Assessing the Success of National Human Rights Action Plans through a Political Economy Lens : The Case of Chile

National human rights action plans turn state commitments on human rights into policy. After three decades of numerous countries implementing these plans, the few existing assessments of their success are inconclusive. This paper develops a political economy framework to complement previous studies. The approach hypothesizes that such action plans will be successful only if they are built on political consensus; their perceived political benefits exceed their costs; and governments have adequate resources to design and implement them. The paper tests this hypothesis in Chile, a country with a recent history of human rights violations and sustained inequalities that is legally bound to produce human rights action plans. The findings show that these plans have not been successful in Chile, as none of the three conditions is satisfied. The paper contends that the proposed political economy framework can be replicated across multiple national action plans, countries, and contexts.