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Chapter 2

Empirical Theories and Studies of Political Repression

On April 26, just after the announcement that Faure won the election, several cities erupted in violence. The government [of Togo] deployed security forces to quell demonstrations. Security forces fired tear gas indiscriminately into crowds. After dispersing large crowds, they began a house-by-house campaign of violence against supposed opposition supporters in reprisal for protesting alleged electoral fraud. Security forces targeted neighborhoods thought to be opposition strongholds, killing persons in their houses and shooting at those who tried to flee. (U.S. Department of State 2005)

Several hundred Falun Gong adherents reportedly have died in detention [in China] due to torture, abuse, and neglect since the crackdown on Falun Gong began in 1999. For example, Falun Gong groups alleged that more than 50 persons died in custody in June through August, many from torture in detention camps. (U.S. Department of State 2003)

On February 24, Sucre state police in Cumana [Venezuela] used tear gas canisters and pellet guns against students at the University Institute of Technology who were protesting peacefully noncompletion of the cafeteria. One student, Angel Castillo Munoz, died as a result of being hit in the head by rubber bullets and falling unconscious into an area flooded by tear gas. Police reportedly continued to fire, despite students’ attempts to surrender, resulting in a delay of medical care to the injured. (U.S. Department of State 1999)

Why Do States Repress Their Own Citizens?

While most of the current empirical work on political repression has approached states’ behavior from the perspective of international relations theory (primarily a “soft” rational-choice perspective), I seek to expand the theoretical underpinnings of a broader set of subfields in political science, including public law and comparative politics. As I noted in Chapter 1, I do not aim to offer an overarching grand theory that synthesizes the theoretical concerns of these subfields; however, I argue that these theories express commonalities that I incorporate under Most and Starr’s (1989) organizing concepts of opportunity and willingness. I believe these concepts are useful here for structuring the somewhat disparate approaches through which these diverse fields attempt to understand political repression or human rights abuse. Most and Starr conceptualize opportunity as “a shorthand term for the possibilities that are available within any environment” that as such “represents the total set of environmental constraints and possibilities,” and they conceptualize willingness as “a shorthand term for the choice (and the process of choice) that is related to the selection of some behavioral option from a range of alternatives” and the subsequent employment of “available capabilities to further some policy over others” (23). These two overarching concepts are derived from the Sprouts’ “ecological triad,” which is composed of an entity (with its policy/choice processes), its context or environment, and the relationship or interaction between the entity/agent and the environment (1956, 1965, 1968, and 1969). Most and Starr argue that state decisionmakers are surrounded by factors that structure the nature of their decisions that form a complex set of incentive structures. They conceptualize the interaction between agent/entity and structure/environment with the metaphor of a menu that provides “a number of behavioral choice/possibilities” (28), and they argue that “factors based in both the agent (values, preferences, resources, etc.) and the structure (prices, size of portion, reputation for certain dishes, etc.) will make certain choices more or less likely” (Friedman and Starr 2007, 6). This framework fits the underlying soft rationalism of the political repression literature. Most human rights scholars assume that political leaders are rational actors in that they choose from a menu of policy options and employ the tools of repression because they see those tools to be the most effective means to stay in power. I assume throughout this book that the most pervasive factor that increases leaders’ willingness to repress is a threat to the leaders’ rule, whether real or perceived, and that the more serious the threat, the more willing state leaders are to employ repression to deter or impose a cost on actions or views that challenge the regime or its policies. I argue, however, that state actors carefully weigh the costs and benefits of engaging in repressive action, and also consider a menu of alternative mechanisms of control, as well as assessing the odds of achieving their goals with these tools. In the sections that follow I address the general theoretical expectations in more detail, and in the subsequent chapters I will explore these theories more fully and derive testable hypotheses. In the second half of this chapter I examine the body of empirical work on political repression and place this work within that literature.

