The Human Rights Peace: How the Respect for
Human Rights at Home Leads to Peace Abroad
David Sobek Louisiana State University
M. Rodwan Abouharb Louisiana State University
Christopher G. Ingram Louisiana State University
Respect for human rights represents self-imposed restraints on the behavior of a government. These limits signify
both a domestic norm and a state that has decided to settle political disputes through nonviolent methods. When
these governments interact in the international system, we suspect that their basic norms of behavior will remain
and generate relatively peaceful interactions. We test this contention on pairs of all states from 1980 to 2001 and
find that joint respect for human rights decreases the probability of conflict. This relationship is maintained even
when one controls for the effect of democracy and its influence on the human rights record of states.
he international relations literature has shown
that democracies are less likely to become
embroiled in military conflicts. While important, this finding generates broad policy recommendations that may be difficult to implement:
transforming authoritarian regimes into democracies.
Furthermore, how is this to be done peacefully? Kant
recognized the risk of crusading democracies attempting to create world peace through violence as Doyle
notes, “liberal republics are prepared to protect and
promote—sometime forcibly—democracy, private
property, and the rights of individuals overseas in
non-republics” (1997, 308).
Democracies, however, are more than a set of
institutions. Often they have overlapping norms and
policies. Perhaps the most important of these deals
with human rights: democracies are less likely to
repress their citizens in disputes over government
policy. The respect for human rights goes deeper than
simply being a public policy. Human rights policies set
standards of conduct officially endorsed by the state.
A government willing to limit its powers and seek
nonviolent alternatives in dealing with conflict at
home is likely to follow similar policies abroad. It
seems incongruent to expect a state that respects
human rights domestically to suddenly become excep-
T
tionally violent in resolving issues of international
disagreement.1
Respect for human rights can occur in states with
distinctly different institutions. While democracies
generally have better human rights records across all
issue areas, there exist a significant number of nondemocracies that have policies which respect some
subsample of human rights. For example, the United
Arab Emirates, which scored a “0” on the POLITY
democracy score for most of the 1980s and 1990s, had
high levels of respect for personal integrity rights
across the whole period (Cingranelli and Richards
2004). This leads to an intriguing question. Do nondemocracies that respect human rights have more
peaceful relations with one another than nondemocracies with poor records? Or to broaden the question,
does respecting human rights have the same conflictsuppressing effects as democratic institutions?
Our analyses provide strong support for the argument that governments which respect human rights
at home are less likely to become involved in violent
international disputes with one another. These findings are independent of the conflict dampening
impact of democratic institutions and generate policy
recommendations that are clear and do not require
costly attempts at regime change: a premium should
1
Although this relationship is not absolute as democratic colonial powers have unfortunately demonstrated.
The Journal of Politics, Vol. 68, No. 3, August 2006, pp. 519–529
© 2006 Southern Political Science Association
ISSN 0022-3816


 , .  ,   . 
be placed on pressuring states to improve levels
of respect for human rights within their countries.2
Groups such as Amnesty International are not only
humanitarian organizations, but also sources of international peace.
Democratic Peace
There is a considerable literature that has examined
the relationship between democratic institutions and
interstate conflict. Studies looking at the individual
behavior of states have generally found no relationship between democratic institutions and international conflict (Bueno De Mesquita and Lalman 1992;
Chan 1984; Weede 1984), but a few have discovered
that democracies are more peaceful (Benoit 1996; Ray
1995; Rummel 1983).3 These monadic studies commonly argue that structural constraints pacify democracies: the public is risk averse in its attitude towards
war because they will fight on behalf of the government. Since the government faces reelection and
higher domestic costs, it will be cautious about entering war (Maoz and Russett 1993), although Rosato
(2003) feels these arguments are flawed.
Studies examining the behavior of pairs of states
have generated more consistent findings. The evidence
indicates that democracies are less likely to fight each
other (Bremer 1992; Bueno De Mesquita et al. 1999;
Cederman and Rao 2001; Chan 1984; Maoz and
Abdolali 1989; Oneal and Russett 1997; Ray 1995; Ray
and Oneal 1997; Reed and Clark 2002; Russett 1993;
Russett and Oneal 2001; Russett, Oneal, and Davis
1998; Sobek 2003). These peaceful interactions may
also extend into jointly autocratic pairs of states
(Peceny, Beer, and Sanchez-Terry 2002). Some have
argued that it is the similarity of preferences between
democracies rather than democratic institutions
which underlies the phenomenon (Gartzke 1998,
2000). Others have emphasized the pacific effect of
common economic structures (Jungblut and Stoll
2002; Mousseau 2003).
