Commerce and Imagination: The Sources of Concern about International Human Rights in the US Congress

Do members of Congress put human rights concerns on the agenda in response to their constituents’ demands for trade protection? Humanitarian concern may be an important motive, but the normative weight of these issues also makes them a potentially powerful tool for politicians with less elevated agendas. They may criticize the behavior of countries with whom their constituents must compete economically, while overlooking the actions of countries with which their constituents have more harmonious economic relations. This paper tests several hypotheses about the salience of human rights concerns in the politics of US foreign policy using data on congressional speeches during the late 1990s gathered from the Congressional Record. We find evidence that, while humanitarian interests remain an important motive for raising human rights issues, the economic interests of their constituents influence which members of Congress speak out on these questions, and the countries on which they focus their concern