After 20 years, the quality of democracy and democratic performance, in particular with respect to human rights, varies significantly across post-Communist Europe (BTI 2010, FH 2010, TI 2011). While existing analyses have concentrated on democratic performance, which is undoubtedly a key dimension of the quality of democracy, little systematic attention has been devoted to the comparative study of human rights and particularly to variation in the violation of human rights in new democracies across Europe.
The proposed paper redresses this gap in existing research by concentrating on variation in the violation of human rights (under which we include rights outlined in the European Charter of Human Rights) based on a comparative multi-method study of cases brought to, and adjudicated by, the European Court of Human Rights. The dependent variables in our study include the type, the extent, and the timing of violations of the European Charter of Human Rights across countries and over time. Since 1959, more than 10,000 judgments have been issued for the 47 member states. Yet the corpus of judgments is skewed towards some states, not only in the number of aggregate cases, but also in the type, extent and timing of violations. Explanations and distinctions derived directly from the literature on democratic performance cannot adequately account for these cross-country differences, however, and a new research agenda and theoretical framework is required.
The proposed paper, which is a part of a wider project, presents the first analysis of the unique data-set based on combining the ECHR data with a variety of hard data and attitudinal data. The data analysis established dependent variable(s) based on the ECHR data and independent variables clustered in three categories – demand (state-related i.e. rule of law, judiciary, democratic stock), supply (society-related i.e. mobilization – empowerment and trust) and structural/contextual.
