The Right to Political Participation: A Study of the Judgments of the European and Inter-American Courts of Human Rights (Comparative Constitutional Change)

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.

Gabriella Citroni is Researcher in International Law and Adjunct Professor of International Human Rights Law at the University of Milano-Bicocca (Milan, Italy). She is in charge of the course on "Enforced Disappearances in International Law" at the LL.M. in International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights organised by the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights. She acts as senior legal advisor of the NGO TRIAL International. She has published extensively in the field of international human rights law.

Irene Spigno is General Director of the Inter-American Academy of Human Rights of the Autonomous University of Coahuila (Mexico) and Director of its Centre for Comparative Constitutional Studies. She holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Constitutional Law from the University of Siena in Italy and is full professor of Comparative Constitutional Law at the Autonomous University of Coahuila (Mexico). Her research interests include freedom of expression, and in particular hate speech, constitutional justice, multiculturalism in comparative perspective, and gender studies.

Palmina Tanzarella is Researcher in Constitutional Law at University of Milano-Bicocca (Milan, Italy). She teaches Italian and European Constitutional Law and State Building. She published on the European and Inter-American protection of Human Rights. At present, her research includes hate speech as limitation of freedom of expression in the European framework. She collaborates as advisor with the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ).