Who Cares About Whom? Public Attitudes Toward Abusing Human Rights

• In Event: Public Opinion on Political Violence

Abstract

What drives public opinion on human rights? How individuals respond to reports of human rights abuses can have major implications for domestic and international politics. Previous theory and evidence suggest that human rights violations can be costly for governments when they are met by protests, conflict, change in electoral support and/or sanctions from the international community. However, not all cases of human rights violations result in widespread disapproval – with individual responses to human rights abuses varying across multiple contexts. What explains differences in public responses to human rights violations? To answer this question, I develop a survey experiment that varies the identity of the victim and perpetrator as well as the type, scope and intensity of human rights violations. I argue that human rights abuses targeting in-groups are more likely to generate negative responses than those that target out-groups. However, this response is conditional on the type of perpetrator and the severity of human rights violations. This article contributes to a growing literature on public opinion and human rights by dis-aggregating abuses and examining the different effects that identity and the scale of abuse can have on public disapproval. These findings are also informative for human rights advocates that seek to gain support for human rights campaigns and prevent governments from committing future human rights abuses.

Author

• Rebecca Elizabeth Cordell, University of Texas at Dallas