we conduct an international analysis using existing datasets covering 102 countries from 1994 to 2010. Employing several statistical models, the data supports the conclusion that police militarization increases the likelihood of government repression, specifically through extrajudicial killing and torture. Aside from highlighting a consequence of police militarization policy, the findings point to police militarization as an important omitted variable in crossnational models of repression and human rights.
Journal of Global Security Studies, 2023
Does shaming affect human rights treaty ratification? Whereas most scholars study shaming's effec... more Does shaming affect human rights treaty ratification? Whereas most scholars study shaming's effects on eventual human rights respect, models of international shame predict states institutionalize rights before behavioral changes become reality. I take a step back and study shaming's effects on treaty ratification. Viewing shaming as a process that seeks to change behavior by isolating and embarrassing the target leads to a somewhat counter-intuitive prediction-although increasing pressure on states raises a state's willingness to ratify treaties, too much shame can cause a state to eschew treaty ratification. The argument follows from the social psychology literature on social exclusion that shows isolated individuals retreat from efforts to act normatively rather than increasing their efforts at inclusion. Using data on ratifications of the core UN human rights treaties and an original latent variable measuring shame, I find support for the argument that shaming increases treaty ratification to a point, but then begins to decrease ratification rates.
Journal of Peace Research, 2021
Tactical repertoires of mobilization and repression play an essential role in understanding dynam... more Tactical repertoires of mobilization and repression play an essential role in understanding dynamics of political violence, yet existing quantitative approaches focus primarily on intensities or counts of repressive actions. We focus instead on the diversity of repression, and demonstrate a novel method of measuring repertoires of state repression using event data. We show that more repressive states are likely to employ more diverse repertoires of repression, rather than specializing narrowly in particularly coercive tactics. We demonstrate that, globally, repertoires of state repression are growing less diverse over time. Finally, in the appendix, we model repertoires of repression across countries and over time, finding evidence of broader repertoires during protest and civil war, but narrower under democratic regimes and international human rights treaties.
Journal of Conflict Resolution, 2020
A wealth of literature argues that domestic institutions can sometimes restrain government repres... more A wealth of literature argues that domestic institutions can sometimes restrain government repression. In this article, we highlight an institution tasked specifically with protecting and promoting human rights: the National Human Rights Institution (NHRI). Although common international standards exist, NHRIs exhibit substantial variation in their organization, the rights that they protect, the activities they permit, and the manner in which they appoint their members. Scholarship to date has conceptualized and measured NHRIs dichotomously; an NHRI either exists or it does not. We present data that highlights NHRI heterogeneity collected via content analysis of NHRI annual reports, NHRI websites, national constitutions, government legislation, and other sources. Using these data, we show NHRIs that can publish their findings and NHRIs that can punish offenders are each associated with less state torture. These data will allow future researchers to better explore important questions regarding NHRI origins, design, processes, and effectiveness.
International Studies Quarterly, 2020
Do regional human rights courts influence respect for rights? Beyond providing remedy for individ... more Do regional human rights courts influence respect for rights? Beyond providing remedy for individual human rights abuse, case outcomes help frame potential social mobilization by setting standards and raising the rights consciousness of civil society
actors. The expectation of mobilization can increase the government’s costs of flouting the court’s rulings. We argue that an enabling domestic environment characterized by two features increases government expectation of mobilization following regional court litigation. First, a robust civil society creates strong horizontal ties between potential mobilizing groups. Second, a national human rights institution (NHRI) creates vertical ties that both transfer information down from the court to civil society; and transfer demands up from civil society to political elites in position to make stronger human rights policy. Using data for all Council of Europe countries from 1980 to 2012, we find European Court of Human Rights litigation associated with higher respect for rights in an enabling domestic environment characterized by strong civil society and the presence of a NHRI.
