Varieties of How Actors Use Human Rights Treaties in Subnational Policy Processes

In this chapter, we examine the varieties of how actors use international human rights treaties in policy processes at the subnational level. As explained in Chapters 1 and 2 , our case studies are the Istanbul Convention (IC) and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) in Swiss cantons. Here, we identify the most relevant actors and how they come to know about a treaty, and we then categorise various uses according to the actors and to the stage of the policy process in which the actors intervene. We find that various subnational actors—including bureaucrats, elected politicians (members of cantonal parliaments or governments), civil society representatives and academic experts—use treaties according to their own local interests, agendas and strategies. The uses of the treaties often occur along a continuous and incremental process involving back and forth and both top-down and bottom-up dynamics. In the policy process, subnational actors use treaties to (a) set issues on the policy agenda and (b) to support claims (new ones or existing ones). If the relevant subnational political authorities use a treaty with a view to further its implementation, we qualify this type of use as an engagement, which we will address in Chapter 5 .