Key Theoretical Perspectives on Repression of Human Rights

Rational Actor Theories

As noted above, much of the human rights literature takes a soft, rational actor approach. Even though the earliest empirical studies largely focused on the domestic environment, over time human rights studies have drawn increasingly upon the dominant theory in international relations, especially as the compliance literature has grown. As the rational approach has been applied to states’ human rights behavior, the literature has gradually broadened beyond the approach’s assumption of a unitary state actor, and has expanded its focus to domestic institutions and actors, as we will see below. The rational actor approaches fall easily within Most and Starr’s framework in that these approaches would generally perceive a regime’s opportunity and willingness to use the tools of repression to be either facilitated or constrained by both the domestic and international environment.

(NEO)REALISM AND RATIONAL FUNCTIONALISM

Both realists and rational functionalists perceive states as unitary rational actors that primarily behave on the basis of self-interest; thus they would argue that decisions by the state on whether to adhere to international human rights norms or to engage in repression would largely be a function of the state’s calculation of the benefits and costs of engaging the various choices. As these are international relations approaches, their perspective on state repression and human rights behavior more generally focuses on the role of the international human rights regime and international organizations, and more specifically on state decisions to join human rights treaties, and the subsequent decision of whether or to what extent to comply with the legal obligation. Realists in international relations (Morgenthau 1948; Hoffmann 1956; Waltz 1979; Gilpin 1987) emphasize the dominance of power and the norm of sovereignty in a weak and decentralized international legal system, which they argue diminishes the likelihood that legal authority will constrain the behavior of states. They posit that any observed compliance with international norms or treaties simply reflects a convergence of interests that will dissipate once the state’s material interests conflict with its normative commitments (Hoffmann 1956; Waltz 1979; Mearsheimer 1994). Thus, realists ultimately remain skeptical about the development of international law beyond serving the interests of the most powerful states, which they argue typically do not have sufficient self-interest to impose sanctions for violations of international human rights law (Krasner 1993; Donnelly 1998). Both realists and rational functionalists note that the formal mechanisms for monitoring and enforcing human rights commitments are deliberately weak, thus allowing states to engage in cheap talk with little or no direct costs. In addition, these treaties lack the potential effects of market forces, reciprocal benefits, or potential retaliation from other state parties that typically motivate compliance with international financial agreements (Neumayer 2005). At the same time regimes may face domestic circumstances that make compliance with international norms too costly, even for well-intentioned states, particularly in the face of perceived or real internal threats to the regime.

Rational functionalists also perceive state behavior as being interest-driven and recognize the dominant value of state sovereignty; however, they argue that international agreements provide a means through which states can cooperate to solve problems that they cannot achieve unilaterally, and therefore states are willing to sacrifice some measure of sovereignty for this benefit (Bilder 1989). While the mutual benefits of interstate cooperation through trade and monetary agreements readily come to mind, it is much more difficult to identify the mutual benefit of agreements that regulate activities such as human rights that are purely internal to the state rather than interactions among states (Moravcsik 2000). However, it is possible that states may acquire indirect benefits, such as bilateral or multilateral aid, through participation in the international human rights regime. In addition, they may avoid reputational costs, particularly identification as a “pariah state,” for failure to participate in the regime. While rational functionalism has tended to focus on the question of formal commitment to human rights treaties, the theory is increasingly applied to the question of compliance with international norms or treaties, with the expectation that, given the weak enforcement mechanisms of the agreements and the low probability of sanctions, compliance will most likely be driven by calculations related to reputation (Simmons 2000; Hathaway 2005).

