James Ron

This article explains tactical escalation by a Peruvian left-wing group during the 1980s and 1990s as an interaction effect between organizational ideology and the broader political and organizational environment. In 1980, Peru’s Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) organization ended a decade of political organizing and launched armed struggle against a new civilian government. Peru had been governed since 1968 by military officers, but popular pressure, including strong left-wing protests, had forced the military to cede control. In responding to democratization with revolution rather than electoral participation, Sendero broke with the rest of Peru’s Marxist left. In 1983, Sendero again escalated its tactics, initiating a campaign of violent intimidation against Peru’s legal left. By 1996, according to data assembled for this study, the group had selectively assassinated some 300 prominent Peruvian leftists. For theorists of revolutions and social movements, Sendero’s tactical trajectory poses two important puzzles. First, many revolutionary theorists believe that transitions from authoritarianism to elections decrease armed insurgency. Why, then, did Peru’s democratization provoke Sendero’s escalation? Second, Sendero might well have been expected to cooperate with other left-wing groups, rather than to attack them so brutally. Why did Sendero choose an alternative path? The group’s anti-left measures are all the more puzzling given the opposition they provoked among potential allies at home and abroad. This article explains Sendero’s choices by drawing on political opportunity theory, theories of organizational competition, and the concept of declining protest cycles. Democratization can promote greater levels of strife if small but violence-prone groups fear marginalization in electoral politics. A dense left-wing social movement sector, moreover, can stimulate internecine competitive fighting if only some of the movement’s members accept the legitimacy of national elections.

Local human rights organizations (LHROs) are essential allies in the global fight for justice, but what drives—or undermines—public trust in them? In this article, James Ron (University of Minnesota) and David Crow (CIDE, Mexico City) present the first large-scale, cross-national study of public confidence in LHROs. Drawing on 233 key informant interviews across 60 countries and original Human Rights Perceptions Polls conducted in Mexico, Nigeria, Morocco, and India (n ≈ 6,800), we explore how familiarity, funding perceptions, political skepticism, transnational connectivity, and socioeconomic status shape public trust. Our findings challenge several conventional assumptions. • Familiarity breeds trust: Knowing someone in a rights group, hearing about “human rights” regularly, or participating in activities strongly predicts higher confidence in LHROs. • Anti-politics matters: Those most skeptical of politicians and political institutions are significantly more likely to trust LHROs. • Funding perceptions are mixed: Believing LHROs are funded by foreign governments sometimes reduces trust (as in Colombia), but foreign support is not consistently harmful—and in India, perceived international support actually boosted trust. • Surprising nulls: Socioeconomic status and transnational ties (like foreign travel or language ability) are not reliable predictors of trust, despite frequent assumptions. Across regions, LHROs occupy a middle ground of legitimacy: less trusted than churches or the army in some contexts, but far more trusted than politicians. The article demonstrates that building public familiarity and maintaining independence from distrusted elites are key to rights groups’ survival. Published in Human Rights Quarterly 37:188–239 (2015), this research advances debates on civil society, NGO legitimacy, and human rights politics.

In 1988, Israeli security forces engaged in a wide variety of repressive tactics aimed at putting down the Palestinian uprising in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Rather than viewing these methods solely as products of instructions handed down from on high, this article regards Israeli tactics as emerging from processes of innovation and elaboration by military personnel. Rules stipulating the legal use of lethal force placed important limits on Israeli military behavior. Within those limits, however, soldiers were free to invent new methods of repression. The article draws on 50 open-ended interviews with Israeli military veterans

During 1991-92, Israel's security agencies instituted changes in their techniques for interrogating Palestinian detainees. Rather than using brute force that was not centrally overseen, they began to use painful measures that did not leave scars, that were more tightly controlled by higher officials, and that they portrayed in public as humane. Israeli agencies did not apply these changes to interrogations in southern Lebanon, however. In Palestine, but not in Lebanon, the targeted population actively used world media to publicize allegations of mistreatment and notified international agencies and human rights groups of their plight. The Israeli changes illustrate that global forces are pushing at least some states to alter their sanctioned violence practices toward a worldwide norm of legitimacy that emphasizes professionalism, rationalization, and bureaucratization. Sociological field theory can explain much of this behavior but requires some modification to account for variations such as those described here.

Local human rights organizations (LHROs) are key domestic and transnational actors, modifying, diffusing, and promoting liberal norms; mobilizing citizens; networking with the media and activists; and pressuring governments to implement international commitments. These groups, however, are reliant on international funds. This makes sense in politically repressive environments, where potential donors fear government retaliation, but is puzzling elsewhere. We interviewed 263 LHRO leaders and key informants from 60 countries, and conducted statistically representative surveys of 6180 respondents in India, Mexico, Morocco, and Nigeria. Based on these data, we believe LHRO funding in non-repressive environments is shaped by philanthropic logics of appropriateness. In the late 1990s, transnational activists successfully mainstreamed human rights throughout the international donor assistance community, freeing up development money for LHROs. Domestic activists in the global South have not promoted similar philanthropic transformations at home, where charitable giving still focuses on traditional institutions. Instead, domestic rights activists have followed the path of least resistance toward international aid, a logic of outcomes produced by variations in global logics of (philanthropic) appropriateness.