Theories that attempt to explain the empirical
regularity abound. Some suggest that democratic
institutions afford clarity in the sending of information to other leaders, lowering the probability of war
by reducing uncertainty (Schultz 1999). Recent work
2
We would like to thank a careful reviewer for noting that the
Carter Administration pressured states into improving their
human rights performance.
3
Pickering (2002) discovered that democracies are less likely to be
targeted in foreign interventions.
finds that the constraints facing democratic leaders
depend on the size of the winning coalition (Bueno
De Mesquita et al. 1999; Bueno De Mesquita et al.
2003). A similar line of argument has noted the
importance of institutional variation within democracies. States with systems of proportional representation are involved in less conflict in comparison to
other types of democratic systems (Leblang and Chan
2003; Palmer, London, and Regan 2004).
Normative Explanations
Normative explanations of the democratic peace
emphasize that democratic societies internalize nonviolent and noncoercive approaches to the resolution
of the great majority of domestic political conflicts
(Dixon 1994). This occurs through a process of
bounded competition whereby actors involved in the
political process agree to be constrained by a set of
rules about the resolution of political conflicts (Dixon
1994; Maoz and Russett 1993; Schmitter and Karl
1991). These nonviolent resolutions rest upon the
concept of “contingent consent” whereby societal
choices are accepted, providing the framework used
was fair to those involved (Schmitter and Karl 1991).
This contingent consent permits the peaceful resolution of political conflict.
Acceptance of nonviolent conflict resolution
based upon contingent consent becomes a norm in
society through repeated interactions between political actors (Axelrod 1984; Dixon 1994). Where these
norms are weak, or the attachment of the state to nonviolent conflict resolution is unclear, this information
is signaled at an international level making these states
more likely to be targeted in international conflict
(Huth and Russett 1993; Maoz 1989; Maoz and
Russett 1992).
The normative approach argues that the values of
nonviolent and noncoercive conflict resolution serve
as the basis for negotiations when disagreements
occur at the international level (Dixon 1994). This
norm of nonviolent conflict resolution additionally
constrains democratic leaders because their public
abhors the use of violence (Morgan and Campbell
1991). When democracies interact in the international
system these norms are signaled to one another, generating interactions based upon the domestic norms
of bargaining and peaceful resolution of disputes.
The concept of bounded competition informs
each party that their opponents are, in general, normatively proscribed from using coercive means of
conflict resolution. This provides a pacific framework
   :            
within which to resolve disputes. In situations of international dispute, where both parties are normatively
inhibited from the use of force, the chances for peaceful resolution are much higher.
Humans Rights as Democratic
Policies
Aside from a bargaining culture and a norm of peaceful resolution of disputes, democracies also maintain
greater respect for the rights of their citizens (Henderson 1991; Park 1987; Poe and Tate 1994; Poe, Tate,
and Keith 1999), although recent work has found that
democratic institutions only have a significant influence on the level of respect for human rights at high
levels of the POLITY score (Davenport and Armstrong 2004). There is, however, evidence that the
most repressive states tend not to be the most authoritarian, but rather mixed regimes. The “murder in the
middle” thesis suggests that in the most authoritarian
regimes the public is cowed into acquiescence, lessening the need for repression (Fein 1995). In comparison, mixed regimes, where some protest is allowed,
tend to have fragile political institutions. Leaders of
mixed regimes see opposition as a direct threat to their
hold on power. Unlike democratic regimes where
mechanisms exist to channel dissent, these are much
more limited in mixed regimes, increasing the probability that leaders respond to threats with repression
(Fein 1995; Regan and Henderson 2002).4
Two other types of regimes have been posited to
have poor levels of respect for human rights. In particular, some studies have found evidence that Marxist
or Marxist-Leninist regimes have lower levels of
respect for human rights than their non-Marxist
authoritarian counterparts (Kirkpatrick 1979;
Mitchell and McCormack 1988; Poe and Tate 1994;
Poe, Tate, and Keith 1999). In addition, there has been
a moderate amount of support for arguments that
military regimes tend to repress their citizens more
than their civilian counterparts (McKinlay and Cohan
1975; Poe, Tate, and Keith 1999).
