Description
Political leader use political incarcerations when facing dissents. Albeit with it, since leaders cannot solely decide to incarcerate the targets, the involvement of the courts has made political imprisonment a three-actor game, which makes political imprisonment stand out of four types of physical integrity rights violations as well. Other than balancing regime powers, domestic judiciaries are also obligated to execute international law and treaties, holding political leaders in check. Therefore, this paper argues that ratifying human rights treaties can effectively prevent governments from imposing political incarceration when conditional on the practice of judicial independence. This is because, by doing so, the repressive leaders are at increased procedural cost, with an increased risk of lawsuit dismissal, and thus having further potential reputational costs to bear domestically and internationally. At the same time, due to the non-exclusive nature of political imprisonment as a policy tool, after considering these possible risks, the government may be more inclined to choose other avenues to acquire the same interests. Additionally, this paper addresses the selection issue and window-dressing intentions argument in international human rights treaties studies by employing the domestic institutions' effect, as judiciaries link the domestic legal system with the enforcement of international law. This paper tests this argument using data from 1981 to 2021.
