The Strategic Determinants of U.S. Human Rights Reporting: Evidence from The Cold War

Nancy Qian and David Yanagizawa-Drott

Journal of the European Economic Association, 2009, vol. 7, issue 2-3, 446-457

Abstract: This paper uses a country-level panel data set to test the hypothesis that the United States biases its human rights reports of countries based on the latters' strategic value. We use the difference between the U.S. State Department's and Amnesty International's reports as a measure of U.S. "bias." For plausibly exogenous variation in strategic value to the U.S., we compare this bias between U.S. Cold War (CW) allies to non-CW allies, before and after the CW ended. The results show that allying with the U.S. during the CW significantly improved reports on a country's human rights situation from the U.S. State Department relative to Amnesty International. (JEL: P16) (c) 2009 by the European Economic Association.

JEL-codes: P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

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