Political scientists who study human rights have only recently turned their attention to economic and social rights. With a few notable exceptions, the field has been centrally preoccupied with civil and political rights. Human Rights and Structural Adjustment thus joins an emerging body of research seeking to understand the sources and impact of economic and social rights. More specifically, M. Rodwan Abouharb and David Cingranelli set out to test systematically the effects of structural adjustment agreements (SAAs) on various human rights. They find that SAAs lead to less respect for economic and social rights, physical integrity rights, and worker rights but to greater protection of the political rights associated with liberal democracy. On the basis of this empirical evidence, the authors call vigorously for a human rights–based approach to economic development.

As the most comprehensive study to date of the human rights consequences of international financial institutions (IFIs), this book contributes gainfully to the existing scholarship. Surveying 131 countries between 1981 and 2003, Abouharb and Cingranelli focus on the cumulative effects of SAAs (measured by the number of years a country was under structural adjustment). They investigate both the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, whereas previous research focused mostly on the latter. Methodologically, they deploy a two-stage model to control for problems of selection or the possibility that states entering into SAAs are already predisposed to certain human rights practices. Theoretically, the authors advance the research on state repression (or violations of physical integrity rights) by moving beyond state-level characteristics to introduce a transnational financial dimension. More generally, they outline measurement issues carefully, present useful descriptive overviews and statistics, and survey competing theoretical claims; they also mine the case-study literature to generate hypotheses and illustrate their argument anecdotally. The book's broad analytical scope is especially noteworthy.

Abouharb and Cingranelli examine why a country enters into a SAA and then test propositions about the effects of structural adjustment. They find most support for standard economic arguments about loan disbursement, and they determine, somewhat surprisingly, that IFIs prefer lending to rights-protective states. More specifically, the authors probe the impact of SAAs across five outcomes: economic and social rights, domestic rebellion, rights to physical integrity, worker rights, and procedural democratic rights. They conclude that structural adjustment generally worsens domestic conditions; the one exception is procedural democracy (e.g., freedoms of speech and association, free and fair elections), though it is unclear from the analysis whether IFI lending initially favors countries scoring higher on these democratic procedures. While the authors address each proposition distinctly in separate chapters, a causal chain evidently links the various factors: Structural adjustment leads to violations of economic and social rights, which engender domestic instability, in turn producing greater state repression and abuse of worker rights.

In bridging the divide between economic-social and civil-political rights, the authors overlook two possibilities. First, their measure of economic and social rights may be driving one of the book's puzzling findings: why respect for economic and social rights is inversely related to respect for physical integrity and worker rights. They speculate about the role of a “threshold effect” (p. 201), wherein economic and social rights are influential only after a certain level of protection is reached. Another possibility, however, is that the Physical Quality of Life Index (a composite of infant mortality, life expectancy, and adult literacy) is not always a valid proxy for economic and social rights, since quality of life may also signal societal expectations and a capacity to demand change. Paradoxically, people who enjoy a higher quality of life may be more likely to rebel against long-standing SAAs, sparking violations of physical integrity and worker rights. Measurement challenges, then, make it difficult to assess how different human rights practices are actually connected.

Second, Abouharb and Cingranelli assume that structural adjustment affects state repression indirectly, but direct effects may also be at work. Once states enter into an SAA, they may repress and abuse worker rights preemptively, attempting to ward off potential social opposition. Accordingly, repression (especially of labor groups) may be a corollary of the state's implementation of structural adjustment, not an indirect and unintended outcome. This argument highlights more fully the interdependence of different types of rights, in contrast to the linear sequencing depicted by the authors; that is, economic hardship produces social rebellion, moving a reactive state to repress and abuse worker rights. Future research should extend this analysis to explore additional pathways of influence, including interaction effects among different types of rights and between state and society.

Human Rights and Structural Adjustment is pathbreaking in its comprehensiveness, linkage of economic-social and civil-political rights, and thorough empirical testing. It will be the authoritative work on the subject for some time, provoking discussion among political scientists, economists, human rights students, and policy stakeholders. Abouharb and Cingranelli establish quite convincingly that structural adjustment has undermined human rights, and they call compellingly for a human rights–based approach to development, one promoting basic rights protections alongside economic growth. The authors are also on solid theoretical (if empirically unverifiable) ground when they appeal to international legal and normative arguments for the reasons that IFIs should adopt a human rights approach. Overall, the book sets the stage for a new and overdue research agenda—assessing how transnational economic factors like finance, trade, and intellectual property shape human rights practices.