Researchers at Binghamton University and the University of Rhode Island have published a new framework for measuring human rights across countries and across decades, transforming a subject traditionally dominated by case studies and moral judgments into one that can be analyzed with transparent, reproducible quantitative methods. Their book, Science and the Study of Human Rights, uses international datasets to compare how governments protect civil, political, economic and social rights, while also identifying countries that perform better or worse than their political and economic circumstances would predict.
The authors—Binghamton University political scientists David L. Cingranelli and Mikhail Filippov, along with University of Rhode Island researchers Skip Mark and Ashlea Rundlett—argue that systematic measurement can reveal patterns that are difficult to detect through individual country reports. Their approach is built around the principle that phenomena often considered too complex or abstract to quantify can still be studied scientifically when researchers define consistent indicators, apply the same scoring rules to every country and make the underlying evidence available for independent evaluation.
Central to the book is the CIRIGHTS Data Project, a large-scale human rights database directed by Cingranelli, Mark and Filippov. The project assigns numerical scores to countries based on their treatment of people under internationally recognized human rights standards. Its indicators cover issues including torture, disappearances, imprisonment, judicial protections, labor rights and other forms of government conduct. By converting documentary evidence into comparable measurements, CIRIGHTS allows researchers to examine changes over time, test explanations for government behavior and evaluate whether policy interventions are associated with improved rights protections.
The scoring system places countries on a scale from zero to 100, although the number is not intended to represent a universal or flawless measure of human dignity. Instead, it summarizes how consistently a government fulfills particular obligations defined by the project’s coding procedures. In the researchers’ most recent analysis, the average score for governments was approximately 70. The United States received a score of 62.5, illustrating how even wealthy democracies can perform unevenly across different categories of rights. The authors emphasize that numerical scores should be interpreted alongside the definitions, source documents and limitations that produced them.
The analysis confirms several broad patterns in global human rights performance. Democracies generally protect rights more effectively than nondemocratic governments, while wealthier countries tend to outperform poorer nations. These relationships are not deterministic, however. The researchers also model structural conditions such as national wealth, political institutions, armed conflict and the human rights behavior of neighboring states. This makes it possible to estimate how a country performs relative to what might be expected from its circumstances, rather than simply ranking governments by raw scores.
That distinction produces a second category of results: overachievers and underachievers. Rwanda and the Philippines, for example, were identified as countries performing better than models based on their structural conditions might predict. Being labeled an overachiever does not mean that a country protects all rights or has eliminated abuses. It means that, compared with nations facing similar levels of poverty, conflict or regional pressure, its measured performance is unexpectedly strong. The researchers argue that these cases may help reveal institutional choices or political strategies that could be relevant elsewhere.
The same method identifies countries whose human rights records fall below expectations. The book lists China, Egypt, Greece, Guyana, Israel, North Macedonia, Paraguay, Romania, Russia, the Seychelles, Sudan, Tuvalu and Iran among the underperformers in the analysis. Iran received a zero on the relevant human rights measures cited by Cingranelli. Several countries, including the United States, North Korea, Germany, South Sudan and Venezuela, could not be included in the achievement comparison because required information for the statistical models was unavailable. This limitation highlights a fundamental problem in global human rights research: a country cannot be evaluated reliably when comparable evidence is missing.
The researchers describe the database as both a scientific resource and a teaching tool. Students at Binghamton University, the University of Rhode Island and the University of Connecticut have participated in collecting and assessing country-level information, while faculty members at University College London have also contributed to the project. In classroom exercises, students learn how coding decisions are made, how documentary evidence is translated into variables and how disagreements between coders can affect the reliability of a dataset. The process demonstrates that quantification does not eliminate judgment; instead, it makes judgments explicit enough to be reviewed, debated and improved.
The future of the project may be complicated by changes in the information available from the United States government. The U.S. State Department reports that historically formed the core of the CIRIGHTS evidence base are no longer being produced in the same comprehensive and apparently objective form, according to the authors. Alternative sources may allow researchers to continue measuring some rights, but replacing the original documents could create comparability problems with earlier years. Political scientists can still extract information about labor rights and other subjects, and the team plans to review older reports and develop new measures involving prisoners, refugees and human trafficking. Yet shifts in reporting practices could make it harder to determine whether apparent changes reflect real changes in government behavior or changes in the data itself.
The authors say the timing of the book makes systematic measurement particularly important as human rights become less prominent in political discourse. Cingranelli argues that the United States played a major role in drafting and adopting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, but that support for the concept should not be assumed to remain constant. Rundlett says the value of the research lies in forcing public impressions to confront evidence: countries widely viewed as rights-respecting may show weaknesses in specific areas, while less celebrated governments may outperform expectations on selected measures. By making those contrasts visible, the new framework aims to give scholars, policymakers, journalists and activists a more precise way to assess whether governments are protecting human rights—and whether they are getting better or worse.
Subject of Research: Quantitative measurement and comparative analysis of human rights practices worldwide.
Article Title: Science and the Study of Human Rights
References: Cingranelli, David L.; Filippov, Mikhail; Mark, Skip; and Rundlett, Ashlea, Science and the Study of Human Rights, SUNY Press; CIRIGHTS Data Project.
Image Credits: SUNY Press
Keywords: Human rights, political science, international relations, government, CIRIGHTS, quantitative research, human rights measurement, democracy, global policy, social science
