Replication Data for: Lobbying, Access Points, and the Protection of Human Rights in Democracies

Why do some democracies better protect human rights than other democracies? Although research shows that democracies engage in fewer human rights abuses than non-democracies, we know less about what explains variation in respect for rights among democracies. Using Access Point Theory, we argue that the number of points of access for interest groups in democracies leads to better protection of physical integrity rights but has weaker or no effects on workers’ rights. By increasing the amount of access provided to interest groups, lobbying becomes cheaper which enables human rights organization to lobby for better rights protection but, on workers’ rights, also enables businesses to lobby against those protections. We examine these expectations using data on all democracies from 1980 to 2002, as well as a new latent measure of economic rights constructed using item response theory.