In the context of the human rights literature, these approaches typically focus on the commitment to and compliance with international norms, specifically human rights treaties; however, international human rights norms broadly speaking, and human rights treaty commitments more specifically, are both strongly associated with expectations that these norms and/or commitments will be translated into domestic law and policy and protected by domestic institutions, particularly the judiciary. To the extent that the adoption or maintenance of constitutional provisions for core rights represents compliance with international treaty commitments, realists would expect that commitment to these norms in constitutional documents would simply reflect a convergence of interests that, once again, would dissipate once the state’s material interests conflicted with the formal commitments, and thus the state would be likely to ignore or change its constitutional commitments when it was no longer beneficial to its goals. In other words, the commitments would not be likely to alter the menu of policy choices, especially if the regime’s primary interest, staying in power, was threatened from within or without. It is, however, more likely that formal commitments to international human rights norms through domestic constitutions will be associated with stronger legal remedies for violations and enforcement mechanisms than those of human rights treaties. Specifically, constitutions that provide for an independent judiciary increase the potential costs of the regime’s choice to engage in political repression. The third stream of the rational actor approach addresses the influence of the judiciary and domestic institutions more broadly.

DOMESTIC INSTITUTIONS/DEMOCRATIC PEACE

A third stream within the rational actor perspective dismisses the assumption of a unitary state actor and instead recognizes the role of numerous domestic actors and institutions within the state (particularly in democratic regimes) that may affect the regime’s menu of acceptable policy options or its calculation of costs and benefits related to commitment to international national human rights norms and with subsequent (non)compliance to formal commitment to the norms. Poe, Tate, and Keith (1999) argued that state leaders have less opportunity and less willingness to employ the tools of repression when faced with domestic or international conflict (293 and citations therein). As I noted above, opportunity is constrained because the structure and limited nature of democratic governments, which may include separation of powers and/or checks and balances, make it difficult for state actors to coordinate extensive use of repression. The necessity to utilize repression as a tool to solve conflict can be mitigated in democracies because they provide a variety of alternative mechanisms through which conflict can be channeled for possible resolution (Poe, Tate, and Keith 1999; Davenport 2007c), in turn, weakening the state’s justification for coercive state action. The need to employ the tools of repression is also dampened by “the socialization processes that guide citizens of democratic polities toward the belief that nonviolent means of resolving conflicts are preferred over violence” (Poe, Tate, and Keith 1999, 293). The democratic norms of compromise, toleration, and facilitation may influence the decisions of the rulers by “increasing the cost of human rights violations as well as decreasing the value to quiescence” (Davenport 1999, 96). The cost of repression is increased in democracy as the electoral process “provides citizens (at least those with political resources) the tools to oust potentially abusive leaders from office before they are able to become a serious threat” (Poe and Tate 1994, 855).

It is not just democratic electoral processes but also the legal institutions associated with democratic systems that can provide the public and other political actors with the tools and venues through which they can hold the regime accountable should it fail to keep its formal commitments, both domestic (Keith 2002b) and international (for example, Keith 1999; Neumayer 2005; Hathaway 2007; Powell and Staton 2009). A truly independent judiciary, in particular, “should be able to withstand incursions upon rights because (1) the courts’ power and fiscal well-being are protected, (2) the courts have some ability to review the actions of other agencies of government, and (3) the judges’ jobs are constitutionally protected” (Keith, Tate, and Poe 2009, 649). Powell and Staton (2009) posit that in states where the courts are influential (effective), the use of repression may lead to rights claims in which the regime will incur a loss of resources as punishment for violating its obligations (154). In addition, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) may initiate human rights litigation and form with courts what Moustafa refers to as “judicial support networks,” which consist of domestic and transnational institutions and associations that support the judiciary’s independence and power, which in turn are necessary for activists to pursue their claims (Moustafa 2008, 2007, 44).