International Studies Quarterly
How can information campaigns of non-governmental human rights organizations (HROs) to "name and ... more How can information campaigns of non-governmental human rights organizations (HROs) to "name and shame" human rights violators improve human rights conditions? Is the effect direct-does HRO targeting induce violating states to change their behavior? Or is the effect indirect-does pressure by third-parties mediate the relationship between HRO actions and changes in human rights practices? The boomerang and spiral models suggest HRO activity provokes third-parties, such as other states and international organizations, to pressure violating states. This pressure, in turn, drives violating states to improve human rights conditions. On the other hand, recent empirical work finds third-party pressure can further degrade human rights conditions. We provide a comprehensive analysis of how these individual factors-HRO activities and pressure from third parties-work together in the larger chain of causal events influencing human rights conditions. Using a causal mediation model, we examine whether HRO campaigning improves human rights directly or if the effect is mediated by costs imposed by powerful actors through sanctions and military interventions. We find that, although HRO activities have an overall positive effect on human rights conditions, the negative effects of third-party pressure somewhat diminish the positive effects.
Conflict Management and Peace Science
This special issue is dedicated to the impact of Will Moore on peace science research and the com... more This special issue is dedicated to the impact of Will Moore on peace science research and the community of peace science scholars. The five pieces in this special issue exemplify Moore's dedication to rigorously developed concepts and theories that generate testable hypotheses and are evaluated using novel, fine-grained data. All papers are written by former students or scholars directly influenced by Moore. This introduction describes the impacts that Moore has had on the discipline, his students, and other scholars. Beyond this, it explains how each paper is situated in his legacy.
International Interactions, 2018
We present an interdisciplinary theory that considers how loss of membership in international org... more We present an interdisciplinary theory that considers how loss of membership in international organizations affects states' human rights practices. Drawing mostly from social psychology and international relations research, we argue that states are socialized into the international community through a process of social influence, whereby they are incentivized to comply with group norms by the promise (threat) of social rewards (punishments). Social influence occurs when states form social bonds through interactions with other states. When social bonds are severed, fewer opportunities for social influence occur due to lower information to both the remaining states and the state that lost those social bonds. Thus, we hypothesize that the loss of membership from IGOs reduces incentives to comply with group norms and adversely affects human rights practices at home. A combination of propensity score matching/regression and autoregressive distributed lag models on a global cross-section across the years 1978 to 2012 supports the theory. Specifically, losing at least one IGO membership leads to a long-run drop in human rights respect of about one quarter to one half standard deviation.
Research and Politics, Jun 14, 2017
Does increased militarization of law enforcement agencies (LEAs) lead to an increase in violent b... more Does increased militarization of law enforcement agencies (LEAs) lead to an increase in violent behavior among officers? We theorize that the receipt of military equipment increases multiple dimensions of LEA militarization (material, cultural, organizational, and operational) and that such increases lead to more violent behavior. The U.S. Department of Defense 1033 program makes excess military equipment, including weapons and vehicles, available to local LEAs. The variation in the amount of transferred equipment allows us to probe the relationship between military transfers and police violence. We estimate a series of regressions that test the effect of 1033 transfers on three dependent variables meant to capture police violence: the number of civilian casualties; the change in the number of civilian casualties; the number of dogs killed by police. We find a positive and statistically significant relationship between 1033 across all models.
Journal of Human Rights, 2017
Does adopting a National Human Rights Institution (NHRI) make states’ international commitments t... more Does adopting a National Human Rights Institution (NHRI) make states’ international commitments to not torture more constraining? Many researchers have explored international human rights treaties’ ability to constrain leaders from violating human rights (e.g Hathaway 2002; Hill 2010; Simmons 2009), some focusing exclusively on the United Nations Convention Against Torture (CAT) (e.g Hollyer and Rosendorff 2011;
Powell and Staton 2009; Vreeland 2008). Thus far, findings are not promising unless certain domestic conditions apply such as sufficient democratic space to air grievances (Simmons 2009) or independent judiciaries (Powell and Staton 2009). This paper continues to explore domestic conditions by focusing on another liberal institution – National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs). Torture is usually a secretive practice, and NHRIs act as information providers to potential mobilizers and domestic legal systems assuring international legal commitments are not empty promises. Using statistical analysis on 153 countries over the years 1981–2007, I find that when a country has ratified the CAT, the presence of an NHRI substantively decreases the chances the state will be an egregious offender.
