ABSTRACT
This book provides a comparative analysis of how judgments from the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) affect political participation and electoral justice at the national level.
Looking at specific countries, the work analyses the legal impact the implementation of the ECtHR and the IACtHR judgments has, with a specific focus on cases in which the regional court concerned uses the “democratic argument,” that is, an argument related to democracy and political rights. The reasoning is that, although democracy is a much wider concept, judgments concerning violations of political rights and electoral justice provide reliable indicators to assess the status and sustainability of democracy in a State. Moreover, the analysis of the violations of political rights and electoral justice allows an in-depth comparison between the two regional human rights systems. Mindful of the broader scope of the fall-out generated by the non-implementation of judgments, including in socio-economic terms, the book includes a section exploring how judgments issued by the ECtHR and the IACtHR affect voters’ participation in the countries under their jurisdiction. To this end, an original dataset including the 47 Member States of the Council of Europe and the 20 countries which recognised the adjudicatory jurisdiction of the IACtHR is built.
Multidisciplinary in aim and scope of analysis, the book will be an invaluable resource for researchers, academics, and policy-makers working in the areas of constitutional law, international human rights law, and political economy.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|244 pages
The European Court of Human Rights
chapter 5|24 pages
Italian Democracy in Strasbourg and the compliance with European Court's judgments on political rights
chapter 6|28 pages
Democracy and political participation in the countries of the former Yugoslavia
chapter 7|24 pages
At any cost?
chapter 8|26 pages
Right to vote and the right to have the last word
chapter 9|24 pages
Democracy and the right to free elections in Turkey
part II|126 pages
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights
chapter 11|22 pages
The protection of the political rights of minorities in the ACHR
chapter 13|22 pages
Political rights of human rights defenders and indigenous leaders in the Inter-American Court
part III|40 pages
An empirical assessment based on political economy