Replication Data for: The Changing Standard of Accountability and the Positive Relationship between Human Rights Treaty Ratification and Compliance

Researchers have puzzled over the finding that countries that ratify UN human rights treaties such as the Convention Against Torture are more likely to abuse human rights than non-ratifiers over time. I present evidence that the changing standard of accountability --- the set of expectations that monitoring agencies use to hold states responsible for repressive actions --- conceals real improvements to the level of respect for human rights in data derived from monitoring reports. Using a novel dataset that accounts for systematic changes to human rights reports over time, I demonstrate that the ratification of human rights treaties is empirically associated with higher levels of respect for human rights over time and across countries. This positive relationship is robust to a variety of measurement strategies and model specifications. Overall, a new picture emerges of improving levels of respect for human rights, which coincides in time with an increasing number of countries ratifying an increasing number of international human rights treaties.