Research + Publications — Dr M Rodwan Abouharb

Research Interests

Research Areas

My research examines the intersection of political violence, economics, and human rights violations and follows three broad streams. The first is at the intersection of questions about the domestic economic, social, and human rights consequences of policies promoted by international economic organisations. The second is about how political actors who violate human rights seek to evade accountability for their actions and how domestic institutions can reduce the likelihood of those violations from taking place. The third is around relational dynamics: changes in protest and human rights violations, changes in rhetoric and repression, and changes in conflict and its consequences for non-combatants.

The Human Rights Consequences of International Economic Organisations

My earlier research, co-authored with David Cingranelli, examined the impact of international economic organisations on civil conflicts and human rights violations published in International Studies Quarterly and The Review of International Organisations and in an award-winning book published by Cambridge University Press entitled Structural Adjustment and Human Rights. We found countries spending more time under World Bank and IMF structural adjustment programs had worsened economic and social rights outcomes, faced more protest and rebellion and responded with more human rights violations to maintain political control. In related research co-authored with Susan Aaronson on the WTO published in International Studies Quarterly and the World Trade Review, we found a positive association between membership in the organisation and improved democratic rights and metrics of good governance.

I’m working on a series of papers and my second published book, co-authored with Bernhard Reinsberg, which examines how distributional politics shapes the consequences of IMF conditionality on inequality and protest at the individual level. Our work focuses on how governments utilise distributional politics in the context of IMF structural adjustment lending to favour their supporters and punish those who support their political opponents. We provide novel insights into how policies promoted by international economic organisations can exacerbate pre-existing inequalities within states while also emphasising how governments seek political advantage in implementing reforms agreed upon with the IMF during economically turbulent times. Our local political economy explanation also provides a novel understanding of who protests these programs and why: opposition supporters whom the government targets.

Finally, in a collaborative project with David Cingranelli and Bernhard Reinsberg, we examine if people get the economic policies they want and if the involvement of the IMF interferes with this substantive democratic right. Overall, we find a weak link between the economic policies people want and the economic policies that people get. This link weakens even more for citizens under authoritarian regimes whose governments agree on reform packages with the IMF. Our evidence indicates that authoritarian regimes comply with the Fund over the economic preferences of their citizens, meaning people get even less of the economic policies they want. In comparison, we find evidence of resistance by democratic states to the demands from the Fund, meaning people get more of the economic policies they want.

Human Rights and the Evasion of Accountability

I’m also interested in how strategic governments evade accountability for their human rights violations, primarily through their use of enforced disappearances. In co-authored research with Caroline Payne published by the Journal of Human Rights, we found that states that ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights respond to increased scrutiny of their human rights records by changing the violations they utilise. They decrease their use of extra-judicial killing and switch to the use of forced disappearances to evade accountability for their actions, as the latter are more challenging to prosecute.

Currently, I am working on a global data collection effort to map the legalisation of crimes of enforced disappearance into domestic law and also document international and national prosecutions for these crimes to understand better if governments and their agents are more accountable for these crimes. The project will examine if these accountability mechanisms have reduced the frequency of enforced disappearances worldwide.

The dynamics of protest and human rights violations, rhetoric and repression, and the consequences of conflicts for non-combatants.

My final area of interest is understanding how relational dynamics influence protest and repression, rhetoric and repression, and the consequences of wars for non-combatants. In this area of my research, I have one paper forthcoming in the Journal of Human Rights on the effects of different types of wars on infant mortality since 1950. I have a working document which examines if governments respond with varying kinds of repression depending on the type of protest. Lastly, with Slava Mikhaylov, we investigate the link between women’s rights rhetoric at the United Nations and domestic women’s rights practices; if governments start talking about women’s rights, do they follow through and improve them at home?