Evidence in Demand: An Overview of Evidence and Methods in Assessing Impact of Economic and Social Rights

The article examines evidence and methods in the recent human rights literature which reports on the impact of economic and social rights. The article is structured according to the four main analytical entry points under which distinct methods of social rights impact assessment are used: social rights litigation (evidence through analysis of legal texts and mainly qualitative evidence), the results of ratifications and constitutionalisation (evidence through comparative quantitative data analysis), the results of human rights policy reforms (evidence through the use of quantitative data and qualitative interpretation) and the results of civil society advocacy and human rights-based approaches (predominantly qualitative evidence). The paper concludes that positive changes are documented with respect to all methods examined, but the causal linkages between the social rights analysed and the results on the ground are not always well-established, or they provide conflicting interpretations, demonstrating that this field of research is still relatively young.