Economic factors also influence how a government treats its citizens. Poor governments are more
likely to violate the human rights of their citizens
(Henderson 1991; McKinlay and Cohan 1975, 1976;
Mitchell and McCormack 1988; Park 1987; Poe and
4
Arguments have been made that governments with a British
colonial past tend to be less repressive because the institutions left
behind by the British are perceived to have promoted democratic
political processes (Mitchell and McCormack 1988; Poe, Tate, and
Keith 1999).

Tate 1994; Poe, Tate, and Keith 1999). The underlying
rationale for these arguments is that economic scarcity
creates social and political tensions, which governments have to deal with by using repression. Some
have additionally argued that rapid economic growth
is likely to increase the level of repression (Henderson
1991; Olson 1963; Poe, Tate, and Keith 1999).
States with large populations have been expected
to violate the rights of their citizens (Henderson
1993). While large numbers of people increase the
number of times repression can occur, there is also an
argument that large populations lead to a scarcity of
resources, generating tensions between those that have
them and those that do not. These tensions increase
the probability that governments will use repression
to manage such conflicts. A related argument suggests
that rapid population growth may intensify resource
stress within states, increasing the probability that
governments deal with these increased demands
through the use of repression (Henderson 1993),
although empirical evidence for these arguments is
mixed (Poe and Tate 1994; Poe, Tate, and Keith 1999).
Finally, it has been argued that involvement in
interstate and intrastate war lowers levels of government respect for human rights. Governments arguably
need to clamp down on domestic threats to the regime
that may otherwise try to take advantage of the situation for their own gain (Poe and Tate 1994; Poe, Tate,
and Keith 1999; Rasler 1986; Stohl 1975, 1976).
Repression is also an option governments use when
faced with internal threats (Nieburg 1969; Skocpol
1979; Tilly 1978), especially civil wars (Poe and Tate
1994; Poe, Tate, and Keith 1999).
The Human Rights Peace
We build upon a number of insights taken from the
previous literature. First, while domestic institutions
have an impact on the human rights record of a state,
the relationship may not be absolute. For instance,
poor democracies with rapidly growing economies
and populations may limit human rights, while
wealthy autocracies with small and stable populations
may respect the rights of their citizens. This implies
that there exists a set of democracies that have relatively poor human rights records and autocratic states
with relatively good ones. The existence of these “offdiagonal” cases represents the critical test of our
human rights peace theory.5 In general, the relations
5
“Off-diagonal” cases are those that represent uncommon combinations, such as democracies that do not respect human rights and
autocracies that do.

 , .  ,   . 
Research Design
between democracies with poor records should be
more conflict prone than expected from their level of
democracy, and autocracies with good records should
have more peaceful relations than their lack of democratic institutions predicts.
The literature on the normative explanation of
the democratic peace provides a link between a government’s human rights record and its international
behavior. According to the normative explanation,
democratic states export their norms to the international arena when they interact with states that have
similar norms (arguably other democracies). The
implication of this theory, however, is that nondemocratic states with similar norms should also experience
the same effect.
Often disputes between democratic nations with
poor human rights records demonstrate a lack of contingent consent, where the actors feel that the other
side is not limited to nonviolent resolution of dispute.
For instance, Turkey and Cyprus in recent years represents a pair that is coded as democratic (low democracy of 8), but lack a belief that the other side is
normatively bound to nonviolent resolution of disputes. In this case, both countries also exhibit relatively low levels of respect for physical integrity rights,
which include the right to be free from torture, political imprisonment, extrajudicial killing, and disappearance. The result is a continuing set of reciprocated
conflicts. Colombia and Venezuela in the 1990s also
demonstrate the pattern of two states with democratic
institutions and poor respect for physical integrity
rights that experience a series of border disputes.
One can contrast these examples with the experiences of Malawi and Zambia, which are two autocracies that have generally respected the physical integrity
rights of their populations. While Malawi and Zambia
have had significant foreign policy differences over
time, are autocratic, share a long border, and are
underdeveloped, they have had only one militarized
interstate dispute in 35 years. This dispute was over a
policy disagreements related to Malawi’s support for
South Africa during apartheid. In September 1986,
for example, Zambia threatened to use force against
Malawi, but never did. One could argue that this relative peace is based on contingent consent and the
belief that the other side will maintain a nonviolent
stance.
These examples provide some initial support for
our argument and highlight our general expectation,
which is formalized below.