Conflict Management and Peace Science
This paper explores why states delegate punishment powers to institutions by examining National H... more This paper explores why states delegate punishment powers to institutions by examining National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs). NHRIs exhibit variation in legal ability delegated to them by the state. I argue domestic politics, especially among legislatures and executives, influence the delegation behavior of the state. Most NHRIs receive legal authority from legislatures. As legislators' electoral accountability increases, legislatures increase their preference for human rights protecting policy -- an NHRI with punishment power. However, executives wish to protect access to the state's coercive apparatus, thus they prefer NHRIs without punishment powers. Situations which increase the executive's relative bargaining power should decrease the delegation of punishment power to NHRIs. I test five hypotheses that flow from the argument with data on NHRI punishment powers from 1991-2012. Estimating Bayesian logistic regression models, I find support for the contention that understanding domestic politics is vital to understanding when human rights institutions receive punishment power.
Because the abuse of human beings is abhorrent, we normatively expect governments to respect thos... more Because the abuse of human beings is abhorrent, we normatively expect governments to respect those rights. However, throughout human history, abuse of human begins has been the norm. Governments abuse rights because doing so helps leaders exercise, expand, or retain their power. Normatively, this is troubling. Yet, as a positive matter, it should not be surprising. We begin the essay explaining why this is so, and then turn to the question that broadly captures the research agendas of those studying the topic of human rights: how can people constrain Leviathan? Over the course of the 1980s and 1990s, several foundational studies helped establish a generally agreed on account that governments respond to dissent with coercion. Domestically, democracy and economic output both reduce rights abuses, while large populations increase repression. The impact of international characteristics is less well developed. In fact, what is known is that the international human right regime is complex and that norms, treaties, and international courts do not have a consistent effect on a countrys' respect for rights. Researchers are now studying complex relationships between domestic and international factors. For instance, the domestic judiciary of a country influences the extent to which human rights treaties constrain government abuse of rights. Over the coming decade, we expect scholars to produce considerable new knowledge about the impact of norms, treaties, and international courts on the states' (lack of) respect for human rights.
Journal of Entomological Science, 2012
Book Reviews by Ryan Welch
Human Rights Quarterly, 2023
Human Rights Review, 2017
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Papers by Ryan Welch
actors. The expectation of mobilization can increase the government’s costs of flouting the court’s rulings. We argue that an enabling domestic environment characterized by two features increases government expectation of mobilization following regional court litigation. First, a robust civil society creates strong horizontal ties between potential mobilizing groups. Second, a national human rights institution (NHRI) creates vertical ties that both transfer information down from the court to civil society; and transfer demands up from civil society to political elites in position to make stronger human rights policy. Using data for all Council of Europe countries from 1980 to 2012, we find European Court of Human Rights litigation associated with higher respect for rights in an enabling domestic environment characterized by strong civil society and the presence of a NHRI.
Powell and Staton 2009; Vreeland 2008). Thus far, findings are not promising unless certain domestic conditions apply such as sufficient democratic space to air grievances (Simmons 2009) or independent judiciaries (Powell and Staton 2009). This paper continues to explore domestic conditions by focusing on another liberal institution – National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs). Torture is usually a secretive practice, and NHRIs act as information providers to potential mobilizers and domestic legal systems assuring international legal commitments are not empty promises. Using statistical analysis on 153 countries over the years 1981–2007, I find that when a country has ratified the CAT, the presence of an NHRI substantively decreases the chances the state will be an egregious offender.
Book Reviews by Ryan Welch
actors. The expectation of mobilization can increase the government’s costs of flouting the court’s rulings. We argue that an enabling domestic environment characterized by two features increases government expectation of mobilization following regional court litigation. First, a robust civil society creates strong horizontal ties between potential mobilizing groups. Second, a national human rights institution (NHRI) creates vertical ties that both transfer information down from the court to civil society; and transfer demands up from civil society to political elites in position to make stronger human rights policy. Using data for all Council of Europe countries from 1980 to 2012, we find European Court of Human Rights litigation associated with higher respect for rights in an enabling domestic environment characterized by strong civil society and the presence of a NHRI.
Powell and Staton 2009; Vreeland 2008). Thus far, findings are not promising unless certain domestic conditions apply such as sufficient democratic space to air grievances (Simmons 2009) or independent judiciaries (Powell and Staton 2009). This paper continues to explore domestic conditions by focusing on another liberal institution – National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs). Torture is usually a secretive practice, and NHRIs act as information providers to potential mobilizers and domestic legal systems assuring international legal commitments are not empty promises. Using statistical analysis on 153 countries over the years 1981–2007, I find that when a country has ratified the CAT, the presence of an NHRI substantively decreases the chances the state will be an egregious offender.