These general explanations tend to assume a rather monolithic set of democracies, although it should be noted that most empirical human rights studies ultimately test the level of democratization rather than assuming a simple dichotomy. Most studies also tend to assume a linear association, at least in their empirical models. Recent theoretical and empirical work suggests that these often-unstated assumptions do not accurately reflect the true relationship between democracy and repression. Some scholars argue that there is “more repression in the middle,” with full autocracies and democracies applying relatively low amounts of repression (with the latter being the least coercive) and mixed and transitional regimes, which combine elements of autocracy and democracy, being the most coercive (Regan and Henderson 2002, 120, modifying Fein 1995). Reagan and Henderson argue that autocratic regimes are suspicious of attempts to subvert their rule, and “in the face of an overarching state police machinery, the public is cowed and quiescent and made more accepting of domination, such that violent repression by the autocratic state is less likely” (123). However, they argue that the insufficiently developed infrastructure of semi-democratic regimes does not allow for the efficient channeling of opposition or dissent into the political arena, and the fragility of the institutions of government and the more limited range of options available encourage these leaders to respond harshly to opposition threats out of fear of political usurpation (124). In more recent work, both Davenport and Armstrong (2004) and Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2005) argue that the relationship between democracy and repression has been misspecified and that a threshold effect is a more accurate characterization. Specifically, Davenport and Armstrong argue that

until there is a particular combination of institutions and behavioral factors in place, authorities will not be compelled to respect human rights. Below this critical point, the constraints are not comprehensive or severe enough to deter repressive action nor are the social control mechanisms well enough situated to provide viable alternatives for state repression. As these institutions and behavioral patterns gain strength beyond some threshold and the country’s over-all level of democracy increases, however, the repressive behavior used by authorities should decrease. Above the critical point, constraints become too significant to ignore, and democracy functions as an acceptable substitute for influencing citizens. (542)

Other scholars have perceived democracy as multi-dimensional, following Lasswell (1950) and Dahl (1971), and have sought to understand which dimensions of democracy are more likely to lessen the use of political repression (Gleditsch and Ward 1997; Keith 2002a; Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2005).

Scholars also have attempted to distinguish between types of autocracy. For example, scholars have examined the role of military regimes (McKinlay and Cohen 1975; Poe and Tate 1994; Poe, Tate, and Keith 1999, Davenport 2007b) and Marxist-Leninist regimes (Mitchell and McCormick 1988; Poe and Tate 1994; Poe, Tate, and Keith 1999). The expectation that military regimes are more willing and able to use the tools of repression than other regimes has been well established, extending back to the work of McKinlay and Cohen (1975), who found that military regimes were more likely than civilian ones to suspend constitutions and to ban assemblies and political parties. As Poe and Tate (1994) noted, this increased willingness of a military regime to employ coercive means against its civilian population is not surprising, as “military juntas are based on force, and force is the key to coercion” (858). And as Poe, Tate, and Keith (1999, 293) argued, because the leaders in a military regime have direct control of the instruments of coercion, they will also be likely to face fewer constraints and barriers than other leaders if they choose to act repressively. As Poe and Tate (1994) noted, “since military rule is by definition antithetical to democracy, it might be that any apparent relationship between military rule and state terrorism is spurious, a result of a failure to control for the democratic/nondemocratic nature of the regime” (858). Davenport (2007b) argues that in “political systems where the agents of repression (i.e., the military) directly wield power, there is a higher likelihood that repressive behavior—especially violent activity—would be applied out of habit, familiarity, an impulse to meet specific organizational norms, and a desire to expand prestige in/control over the political system” (486). However, Davenport points out that there is a significant scholarship that disagrees with some of these assumptions: “Others have noted that the armed forces tend to shy away from their area of expertise and implementing repressive behavior. Indeed, the hesitancy of the ‘professional soldier’ to interfere in domestic politics because of organizational norms is a constant theme in older research … persisting up to the present” (491 and citations therein). Additionally, he argues that a military regime will have less need to resort to “overt manifestations of coercive power” because “such power is signaled by the presence of the military itself” (491). As we will see below, empirical studies have been rather mixed in determining the influence of military regimes.