The human rights practices of governments are taken
from the CIRI human rights data set (Cingranelli and
Richards 2004), which used the annual U.S. State
Department Country Reports on Human Rights Practices and Amnesty International Annual Reports to
develop the data set. The CIRI data has information
on the state, but the research design examines the pairs
of states in a particular year. As with regime type, this
means that a measure, which reflects human rights
respect among a pair of states needs to be constructed. The analyses follow the democratic peace literature and use a weak-link methodology, where the
pair can only be as democratic as its least democratic
member. So the human rights record of a pair in a
given year is the lower of the two state values. For
example, if state “A” has a 1 for workers’ rights and
state “B” has a 2, the paired value would be 1. The
variables are grouped under three concepts: physical
integrity rights, women’s rights, and empowerment
rights.
Physical integrity rights describe the rights of
individuals to freedom from torture, political imprisonment, extrajudicial killing, and disappearance. Each
variable ranges from large-scale violations of rights
Hypothesis: Pairs of states that jointly respect human
rights have a decreased probability of experiencing the
onset of new militarized disputes.
6
More detailed descriptions of each variable can be found on
a web appendix available on the JOP website (http://journalof
politics.org/articles.html).
We examine all pairs of states from 1981 to 2001. To
correct for autocorrelation all of the models include a
measure of peace-years along with three cubic splines.
The estimated coefficients of the splines and peaceyears are excluded from the tables for the purpose of
presentation, yet all models presented were calculated
with the splines and peace-years.6
Dependent Variable
The dependent variable is the onset of a new Militarized Interstate Dispute between a pair of states in a
particular year. In those years in which a new dispute
occurs, the variable is coded as “1,” and in all other
years it is “0.” The years in which a pair of states contains an ongoing dispute are dropped from the analysis. This is done so the models do not conflate the
effects of dispute origination with the effects of
dispute continuation. Unless otherwise noted, the data
set and variables used in this analysis were created
using EUGene version 3.04.
Human Rights
   :            
(50 or more instances) to some violations (1–49 violations), to complete respect for them in a particular
year. A physical integrity index is also used. This is an
additive scale of the rights to freedom from physical
integrity violations and ranges from “0” (no respect)
to “8” complete respect.
The second concept describes the rights of women
to become involved in politics and the economic and
social life of their countries. Women’s political rights
include the right to be able to vote, run for office,
and hold governmental positions. Women’s economic
rights include amongst others the right to equal pay,
choice of employment, and the right to obtain
employment without male consent. Women’s social
rights include amongst others the right to equal
inheritance, the right to enter into marriage based on
equality with men, the right to travel abroad, and the
right to obtain a passport. Each variable is coded along
a 0–3 category scale. A value of “0” denotes no rights
for women under law. A value of “1” occurs when
there are some rights for women under law, but the
government does not enforce these laws effectively. A
value of “2” is when there are some rights for women
under law and the government does enforce these laws
effectively but tolerates a low level of discrimination.
A value of “3” implies that all or nearly all of women’s
rights are guaranteed by law and in practice.
The third concept describes rights to empowerment. This right of citizens to assemble and associate
describes the freedom of people to meet and partner
with others in political parties, trade unions, cultural
organizations, or other special interest groups. Worker
rights describe the rights of citizens amongst others to
freedom of association at the workplace, the right to
collective bargaining and freedom from forced labor.
These two variables are coded on a 0–2 scale where
values of “0” indicate that these rights are not protected, a value of “1” where they are partially protected, to a value of “2” where they are protected
by the government. The freedom of speech describes
the extent to which the freedoms of speech and press
are affected by government censorship. Freedom of
movement describes the ability of citizens to move
throughout and also to leave and return to their
country without governmental restriction of certain
groups based upon political or religious grounds.
Freedom of religion describes the extent to which citizens practice their religious beliefs without governmental interference. Freedom of speech, movement,
and religion are each coded with a value of “0” if government places restrictions and “1” otherwise. Finally,
an overall index measure of respect for empowerment
rights is created. It is a 10-point additive index of the
following rights: freedom of speech, assembly and

association, worker rights, freedom of religion, and
political participation. This index ranges from a low
value of “0” indicating no respect for empowerment
rights to “10” implying complete respect.
Democratic Peace and its Critique
This project uses the POLITY 4e score as a measure of
the regime type. POLITY determines the regime type
for a state by looking at its political institutions. Six
types of authority characteristics are examined (regulation of executive recruitment, competitiveness of
executive recruitment, openness of executive recruitment, executive constraints, regulation of participation, and competitiveness of participation) and coded
as being either more or less democratic (or autocratic). For these analyses subtracting the democracy
score from the autocracy score yields a new variable
that can range from −10 (completely autocratic) to
+10 (completely democratic).
