Judicial Accountability: How Democracies React to Human Rights Violations

Abstract

This study generates a hypothesis about democracies member to the European Court of Human Rights. The ECtHR is considered one of the most effective international human rights institutions due to its judicial accountability which promotes compliance to rulings. By examining the violations found by the court against the United Kingdom and Hungary, one Western and one Eastern European state, and comparing those violations to reports and press releases from Human Rights NGOs, this study explores the compliance to the court as well as the effect of democratic tradition on the types of violations found against a country. The study finds there is a distinction between older and newer democracies in terms of types of violations and the focus of Human Rights NGOs in their reports.