Last year, Erik Voeten and Laurence Helfer found that international institutions can effectively push countries to protect gay rights – but only where popular support for gay rights is low and the government is secular or urban. Voeten elaborates:
In countries with high levels of public acceptance and an urban and non-religious government, policy change [toward recognizing civil rights] happens without international legal action. Rural, religious, and nationalist governments tend to resist liberalization regardless. Yet low public support but a government that is not necessarily ideologically opposed to liberalization creates an opportunity for an international intervention to make a difference. We estimate that a substantial number of countries, especially in Eastern and Southern Europe, have more liberal LGBT rights laws than we would have expected in the absence of international court action.
He adds that court rulings have the greatest effect in countries where homophobia is widespread, “suggesting that the institution matters where it is needed most”:
There is little evidence that the legal changes in these European countries have noticeably changed public attitudes or that they have eliminated discrimination in society. Nonetheless, it matters that you cannot be thrown in jail for consensual sex.
The Dish 