Research question/goal:

This project examines whether, and under what conditions, support for human rights can be strengthened during times of crisis. Drawing on a series of innovative survey experiments conducted with the German adult population, we assess theoretically and empirically whether emphasizing the significance of human rights increases public support. We investigate how the characteristics of the rights holder and individuals’ predispositions toward human rights shape the impact of different arguments in crisis situations. By testing the malleability of attitudes towards different rights under different scenarios, we generate new insights on which rights are seen as more or less contestable by different societal groups and individuals, using different arguments in support for human rights. Through a combination of survey and experimental methods, we map attitudes to human rights among the German population, test the fragility of these commitments when their universality and unconditionality are contested, and assess whether normative or instrumental arguments can bolster citizens' defence of their basic human rights.

This is a joint project with Katrin Paula (Technische Universität München), Robert Johns (University of Southampton) and Nadine O’Shea (Technische Universität München).

Current stage:

We are currently finalizing our paper on whether different arguments can strengthen support for human rights by protecting the right to demonstrate without fear of excessive police violence. We find that pro-human rights arguments do not generally sway people’s opinion. But they do lower support for a rights-restricting policy in the most unlikely circumstances, if it is targeted against an out-group and if people have strong priors against human rights. We are about to roll out the second wave of our survey to 8’000 respondents in Germany to investigate how deliberation about the right to protest influences people’s opinion, using different forms of media to convey the deliberation to respondents.