id	author	title	date	pages	extension	mime	words	sentence	flesch	summary	cache	txt
cjrl-2316	Jallad, Zeina	The Power of the Body: Analyzing the Logic of Law and Social Change in the Arab Spring	2016	30	.pdf	application/pdf	18070	719	44	In such contexts, civil society constantly lobbies for reform and monitors government compliance with international treaties.23 In repressive states, civil society advocates can operate only within the margins of allocated space, utilizing various mechanisms to mobilize for reform and effect change.24 However, most repressive states lack the two principal interdependent conditions for genuine implementation of human rights law: democratic mechanisms through which the promise of human rights norms can be effectuated, and civil society institutions capable of pressing for the implementation of those norms.25 When neither condition is present, international human rights law is stripped of its tools and its potential.26 As a result, not only does ratification of human rights treaties by repressive regimes fail to guarantee better respect for human rights, it also risks providing those regimes with a political fig leaf to conceal violations of human rights.27 While some human rights scholars have been optimistic about the effectiveness of human rights law and its contribution to the promotion of human rights in repressive societies,28 others have offered evidence to the contrary,29 demonstrating the conditional effectiveness of human rights law.30 The latter tend to doubt states’ actual compliance with international human rights law which, “if it takes place at all, may well happen sporadically and in fits and starts.	cache/cjrl-2316.pdf	txt/cjrl-2316.txt