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Does the implementation of structural adjustment agreements increase or decrease government respect for economic and social human rights? Neo-liberal theory suggests that structural adjustment agreements improve economic performance, generating more respect for economic and social human rights. Critics contend that the implementation of structural adjustment conditions causes economic hardships and reduces government respect for economic and social human rights. We account for the loan selection criteria of the World Bank and IMF when estimating the human rights consequences of structural adjustment. Using a global, comparative analysis for the 1981-2004 period, we examine the effects of structural adjustment on government respect for economic and social human rights. The findings show that the longer countries have been under structural adjustment agreements the worse the level of government respect for economic and social human rights. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does the implementation of a structural adjustment agreement increase or decrease government respect for workers' rights? Neo-liberal theory implies that the economic liberalization required by structural adjustment agreements improve economic performance, generating better human rights practices including stronger protections of workers' rights. Critics contend that the implementation of structural adjustment conditions causes governments to lower labor standards as one way to attract more foreign investment. We conduct a global, comparative analysis for the 1981-2003 period, and use a two-stage model to account for World Bank and IMF loan selection criteria when estimating the workers' rights consequences of structural adjustment. The findings show that implementation of structural adjustment agreements reduces government respect for worker rights, and they suggest that more attention should be paid to international forces, especially the effects of international regimes, on government workers' rights practices. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does the existence of a structural adjustment agreement with the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund (IMF) cause loan recipient governments to become more repressive? This research project accounts for loan selection criteria when estimating the human rights consequences of structural adjustment. Empirically, this project significantly advances our understanding of the human rights effects of structural adjustment by estimating the joint effects of IMF and World Bank structural adjustment agreements on loan recipients. Almost all the previous research on the economic and political effects of structural adjustment has focused exclusively on the International Monetary Fund. Using a global, comparative analysis for the 1982-2001 period, the effects of structural adjustment on government respect for citizens? rights to freedom from torture, political imprisonment, extra-judicial killing and disappearances were examined. The findings show that implementation of structural adjustment agreements worsens government respect for all four personal integrity rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As part of a current National Science Foundation project (www.humanrightsdata.com), this paper establishes and tests a method for measuring the degree of government effort to protect internationally recognized economic human rights. For many reasons, economic human rights to such things as health care, education, food and housing have been overlooked by most scholars who have taken a scientific approach to the study of human rights. With the end of the cold war, however, human rights organizations such as Amnesty International are giving economic human rights more attention. International debates between the representatives of economically developed and developing countries over trade and development aid also include have included discussions of probable or actual impacts on economic human rights. Moreover, a growing literature demonstrating the linkage of economic globalization, government respect for human rights, and the probability of state failure has placed economic rights in a new light of salience for policymakers. The few quantitatively oriented scholars who have given attention to the subject have analyzed cross-national variations in the level of government protection of economic human rights, using such measures as the Physical Quality of Life Index and the Human Development Index. The problem with such measures is that they are highly correlated with national wealth, and they reflect human rights conditions experienced by the people living in a country, not the human rights policies of governments. In this work, we seek to develop measures of government policies to promote or violate the economic human rights of their citizens that are analogous to widely used measures of government policies to protect or violate human rights to personal integrity such as the Political Terror Scale, the Freedom House Civil Rights Index, and the Cingranelli/Richards Index of Personal Integrity. These measures of government policies to respect economic human rights are being developed as part of a project currently funded by the National Science Foundation that will produce a human rights dataset for public distribution in 2004. The dataset will contain multiple measures of government respect for various types of internationally recognized human rights for over 160 countries from 1981 to 2002. Information from this dataset about government protection of personal integrity and civil rights already has been used by the World Bank in its Governance Matters report. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The IMF has used Structural Adjustment Loans (SALs) to encourage economic development in Less Developed Countries by alleviating short term financial difficulties and imposing loan conditions mandating economic restructuring in recipient countries. In general, SALs require governments to balance their books, reduce expenditures for social programs, promote export-orientated growth, and de-regulate and privatize state-held entities. There is much speculation in the popular press and in the academic literature on human rights that the imposition of SALs induces recipient governments to reduce their level of respect for internationally recognized human rights (Bello 1994; Commonwealth Secretariat 1989; Danaher 1994; and Sadasivam 1997). While there has been much previous research on this topic, most of it has been based on the observation of only one or a few cases, usually over a short time period (Bello 1994; Commonwealth Secretariat 1989; Chipeta 1993; Danaher 1994; Dennis 1992; Handa and King 1997; Kane 1993; Sadasivam 1997; Sowa 1993 and Vuorela 1991). Only a few scientific studies attempt to assess the effects of SALs from a cross-national time series perspective (Poe and Camp Keith, 2001; Buchmann 1996; Çagatay and Özler 1995; Dorosh 1996; Due and Gladwin 1991; and Sahn 1996) and only one of the previous scientific studies addresses the cross-national effects of SALs on government respect for specific civil and political rights (Poe and Camp Keith, 2001). Recent work (Przeworski and Vreeland 2000; Vreeland 2002) has examined the impacts of IMF adjustment controlling for issues of selection. Their findings indicate a selection process, which connects the factors that determine both the receipt and impact of adjustment lending. The negative impact on economic growth and income distribution, generate questions about the impact of adjustment on other issues including the respect for human rights. This paper investigates the impacts of IMF structural adjustment lending on respect for human rights and will employ a data set that includes annual observations of specific human rights practices for all countries from 1981 to 2001. Thus, we will be able to draw conclusions about how SALs affect particular human rights practices. We also will estimate the direct and indirect effects of SALs on the human rights practices of recipients and determine whether the relationship we discover between receipt of a SAL and subsequent human rights practices might be due to selection effects rather than the effects of the loans themselves (Abouharb and Cingranelli 2002; 2003; Przeworski and Vreeland 2000; Vreeland 2002). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The IMF has used Structural Adjustment Loans (SALs) to encourage economic development in Less Developed Countries by alleviating short term financial difficulties and imposing loan conditions mandating economic restructuring in recipient countries. In general, SALs require governments to balance their books, reduce expenditures for social programs, promote export-orientated growth, and de-regulate and privatize state-held entities. There is much speculation in the popular press and in the academic literature on human rights that the imposition of SALs induces recipient governments to reduce their level of respect for internationally recognized human rights (Bello 1994; Commonwealth Secretariat 1989; Danaher 1994; and Sadasivam 1997). While there has been much previous research on this topic, most of it has been based on the observation of only one or a few cases, usually over a short time period (Bello 1994; Commonwealth Secretariat 1989; Chipeta 1993; Danaher 1994; Dennis 1992; Handa and King 1997; Kane 1993; Sadasivam 1997; Sowa 1993 and Vuorela 1991). Only a few scientific studies attempt to assess the effects of SALs from a cross-national time series perspective (Poe and Camp Keith, 2001; Buchmann 1996; Çagatay and Özler 1995; Dorosh 1996; Due and Gladwin 1991; and Sahn 1996) and only one of the previous scientific studies addresses the cross-national effects of SALs on government respect for specific civil and political rights (Poe and Camp Keith, 2001). Recent work (Przeworski and Vreeland 2000; Vreeland 2002) has examined the impacts of IMF adjustment controlling for issues of selection. Their findings indicate a selection process, which connects the factors that determine both the receipt and impact of adjustment lending. The negative impact on economic growth and income distribution, generate questions about the impact of adjustment on other issues including the respect for human rights. This paper investigates the impacts of IMF structural adjustment lending on respect for human rights and will employ a data set that includes annual observations of specific human rights practices for all countries from 1981 to 2001. Thus, we will be able to draw conclusions about how SALs affect particular human rights practices. We also will estimate the direct and indirect effects of SALs on the human rights practices of recipients and determine whether the relationship we discover between receipt of a SAL and subsequent human rights practices might be due to selection effects rather than the effects of the loans themselves (Abouharb and Cingranelli 2002; 2003; Przeworski and Vreeland 2000; Vreeland 2002). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study reports the results of a multivariate exploration of the relationship between the level of democracy and degree of government respect for workers’ rights in the population of all countries of the world between 1981 and 2001. The statistical technique used to test the hypothesis was maximum-likelihood multivariate ordered logit estimation. The results of the study demonstrate that, even when alternative explanations are statistically controlled, more ‘democraticness’ and a higher level of economic development both are associated with greater government respect for workers’ rights. Other things being equal, economic globalization and a large population size are associated with less respect for workers’ rights. Thus, the results of the study provide some support for the ‘race to the bottom’ thesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The World Bank along with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) provide much needed external capital to developing countries. Thus, it is not surprising that there has been much controversy over their lending practices. Most of the discussion has focused on the fairness of the structural adjustment conditions and the effects of these conditions on economic development and the human rights practices of loan recipients (Sadasivam, 1997). In this work, the human rights consequences of World Bank structural adjustment loans (SALs) are examined in a sample of 161 significant countries of the world during the 1981-2000 period. In the first stage of the analysis, the factors affecting World Bank decisions concerning which governments receive SALs are identified. Understanding the selection criteria employed by the World Bank is an essential first step for those who wish to assess the impact of structural adjustment loans on the human rights practices of recipients. One must determine whether it was the conditions imposed by the Bank or the pre-existing situation that accounted for the human rights impacts since many of the factors important in predicting levels of respect for personal integrity rights are also important determinants of SAL receipt. This is the first two-staged analysis of the human rights effects of structural adjustment. The results of this study show that, when this endogenous relationship is accounted for, governments that receive SALs from the World Bank improve their protection of personal integrity rights the year the loan is received. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One important reason why most previous studies find a strong positive relationship between income equality and democracy is that democratic governments tend to provide more protection for workers? rights, and greater protection of workers? rights tends to produce greater income equality within societies. Using a cross-national comparative research design including 163 countries between 1980 and 1999, the relationships between the level of democracy, the level of government respect for workers? rights, and the level of income equality were estimated. It was expected that there was a positive feedback loop among these three national characteristics. The findings indicated that the higher the level of development, the stronger the positive relationships among these variables. Regardless of their level of economic development, more democratic states provided greater protections for the rights of workers. Previous research had established the existence of this relationship for high-income nations, but this is the first large scale, comparative research project to show the existence of this relationship for all countries. Two links in the positive feedback loop do not work for low income and lower-middle income nations. In those nations, more government respect for workers? rights does not produce greater income equality, and greater income equality does not produce higher levels of democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]