Most recently, Davenport (2007b) has argued that different types of autocratic regimes vary in their use of repression. He challenges the general assumption that all autocratic regimes uniformly lack alternative mechanisms of sociopolitical control and thus resort to coercive power. He argues that research on autocratic regimes has demonstrated that in fact they vary significantly in the strategies they use (490 and citations therein). In particular, he distinguishes two extreme types: personalist systems and single-party systems, with some regime types such as military regimes and hybrid systems in between. He argues that in personalist systems, which are the most isolated of all, “repressive behavior emerges when autocratic leaders are isolated and have involved a smaller number of actors in the political process,” and “the likelihood of repressive behavior is increased as those inside the ruling clique attempt to protect themselves from those that do not have any institutional means to influence government policy/practice” (486). And he argues that single-party systems, which are the least insulated, are the least repressive of autocratic regimes because “authorities have involved more individuals/organizations,” and the likelihood of repression is thus lower because “those in power are able to use alternative mechanisms of control to influence the population by ‘channeling’ them through established political institutions” (486). Davenport admits that the extent to which a single-party system provides alternative mechanisms of solving grievances or promoting alternative mechanisms of control may be weak, but nonetheless, “they do provide some venue within which discussion/aspirations/activism can take place—in a sense, it may be the only ‘show in town,’ but at least there is a show” (490). As we will see below, his empirical analyses support these expectations. Vreeland (2008) also argues that the domestic political institutions of authoritarian regimes are not monolithic; he posits that an authoritarian regime that faces multiple legal political parties may have an incentive to concede to the parties’ pressure to make a small concession and commit to international human rights norms. Ginsburg (2003) makes a similar argument in regard to authoritarian regimes’ adopting constitutional constraints such as judicial review.

The repression literature has approached with some caution the expectation that leftist regimes will be more likely to repress than non-Marxist regimes, and, as we will see below, that hesitancy has been justified empirically. Nonetheless, policymakers such as former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Jeane Kirkpatrick have argued that Marxist or Marxist-Leninist regimes are the world’s most repressive regimes, and political scientists have treated the assertion to be at least a testable hypothesis (Mitchell and McCormick 1988; Poe and Tate 1994; Poe, Tate, and Keith 1999). For example, Mitchell and McCormick (1988) find that such regimes are in fact more repressive on at least one of their dimensions of repression than are non-Marxist “authoritarian” regimes (480–81, 493–95). Poe and Tate (1994) noted that “such a finding is not surprising if one takes seriously the tenets of MarxistLeninist theory about the need for a dictatorship of the proletariat” (858); however, the results of their analyses tended to support critics of U.S. foreign policy that had taken Kirkpatrick and the Department of State to task for unfairly linking all socialist regimes with repression. As we will see below, the relationship appeared only in analyses using human rights measures as reported by the Department of State, suggesting that the leftist regime measure may have been simply controlling for a Department of State bias. Subsequent analyses that have expanded the time frame beyond the 1980s have failed to support the hypothesis that leftist regimes are more repressive; in fact the analyses have suggested just the opposite (Poe, Tate, and Keith 1999; Keith 2002). As Keith (2002) notes, there are two likely explanations. First, in Marxist or Marxist-Leninist regimes control of society and personal freedoms has often been so complete that the regime might be less likely than its non-leftist counterparts to need to engage in these more severe abuses of personal integrity rights to maintain order. Second, as Duvall and Stohl (1983) and Lopez and Stohl (1992) have argued, human rights repression may have an “‘afterlife,’ which affects the behavior of people long after the observable use of coercion by state agents has ended” (Lopez and Stohl 218). Thus, past repression in leftist regimes may actually reduce the need for future repression or the need for more severe forms of repression, such as those measured by personal integrity rights abuse.