HIn Taking Root: Human Rights and Public Opinion in the Global South (Oxford University Press, 2017), James Ron, Shannon Golden, David Crow, and Archana Pandya challenge conventional wisdom about human rights advocacy. The book draws on a unique series of nationally representative surveys conducted in Mexico, Colombia, Morocco, India, and Nigeria between 2011 and 2013—capturing the views of nearly 6,000 respondents in urban and rural settings. The central finding: human rights principles enjoy far more popular legitimacy in the Global South than elites often assume. Across diverse contexts, majorities of ordinary people expressed support for the idea that governments should respect human rights. At the same time, respondents were cautious about human rights NGOs, often perceiving them as elite-driven, internationally funded, and disconnected from local needs. This book breaks new ground by empirically examining the “demand side” of human rights—the beliefs and attitudes of citizens, rather than just the strategies of NGOs or the policies of states. Its insights are essential for understanding how rights movements can build legitimacy and local support in societies marked by poverty, inequality, and political violence. The project has taken on new resonance in light of recent debates over the foreign funding of NGOs and the fragility of human rights support in polarized environments. For example, James Ron’s more recent essay, “A Human Rights Funding Tragedy Foretold”, builds directly on Taking Root’s insights, showing how overreliance on external donors has left many Global South NGOs politically vulnerable.

This article examines a long-standing critique: that international and local human rights organizations (HROs) are too closely aligned with U.S. foreign policy, acting as “handmaidens of empire.” Using original Human Rights Perceptions Poll survey data from over 9,300 respondents in six countries—Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, India, Morocco, and Nigeria—we test whether publics view HROs as allies of Washington or as independent, even counter-hegemonic actors. Our findings show a consistent pattern: across regions, trust in HROs is either uncorrelated with or negatively associated with trust in the U.S. government. In Latin America, where U.S. influence has been most pervasive, the inverse relationship is particularly strong: citizens who mistrust Washington express greater trust in both international and local HROs. These results suggest that publics in the Global South do not perceive rights groups as U.S. foreign policy tools, but rather as either neutral or critical of American power. The article contributes to debates on human rights legitimacy, U.S. soft power, and global perceptions of NGOs. It provides one of the first systematic, cross-national examinations of public opinion on HROs’ geopolitical alignment, challenging assumptions held by both critics and defenders of the international human rights movement.

In Frontiers and Ghettos: State Violence in Serbia and Israel (University of California Press, 2003), James Ron explores a critical question: Why do states unleash extreme violence in some places, but not in others? Drawing on fieldwork in Serbia, Bosnia, Israel, the West Bank, and Lebanon, Ron argues that the answer lies in the interaction between state institutions and geography. The book introduces the concepts of the “ghetto”—zones under direct state control where violence is regulated and legalized—and the “frontier”—spaces outside or beyond the law where states tolerate or encourage unrestrained brutality. Using case studies of Serbian paramilitary attacks on Bosnian Muslims and Israeli practices in the West Bank, Gaza, and southern Lebanon, Ron shows how the same state actors could behave with “savage restraint” in one zone and unleash indiscriminate violence in another. These findings help explain the devastating trajectory of Gaza today. As Ron warned two decades ago, once Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005 and reclassified it as a “frontier” rather than a “ghetto,” the enclave became vulnerable to catastrophic levels of violence. The war of 2023–25 tragically confirms this prediction. Frontiers and Ghettos has influenced scholarship on political violence, human rights, and international law, offering a framework that remains urgently relevant.

Boundary-related inequalities are perhaps starkest during war, where one’s location vis-a-vis a boundary can mean the difference between life and death. Drawing on field interviews in the former Yugoslavia, I explore the impact of the newly created Bosnia/Yugoslavia border on the lives of Muslim Slavs during the first year of the Bosnian War. On what became the Bosnian side of the border, Yugoslav authorities helped ethnic Serb paramilitaries launch a wave of ethnic cleansing, forcing tens of thousands of Muslims from their homes. Miles away in the Sandzak, however, a partially Muslim area on the Yugoslav side of the boundary, those same authorities blocked forced displacement of Muslims, prompting Serbian paramilitaries to engage instead in ethnic harassment, a perverse but less lethal phenomenon involving nationalist threats, attacks on property, and occasional murders or kidnappings. Although Sandzak’s 200,000 Muslims feared the Serbian paramilitaries living in their midst, the irregular fighters, many of whom were active in the nearby Bosnian fighting, did not launch systematic attacks inside Yugoslavia. Sandzak’s Muslims, in other words, were spared the destruction visited upon their Bosnian co-nationals, many of whom lived only miles away. For Sandzak’s Muslims, the new Bosnia/Yugoslavia territorial marker was enormously significant. Ironically, Muslims along the Bosnia/Yugoslav divide were safer if they were inside rather than immediately outside Serbian-dominated Yugoslavia.