The analyses, however, need a measure of the level
of democracy within pair of states (dyad). This
research follows the lead of the previous democratic
peace literature (see Russett and Oneal (2001) for a
more in-depth discussion of this) by using the lower
of the democracy scores. Low democracy measures the
level of democracy found in a pair of states and is the
level of democracy of the most autocratic state.
The models also include high democracy (the higher of
the two countries’ democracy scores), which acts as a
measure of joint autocracy.7
When states enter into a conflict with one another,
they need to have some sort of disagreement. If their
preferences for the international system were identical, then nothing exists over which to dispute (Gartzke
1998). In order to account for this the models include
the variable preference similarity. This is the s-score
derived from the alliance portfolios of the states in the
dyad (Signornino and Ritter 1999). It ranges from −1
(complete dissimilarity) to +1 (complete similarity).
Realist Variables
Power certainly matters in international politics. Most
of the previous research in international relations has
shown that pairs of states which are highly unequal in
power are more peaceful (e.g., Russett and Oneal
2001). These findings corroborate both the views of
power transition theorists Blainey (1988) and Organ-
7
One can make the argument that as the value of high democracy
decreases the states in the dyad are less democratic. This is the
same logic used when talking about low democracy as a measure
of joint democracy only the relationship is reversed.

 , .  ,   . 
ski and Kugler (1981). To control for these effects the
model uses the Correlates of War measure of power
(Composite Index of National Capabilities) to create
a measure of the distribution of power in a dyad.
Capability ratio is simply the high CINC score minus
the low CINC score divided by the sum of the CINC
scores. This produces a variable that ranges from 0
(complete parity) to 1 (complete preponderance).
Often states enter into formal agreements that set
boundaries on their relationship. These relationships
have been hypothesized as either harbingers of peace
(Bremer 1992; Weede 1975) or conflict (Bueno de
Mesquita 1981; Bueno de Mesquita and Lalman 1992).
Given these hypotheses and past research, it is important to control for these effects. The Correlates of War
codes three main types of formal alliances: entente,
nonaggression, and mutual defense (Gibler and
Sarkees 2004). The variable allies is dichotomous and
coded as “1” in which the states in a dyad have one of
the three previously mentioned formal alliances and
“0” otherwise.
Recent research into the causes of international
conflict has looked increasingly at the role of civilization membership. Huntington (1991) argued that
many of the post-Cold War conflicts would occur in
pairs of states from different civilizations. Quantitative research into this question has found limited
support (Fox 2001; Henderson and Tucker 2001;
Russett, Oneal, and Cox 2000), but given that this
research design has a relatively large number of postCold War years, it seems important to control for this
effect. Dissimilar civilizations is a dichotomous variable coded as “1” when the states in a dyad are from
different civilizations, and “0” otherwise. The coding
of civilization membership comes from Henderson
and Tucker (2001).8
Opportunity
Previous research has shown that states require not
only the willingness to engage in disputes, but also the
opportunity (Most and Starr 1989; Starr and Thomas
2005). The analyses of this project use two measures
to account for opportunity. Contiguity is a dichotomous variable coded as “1” in those years in which the
states in a dyad share a land border and “0” otherwise.
We also control for political relevance. Pairs of states
are coded as politically relevant if they are contiguous,
or if at least one of the pair is a major power.
8
The data is available online at http://www.vanderbilt.edu/
~rtucker/data/clash/.
Results
The first important question that must be answered
about human rights policies deals with their distribution across regimes. In order for the statistical analyses to provide any useful conclusions, there needs to
exist pairs of states that are jointly nondemocratic but
also respect human rights. The online web appendix
(http://www.journalofpolitics.org) presents the distribution of human rights policies among jointly autocratic and democratic pairs of states, and as one would
expect, the democratic dyads tend to respect human
rights, yet autocratic dyads do not universally abuse
them. In addition, the web appendix contains a table
of correlations between joint democracy and joint
respect for human rights, which shows relative low
levels of positive correlation (ranging from .07 to .67).
Taken together, these results provide consistent
support to the argument that these concepts contain
enough variation to generate useful findings.
Table 1 presents the results of 14 separate regressions, where each one contains a different measure of
human rights. While the table only presents the coefficient for the human rights variables, each of the 14
regressions contained low democracy, high democracy, capability ratio, allies, dissimilar civilization,
preference similarity, political relevance, contiguity,
peace years, and the three cubic splines. Given the
natural correlations between each measure of human
rights, it is important to first test them individually,
i.e. without the other measures of human rights.
In general, all of the human rights variables have
the expected effects and are statistically significant.
The implications seem clear. Any pair of states that
jointly respects any of the various types of human
rights has a decreased probability of developing a militarized interstate dispute even when one controls for
the common correlates of conflict. In addition, the
negative and significant coefficients for the index variables implies that there is a cumulative effect in that,
as the states in a dyad increasingly respect human
rights, conflict becomes progressively less likely.
Table 2 contains the models that include all
human rights variables in a single regression. In terms
of the human rights policies, all of the coefficients are
in the expected direction but not all reach statistical
significance. In particular, only human rights policies
that deal with political prisoners, freedom of movement, religious freedom, extrajudicial killings,
freedom of assembly and association, and freedom of
speech have coefficients that are statistically significant. This differs from the models in Table 1, where all
   :            

T 1 The Effect of Individual Human Rights Policies on the Onset of International Conflict
(1980–2001)
Variable
Political Prisoners
Freedom of Movement
Religious Freedom
Worker’s Rights
Women’s Economic Rights
Women’s Political Rights
Women’s Social Rights
Disappearances
Extrajudicial Killings
Torture
Freedom of Assembly and Association
Freedom of Speech
Physical Integrity Index
Empowerment Rights Index
Coefficient
Z-Score
P-Value
Number of Observations
Log-Likelihood
−.89
−1.21
−.76
−.58
−.63
−.32
−.52
−.047
−.881
−.874
−.80
−.78
−.33
−.26
−7.87
−8.58
−6.39
−5.60
−5.40
−3.41
−5.06
−8.37
−10.02
−6.47
−5.95
−5.82
−10.71
−7.69
.00
.00
.00
.00
.00
.00
.00
.00
.00
.00
.00
.00
.00
.00
183,451
183,451
183,451
183,448
183,448
183,448
183,451
181,933
181,968
182,505
183,451
183,451
183,293
183,382
−2,649.71
−2,658.00
−2,688.70
−2,688.98
−2,687.82
−2,704.70
−2,691.17
−2,643.39
−2,616.83
−2,670.20
−2,672.40
−2,680.08
−2,605.76
−2,635.06
Note: Each regression had the following control variables: low democracy, high democracy, capability ratio, dissimilar civilization, political similarity (S-score), contiguity, joint alliance, peace years, three peace year splines, and a constant.
of the policies significantly decrease the probability of
militarized dispute onset when looked at in isolation.
Perhaps the most obvious reason for the changes
in the results between Tables 1 and 2 deals with the
amount of correlation between the individual policies.
This makes it difficult for the regression technique to
tease out the individual effects of these differing government human rights practices on the probability of
conflict. To control for the possibility that correlations
account for this, the second model of Table 2 only
examines the personal integrity and empowerment
rights indices. The coefficient on both of the indices is
negative and significant, which provide clear evidence
that states which jointly respect human rights (be it
empowerment or physical integrity rights) are less
likely to develop conflicts.
Aside from the human rights policies, the models
in Table 2 show significant effects for some of the
control variables. As seen in previous research, both
contiguity and political relevance increase the probability of conflict. In addition, power preponderance
and, somewhat surprisingly, dissimilar civilization
membership reduces the probability of MID onset.
Both of the regime type variables are statistically significant, although they produce some intriguing
results. The positive coefficient on high democracy
indicates the existence of an authoritarian peace,
where increasing the autocracy of a dyad (lower high
democracy) decreases the probability of conflict.
Strangely, however, the coefficient on low democracy
is positive and significant, which indicates the exis-
tence of democratic conflicts. What then can explain
this result?
First, the data set used in these analyses contains
more pairs of states after the Cold War than most of
the previous research. If Farber and Gowa’s contention (1995) that the democratic peace is an artifact
of the Cold War is correct, then the coefficient on joint
democracy should change. The index model of Table
2 was replicated using various samples of years to
further investigate this possibility. When looking at
the years between 1981 and 1989, the coefficient on
joint democracy was statistically insignificant. In an
analysis that looks at the years after 1989 the coefficient was positive and significant, which provides
some preliminary support for the argument of Farber
and Gowa (1995). While this is intriguing, it is not the
focal point of this analysis; the more important point
in changing the sample is that they did not alter the
effects of joint respect for human rights.9
Second, the results may be related to the specification of the model. The results reported in Table 1
only show the coefficient on the joint respect for
human rights variable, but the models also contained
low democracy. Of all of the models in Table 1, a total
of eight had a negative and significant coefficient on
joint democracy, and only one had a positive and
9
We additionally ran a model that only contained low democracy,
peace years, and the splines. We used the entire time-span and
found that the coefficient on low democracy was negative and
significant.

