The Politics of Reporting: A Study of States' Strategies for Reporting to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child

Charlotta Friedner Parrat

Political Studies, 2010, vol. 58, issue 3, 472-496

Abstract: This article is concerned with the obligation of State Parties to report to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, and discusses the politics involved in the reporting process, showing what strategy each state chooses to employ. An empirical study shows that the reported improvements in children's rights depend not only on the State Party's economic means, but also on its will to report truthfully. Based on John Rawls' ‘The Law of the Peoples’, I develop four ideal types of state with regard to the reporting process, and present game‐theoretical explanations for their chosen strategies. The outcome is that a burdened state, illustrated by Burkina Faso, will tell the truth about children's rights in the state; a high‐risk state, illustrated by Guatemala, will conceal or avoid eliciting sensitive information for its reports; a quasi‐established liberal democracy, illustrated by Estonia, will also conceal information that shows its child rights record is not as clean as that of a liberal democracy; and a liberal democracy, illustrated by New Zealand, will tell the truth, provide all available information and point out existing problems. The article ends with a discussion about how to take the political factor out of the reporting process.

Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9248.2009.00798.x

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:polstu:v:58:y:2010:i:3:p:472-496

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0032-3217

Access Statistics for this article

Political Studies is currently edited by Matthew Festenstein and Martin Smith

More articles in Political Studies from Political Studies Association
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().