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Whether international trade hurts or helps human rights has been extensively debated.1 Most studies find that overall levels of trade dependence of exporting countries tend to be positively associated with higher levels of respect for human rights. Scholars note, however, that such results are often sensitive to the particular way in which measures of overall trade are operationalized.2 We offer a new way to study the relationship between trade and human rights by focusing on the role of bilateral trade as a vehicle for the diffusion of human rights practices. Because much of the human rights literature focuses on the influence of overall trade on human rights, scholars overlook the possibility that trade with different partners might have different effects on an exporting country's human rights practices. We suggest that a more appropriate approach is to focus on bilateral trading relationships to understand how the varying human rights standards of the importing destinations might influence the human rights practices of the exporting countries. Our approach is analogous to what Vogel has termed the 'California Effect'.3 Its core idea is that international diffusion of policies and practices depends not on how much a country trades but with whom it trades.
One difficulty that states face in trying to restrict imports from countries with poor human rights practices is that the World Trade Organization constrains the ability of importing countries to regulate imports using process-based rules. Therefore, many observers expect that international trade will abet regulatory races to the bottom. In challenging this logic, Vogel has shown that under some conditions, increasing exposure to international trade will instead lead to a ratcheting up of environmental laws and regulatory standards. In the current study we extend this argument to the diffusion of human rights standards. Unlike the environmental regulations that were the focus of Vogel's study, a country's human rights standards involve a set of norms and practices that tends to be less formal and less strongly legalized. As a result of our analysis, we are able to develop further scope conditions concerning the ability of bilateral trade pressures from importing countries to bring about policy changes in exporting countries.
Drawing on prior research which shows non-linear effects of democracy on...