 , .  ,   . 
T 2 The Effect of Human Rights Policies on
the Onset of International Conflict
(1980–2001)
Variable
Low Democracy
High Democracy
Capability Ratio
Allies
Dissimilar Civilizations
Preference Similarity
Political Relevance
Contiguity
Political Prisoners
Freedom of Movement
Religious Freedom
Worker’s Rights
Women’s Economic
Rights
Women’s Political Rights
Women’s Social Rights
Disappearances
Extrajudicial Killings
Torture
Freedom of Assembly
and Association
Freedom of Speech
Physical Integrity Index
Empowerment Rights
Index
Constant
Number of Observations
Log Likelihood
Wald Chi-Sqaured
P-Value of Chi-Sqaured
Pseudo R-Squared
Complete
Model
Index
Model
.051
(3.24)***
.047
(3.72)***
-.699
(-3.18)***
.332
(1.95)*
-.445
(-2.61)***
−.636
(−1.28)
2.284
(11.61)***
.987
(4.39)***
-.262
(-2.61)***
-.515
(-4.22)***
-.280
(-2.73)***
−.109
(−1.14)
−.080
(−.61)
−.101
(−1.18)
−.82
(−.70)
−.004
(−.06)
-.606
(-6.86)***
−.72
(−.60)
-.279
(-2.51)**
-.235
(-1.98)**
—
—
—
—
-2.096
(-3.91)***
.042
(2.88)***
.043
(3.59)***
-.715
(-3.43)***
.263
(1.55)
-.441
(-2.64)***
−.587
(−1.24)***
2.253
(11.68)***
1.065
(4.91)***
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
-.27
(-9.62)***
-.19
(-5.60)***
-2.203
(-4.30)***
180,721
−2,516.37
2,481.83
0
.35
183,227
−2,567.67
2,408.26
.00
.35
Note: All regressions also contain peace years and three cubic
splines.
Z-scores are in the parentheses. *p-values < .1; **p-value < .05;
***p-value < .01 (all are two-tailed tests).
significant coefficient (empowerment rights index).
The positive coefficient on low democracy seems to be
related to the joint respect for empowerment rights,
which was highly correlated with low democracy. As
such, the bulk of the results still support the democratic peace, and it is only when one includes joint
respect for empowerment rights that the results
change.
Before looking at the substantive impact of
human rights policies on international conflict, two
possibly confounding relationships need to be
addressed. First, the statistical support for our hypothesis may be driven by the relationship between conflict and human rights abuses. In other words, the
causality could be reversed. This is especially possible
given the relationship between conflict and human
rights abuses (Rasler 1986; Stohl 1975, 1976; Poe and
Tate 1994; Poe, Tate, and Keith 1999). To test this
prospect we ran all of the models with the lagged
values of the human rights variables and found that
the results were consistent with what is reported in the
paper. The only difference is that disappearances and
freedom of speech are negative, but insignificant, in
the models that replicate Table 1.
Aside from the reverse causality, it remains possible that the relationship between democracy and
respect for human rights is generating our results.
This already appears unlikely given the existence of the
off-diagonal cases and the low correlations (please
consult the web appendix). In addition, the results
obtained from lagging the human rights variables
further refute this contention, in that the level of
democracy this year cannot causally affect human
rights respect last year.
To capture the causal effect of democracy on
human rights we regressed both the physical integrity
and empowerment rights indices on all of the other
independent variables used in the index model (low
democracy, high democracy, and so on). For each of
these models we generated the residuals, which represent the joint respect for physical integrity and/or
empowerment rights not explained by the slate of
independent variables. In other words, a positive
residual means that the dyad has more respect for the
given index than is expected given regime type, development, and so on. Any results obtained with these
residuals cannot be ascribed to democracy’s relationship with the human rights variables because these
correlations have been removed. Gartzke (2000) previously used this technique to factor out joint democracy’s effect on his affinity measure.
