Articles

• Kosař, David
• Petrov, Jan

Abstract

The aim of this article is to explore factors that account for compliance difficulties that may eventually result in a variable level of implementation of the rulings of the European Court of Human Rights and the United Nations Human Rights Committee. We do so by focusing on the high-cost rulings requiring complex legislative measures rendered against the Czech Republic, which ranks among the best compliers among Central and Eastern European countries as well as overall. Our study shows that the level of compliance achieved depends on a repeated balancing exercise, in which domestic political actors balance domestic political costs of compliance against international reputational costs of non-compliance. Subsequently, we argue that the lapse of time is critical in understanding the compliance processes as, sometimes, even a short moment of time, when domestic political costs of compliance become lower than international reputational costs of non-compliance, may create a ‘window of opportunity’ for adopting legislation that is necessary for implementing the given rulings of international human rights bodies. Pro-compliance actors then have to take full advantage of such ‘windows of opportunity’. If they fail to do so, this window may close for a long time, if not forever.