Domestic Signaling and the Accession of Authoritarian Regimes to the UN Convention Against Torture (CAT)

It is commonly claimed that human rights law has no binding effect on autocrats, as both international and domestic mechanisms to enforce human rights agreements are lacking in autoc-racies (Hathaway 2007). While this claim is true as long as autocrats remain in office; provisions in international treaties may affect their post-tenure fate. In this paper, I investigate the impact of one human rights treaty- the United Nations Convention Against Torture (CAT)- that, I argue, renders authoritarian signatories more open to prosecution and less able to find refuge once they leave office if they defy its provisions. I create a theoretical model wherein authori-tarian regimes use accession to the CAT as a costly signal to domestic opposition groups of the high value they place on retaining office. This model can help to explain Hathaway’s (2007) perplexing empirical finding that autocracies are more likely to sign the CAT if they torture than if they do not. Moreover, this tendency is predicted to become stronger the greater the enforcement of the CAT and other such treaties. The model further finds that authoritarian signatories of the CAT are, holding observable variables constant, likely to survive longer in office than non-signatories. Empirical evidence for this claim is presented