{"title":"The politics of human rights trade sanctions: evidence from the African Growth and Opportunity Act","authors":"Travis Curtice, Eric Reinhardt","doi":"10.1177/13540661231193165","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Scholars contend that embedding human rights conditionality in trade agreements can improve human rights. We argue that human rights interests may collide with trade, investment, and security interests. We examine these claims in the context of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), a unilateral trade preference program with robust human rights conditions, created in 2000 by the United States for up to 49 potentially eligible sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) states. US decisions to terminate AGOA beneficiary status are determined strongly by US trade, investment, and security interests. The country’s human rights record, including state-sponsored killings and other violations of physical integrity rights, has a less consistent and weaker effect.","PeriodicalId":48069,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of International Relations","volume":"67 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":2.7000,"publicationDate":"2023-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"European Journal of International Relations","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13540661231193165","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Scholars contend that embedding human rights conditionality in trade agreements can improve human rights. We argue that human rights interests may collide with trade, investment, and security interests. We examine these claims in the context of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), a unilateral trade preference program with robust human rights conditions, created in 2000 by the United States for up to 49 potentially eligible sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) states. US decisions to terminate AGOA beneficiary status are determined strongly by US trade, investment, and security interests. The country’s human rights record, including state-sponsored killings and other violations of physical integrity rights, has a less consistent and weaker effect.
期刊介绍:
The European Journal of International Relations publishes peer-reviewed scholarly contributions across the full breadth of the field of International Relations, from cutting edge theoretical debates to topics of contemporary and historical interest to scholars and practitioners in the IR community. The journal eschews adherence to any particular school or approach, nor is it either predisposed or restricted to any particular methodology. Theoretically aware empirical analysis and conceptual innovation forms the core of the journal’s dissemination of International Relations scholarship throughout the global academic community. In keeping with its European roots, this includes a commitment to underlying philosophical and normative issues relevant to the field, as well as interaction with related disciplines in the social sciences and humanities. This theoretical and methodological openness aims to produce a European journal with global impact, fostering broad awareness and innovation in a dynamic discipline. Adherence to this broad mandate has underpinned the journal’s emergence as a major and independent worldwide voice across the sub-fields of International Relations scholarship. The Editors embrace and are committed to further developing this inheritance. Above all the journal aims to achieve a representative balance across the diversity of the field and to promote deeper understanding of the rapidly-changing world around us. This includes an active and on-going commitment to facilitating dialogue with the study of global politics in the social sciences and beyond, among others international history, international law, international and development economics, and political/economic geography. The EJIR warmly embraces genuinely interdisciplinary scholarship that actively engages with the broad debates taking place across the contemporary field of international relations.