States often file reservations to human rights treaties with the goal of reducing their legal commitments under the treaty. Other states within the treaty have the right to declare objections in response to states making reservations. This is a potentially powerful tool for objecting states, and has numerous consequences for relations within and outside the human rights institution. So why do only some states lodge formal objections, while others do not? We argue that states consider the degree of social power they wield over a reserving state when formulating the decision to lodge an objection, because higher levels of social power amplify the effects of an objection. To evaluate our expectation, we gather data on all states’ reserving and objecting behaviors within the Convention against Torture. Controlling for a number of factors, we find that the measure of social power significantly increases the likelihood that a state will object to another state's reservation. This research calls attention to the power of objections as a legal tool, and suggests areas of future research for the effects of objections on the legality of human rights agreements.

中文翻译：

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社会权力与人权条约中的保留和反对政治

国家经常对人权条约提出保留，目的是减少其在条约下的法律承诺。条约内的其他国家有权对提出保留的国家提出反对。这是反对国家的潜在强大工具，并对人权机构内外的关系产生许多影响。那么，为什么只有一些州提出正式反对意见，而其他州没有呢？我们认为，国家在制定提出反对的决定时会考虑他们对保留国家行使的社会权力程度，因为更高水平的社会权力会放大反对的影响。为了评估我们的期望，我们收集了所有国家在《禁止酷刑公约》中的保留和反对行为的数据。控制多种因素，我们发现，社会权力的衡量显着增加了一个国家反对另一个国家的保留的可能性。这项研究呼吁关注反对作为一种法律工具的力量，并就反对对人权协议合法性的影响提出了未来研究的领域。