University of Georgia

International Human Rights Law and Women’s Access to Abortion

10.07.2025

Can international law protect abortion rights? Drawing from past work on domestic mechanisms that give international law teeth, we argue that a strong civil society composed of women’s groups and groups concerned with women’s rights leads the government to comply with its international human rights commitments to women, specifically their right to abortion. Unlike that past work, though, we draw attention to the ways in which civil society can leverage the depth of their government’s international legal commitment. Highly legalized commitments—those characterized by higher obligation, precision, and delegation—should help groups mobilize and give them access to international legal forums that can credibly threaten the government. Based on this argument, we expect countries that have ratified the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women’s Optional Protocol, a highly legalized treaty, to protect women’s rights to abortion when women’s civil society participation is high. Estimating several statistical models to test our expectations, the results lend credence to the argument. Highly legalized commitments allow civil society actors to hold governments accountable to those commitments leading to more liberalized abortion rights protections.

Gaudio, A., & Welch, R. M. (2025). International Human Rights Law and Women’s Access to Abortion. International Studies Quarterly, 69(2), sqaf028.

International Human Rights Law and Women’s Access to Abortion

06.09.2025

Can international law protect abortion rights? Drawing from past work on domestic mechanisms that give international law teeth, we argue that a strong civil society composed of women’s groups and groups concerned with women’s rights leads the government to comply with its international human rights commitments to women, specifically their right to abortion. Unlike that past work, though, we draw attention to the ways in which civil society can leverage the depth of their government’s international legal commitment. Highly legalized commitments—those characterized by higher obligation, precision, and delegation—should help groups mobilize and give them access to international legal forums that can credibly threaten the government. Based on this argument, we expect countries that have ratified the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women’s Optional Protocol, a highly legalized treaty, to protect women’s rights to abortion when women’s civil society participation is high. Estimating several statistical models to test our expectations, the results lend credence to the argument. Highly legalized commitments allow civil society actors to hold governments accountable to those commitments, leading to more liberalized abortion rights protections.

Gaudio, A., & Welch, R. M. (2025). International Human Rights Law and Women’s Access to Abortion. International Studies Quarterly, 69(2), sqaf028.

Evaluating the determinants of support for police militarization among officers

08.16.2023

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.

Welch, R. M., Mewhirter, J., Wright, J. E., & Oh, J. (2023). Evaluating the determinants of support for police militarization among officers. Politics & Policy, 51(4), 636-660.

Shaming and Treaty Ratification

05.23.2023

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.

Welch, R. M. (2023). Shaming and Treaty Ratification. Journal of Global Security Studies, 8(2), ogad007.

Anatomy of Torture

05.10.2023

Torture works (sometimes). That rather non-committal declaration might risk me being labelled pro-torture by some. At least, that’s the feeling I get from my past experiences. For example, early in my graduate school career, a heavy-hitter scholar visited our department. He graciously took a few graduate students to coffee at our campus café. There he told a story detailing the impossibility of publishing a paper that showed state torture levels correlated with fewer terror attacks in the future. Reviewers and/ or editors, it seemed, could not bring themselves to publish something that empirically showed torture may be in any way efficacious. This anecdote meshed well with my experience in a graduate seminar the following year with the rather uncomfortable title, the Ethics of Torture, where I found myself wondering aloud to the class about torture’s ability to compel people to divulge information they would rather keep secret. The looks on the students’ faces in the decidedly anti-torture class made me wonder if I had become a torture apologist just for considering it. If only Ron E. Hassner’s Anatomy of Torture had been available a decade sooner.

In the book, he sets out to answer a fundamental empirical question: Can torture work? Anecdotes abound, but, due to both ethical and national security considerations, until now, we have had no way of systematically answering that question. Or so we thought.

Hassner, R. E. (2022). Anatomy of torture. Cornell University Press.

Conceptualizing and Measuring Institutional Variation in National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs)

12.27.2020

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.

Welch, R. M., DeMeritt, J. H. R., & Conrad, C. R. (2021). Conceptualizing and Measuring Institutional Variation in National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs). Journal of Conflict Resolution, 65(5), 1010-1033. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022002720982349 (Original work published 2021)

From Litigation to Rights: The Case of the European Court of Human Rights

12.10.2020

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.

Jillienne Haglund, Ryan M Welch, From Litigation to Rights: The Case of the European Court of Human Rights, International Studies Quarterly, Volume 65, Issue 1, March 2021, Pages 210–222, https://doi.org/10.1093/isq/sqaa089

The psychological effects of state socialization: IGO membership loss and respect for human rights

01.02.2019

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.

Miller, G. L., Welch, R. M., & Vonasch, A. J. (2019). The psychological effects of state socialization: IGO membership loss and respect for human rights. International Interactions, 45(1), 113-143.

Domestic politics and the power to punish: The case of national human rights institutions

05.11.2017

Why do states give institutions the ability to legally punish them? While past research focuses on international pressure to delegate authority to third parties, I argue that domestic politics plays a key role. By viewing domestic politics through a principal–agent framework, I argue that the more accountable individual legislators remain to the public, the more likely it is that the legislature will delegate legal punishment authority. I focus on National Human Rights Institutions—domestic institutions tasked with protection and promotion of human rights—to build the argument. Electoral institutions that decrease monitoring of legislator agents, or institutional makeup that allows the executive to displace the public as the principal lead to National Human Rights Institutions without punishment power. Using Bayesian logistic analyses I test four hypotheses, all of which are in agreement with the argument.

Welch, R. M. (2019). Domestic politics and the power to punish: The case of national human rights institutions. Conflict Management and Peace Science, 36(4), 385-404.

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