I Book Review: Conflict and Compliance; State Responses to International Human Rights Pressure
| DOI | 10.1177/016934411002800110 |
| Published date | 01 March 2010 |
| Date | 01 March 2010 |
| Subject Matter | Part D: DocumentationI Book Review |
Netherlands Q uarterly of Human R ights, Vol. 28/1, 128–153, 2010.
128 © Netherla nds Institute of Human R ights (SIM), Printed in t he Netherlands.
PART D: DOCUMENTATION
I BOOK REVIEWS
Sonia Cardenas, Con ict and Compliance; State Respon ses to International Human
Rights Pressure, Universit y of Pennsylvania Pres s, Philadelphia, 2007, 188 p., ISBN:
13: 978–0–8122–3999 –7 and 10: 0–8122–3999–7*
It is not oen in human rights literature that a theoretically – a nd methodologically
– strong book is published . Fortunately, Sonia Cardena s, an associate professor in
political science at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut in the USA, has developed
an interesting t heoretical framework which she applies to analyse t he inuence
of external and intern al pressure in the 1970s and 1980s on the regimes of Chile
under Pinochet , and Argentina under Videla, to end gross huma n rights violat ions.
Aer d rawing conclusions on the impact of these pres sures to change policy in the
two Latin-America n countries known as the Southern Cone, she has moreover
endeavoured to generalise these conclusions in a comparative study for a group of
States in the period aer t he Cold War. Methodologically, it is a very sound piece of
human r ights research. Cardenas rst explains her theoretical framework, which is
derived from the main the ories and current debates in international relations. Aer
that she scruti nises the eld with prima ry and secondary data – both qualitative and
quantitative – a nd literature, which makes it easy for any other researcher to test her
sources. is is followed by a nu ll hypothesis in which she exami nes the pessimist ic
and scept ical view that international pressure did not lead to signi cant changes i n
State behaviour. In order to determine how State compliance va ried with growing
international pressure, Cardenas a lso successively tests the opposite hypothesis. With
this hypothesis she researches the opti mistic approach that e xerting huma n rights
pressure really matters. It is seldom that a book contains both the deductive, analytica l,
theory-driven method applied i n a particular context of limited comparat ive country
studies – in t his case the Southern Cone in the 1970s – and the subsequent step of
generalisation by applying the results to a la rger group of countr ies in another time
period – the 1990s, givi ng the results a greater signic ance. Cardenas does so in a
concise, uently written book .
* Fred Grünfel d is Associate Pr ofessor of Internationa l Relations and International Orga nizations at
the Faculty of Law of Maastricht University, the Netherlands. At Maastricht University he researches
and teaches at t he Maastricht Ce ntre for Human Right s and the University C ollege Maastric ht. He
is also professor in the C auses of Gross Human Rights Violat ions at the Centre for Conict Stud ies,
Faculty of Huma nities at Utrecht Universit y.
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