When we reran the index model of Table 2 with
the residuals instead of the actual values of the
   :            
F 1

The Marginal Effect of Joint Respect of Physical Integrity Rights on MID Onset 1980–2001
Marginal Effect
0
-0.0001 0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
-0.0002
95% Confidenc Interval
Mean Marginal Effect
95% Confidence Interval
-0.0003
-0.0004
-0.0005
-0.0006
-0.0007
Physical Integrity Low
empowerment and physical integrity indices, the
results did not change. Both the residuals were negative and significant indicating that the greater the joint
respect of human rights that was not accounted for
by the secondary regression, the more peaceful the
dyad.10 The combination of this result with the other
tests can fairly definitively show that the results are not
driven by the relationship between democracy and
respect for human rights: joint respect for human
rights independently decreases the probability of
conflict.
As a final check on our argument, we split the data
into two separate samples based on Table 1: jointly
democratic pairs of states and jointly autocratic pairs
of states. In each of these subsets of the data we tested
the effect of the empowerment rights and physical
integrity indices using the index model of Table 2. In
both subsets, the coefficient on the low value of physical integrity rights index was negative and significant,
while the coefficient on low empowerment rights was
negative but insignificant. One can draw two conclusions from these results. First, our contention that
jointly autocratic pairs of states that jointly respect
human rights have a decreased probability of conflict
finds additional support. Second, that support is contingent on the examination of the physical integrity
rights, which arguably shows greater variation with
joint democracy.
Statistical significance, however, does not necessarily indicate substantive significance. Rather than
looking at the substantive effects of each variable,
Figure 1 examines physical integrity rights.11 In
general, as the states in the pair increasingly respect
physical integrity rights, the probability of conflict
10
These, and all other additional analyses, are available upon
request.
11
For the calculation of the probabilities, the continuous
variables are set at their means and the dichotomous variables at
their modes.
decreases. Movement from the lowest to highest
amount of respect decreases the probability of conflict
by 88%. Figure 1 plots the marginal effects of joint
respect of physical integrity rights. The effect is always
significant (95% confidence interval below 0), but it
decreases as the index reaches the higher levels. This
implies that movements toward higher respect when
at the lower levels have a larger substantive impact on
decreasing conflict than the same movement when
already at a high level.
If one constructed a figure to show the impact for
the joint respect of empowerment rights it would look
virtually identical to Figure 1. As the states in pairs of
states increasingly respect empowerment rights, the
probability of MID onset decreases, but the marginal
impact declines as well. Moving from the least respect
of empowerment rights to the greatest lowers the
probability of militarized dispute onset by 85%.
Again, even though the marginal impact decreases, the
effect remains statistically significant.
Conclusion
The results of our analyses consistently show a strong
relationship between joint respect for human rights
and peace. That relationship persists even with controls for regime type and other important correlates
of international conflict. In addition, given the general
lack of high correlation between joint democracy and
joint respect for human rights, it seems unlikely that
the findings are simply capturing the democratic
peace. So, what implications can be drawn from the
results?
The first, and perhaps simplest, conclusion is that
policies do matter. States that respect human rights at
home tend to have more peaceful interactions with
other states that respect human rights. While this
is certainly linked to the democratic peace, because
democracies have better records on human rights, it is

 , .  ,   . 
also separate. There exists a significant portion of
nondemocracies with good human rights records and
democracies with poor ones.
This finding implies that promoting respect for
human rights is more than simply an ethical policy. As
the number of states that respect the rights of their
citizens increases, so will international peace. As
noted earlier, our results indicate that groups such as
Amnesty International are not only humanitarian
organizations, but also forces of international peace.
This is a critical point for both policymakers and individuals, who now have a space to impact international
politics.
Finally, the results speak to the importance of
domestic politics in determining the outcome of
international interactions. Generally speaking, a state’s
choice to respect the rights of its citizens is an internal decision. This internal (domestic) condition,
however, has a direct impact on the origination of
international conflicts. The relationship between
internal and external events cast doubts on the argument that states are identical black boxes interacting
in a system where outcomes are solely determine by
the characteristics of the system.
Acknowledgment
The authors would like to thank Cameron Thies for
reading and commenting on an earlier version of this
manuscript.
Manuscript submitted 12 May 2005
Manuscript accepted for publication 7 September 2005
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David Sobek is assistant professor of political
science, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA
70803-5433. M. Rodwan Abouharb is assistant professor of political science, Louisiana State University,
Baton Rouge, LA 70803-5433. Christopher G. Ingram
is a graduate student of political science, Louisiana
State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803-5433.