Stephen C. Ropp

Stephen C. Ropp (who also writes as Steve C. Ropp) is Emeritus Professor of Political Science at the University of Wyoming. Born in 1941 in Durham, North Carolina, he attended Allegheny College (B.A.) and the University of Washington (M.A.). He developed an interest in Central American and Panamanian politics while serving in the Army in the Panama Canal Zone during the 1960s. This led him to obtain a Ph.D in Latin American Studies from the University of California, Riverside in 1971.

Having published on regional issues during the 1970s, he frequently provided expert advice and testimony during the Central American conflicts of the 1980s. Those seeking it included the Department of State's Kissinger Commission on Central America as well as the Senate and House Foreign Relations Committee. These Committees were particularly concerned with the growing involvement of Panama's General Manuel Antonio Noriega in the international drug trade and the military regime's human rights record.

General Noriega was indicted by a U.S. Federal Grand Jury in 1988 and captured in Panama in 1990 during Operation Just Cause. One year later, Ropp testified as first witness for the prosecution in his Miami-based trial for drug trafficking and money laundering. While this trial was considered problematical at the time for a number of reasons, it set a powerful precedent for the dismissal of claims of sovereign immunity by former heads of state. It also served as one more reason for the eventual creation of more independent international tribunals such as the International Criminal Court.

With human rights becoming an even more important topic in the 1990's following the end of the Cold War, Ropp shifted his research focus from the regional to the global level. In this regard, he was fortunate to make the acquaintance of Thomas Risse (Free University of Berlin) and Kathryn Sikkink (Harvard). who were independently developing new theories about human rights change. Together, they co-edited "The Power of Human Rights: International Norms and Domestic Change"(1999) which became a foundational text within constructivist human rights theory.