The domestic institutions perspective fits firmly within the opportunity and willingness framework. Domestic institutions can either reduce or increase the cost of the choice to employ repression. The limited nature of democratic governments makes extensive use of repression more difficult and costly to arrange, and the electoral processes associated with democracies give citizens the potential to periodically change governments and thus increase the cost of repression. Democratic norms of compromise, toleration, and facilitation along with alternative processes for conflict resolution remove repression from the menu of appropriate policy tools, except in extraordinary circumstances. On the other hand, the nature and norms of military regimes may increase the perception that state coercion of citizens belongs in the menu of appropriate government responses, and the regime may face little cost or few barriers in choosing to employ the tools of repression. However, the past and current environment may lessen the need of military and leftist regimes to engage in overt coercive state action. The mere power of the military’s presence may obviate that need, and the leftist regimes’ overwhelming control of every dimension of society may lessen its need to engage in more severe forms of repression.

Theories Related to International Norms and Socialization

Another set of theoretical approaches generally focuses on transnational or international interaction and socialization, which are believed to drive the creation of and commitment to international human rights norms, rather than rationalist calculations. These perspectives emphasize the transformative power of international normative discourse on human rights and the role of activism by transnational actors (international organizations and nongovernmental actors), who through repeated interactions with state actors socialize states to accept new norms and who also support local efforts to press for a commitment to human rights. Thus, this perspective’s emphasis is on the processes through which state actors adopt formal constraints on the state’s opportunity to repress and through which state actors eventually internalize international human rights norms or values, which over time remove many of the tools of repression from the state’s menu of appropriate policy options. Two of these approaches are particularly relevant to the study of political repression: the transnational advocacy networks perspective and the world society approach.

TRANSNATIONAL ADVOCACY NETWORKS

The transnational advocacy networks perspective (Keck and Sikkink 1998; Risse, Ropp, and Sikkink 1999) posits that international human rights norms are diffused through networks of transnational and domestic actors who “bring pressure ‘from above’ and ‘from below’ to accomplish human rights change” (Risse and Sikkink 1999, 18). Risse and Sikkink identify a process of socialization through which international norms are internalized and implemented domestically, and they identify three types of causal mechanisms that they deem to be necessary for enduring internalization of human rights norms: (1) the process of instrumental adaptation and strategic bargaining; (2) the process of moral consciousness-raising, argumentation, dialogue, and persuasion; and (3) the processes of institutionalization and habitualization (5).

Risse and Sikkink note that the first process, which typically occurs early in the socialization process, is essentially compatible with rational-choice assumptions: state actors make tactical concessions in pursuit of instrumental or material interests, such as releasing political prisoners to retain bilateral aid. In other words, state actors “adjust their behavior to the international human rights discourse without necessarily believing in the validity of the norms” (12). Risse and Sikkink note that sometimes repressive governments will return to repression once the pressure decreases, as Kenya did in the early 1990s. Sometimes, however, the regimes change their discursive practices and start institutionalizing international norms into domestic law for instrumental reasons, and “this in turn opens space for the domestic opposition to catch the government in its own rhetoric”; at this point “instrumental and communicative rationality intertwine,” and thereafter it is very difficult for the regime to deny the validity of human rights norms (15).

Risse and Sikkink argue that the argumentative/persuasion process is still “not sufficient to socialize states into norms-abiding practices” and caution that we cannot consider norms to be internalized in domestic practice until actors comply with the norms irrespective of individual beliefs about their validity (16). Thus, they propose a final type of socialization process, in which norms are gradually institutionalized to such an extent that human rights norms are incorporated as part of the “‘standard operating procedure’ of domestic institutions” (17). Once this stage of institutionalization is reached, changes in government and individual state actors matter less because norms are simply taken for granted and are implemented independently of the moral consciousness of the individual actors (17).

Ultimately, Risse, Ropp, and Sikkink (1999) present a five-phase spiral model that assumes that political repression triggers activation of a transnational network of NGOs that invokes human rights norms and applies pressure on the repressive state to make concessions; the repressive state denies the validity of the human rights norms as a subject for international jurisdiction and instead asserts the norm of nonintervention; the regime eventually makes some tactical concessions to the transnational network; the regime then becomes trapped in its own rhetoric and concessions, which can lead to either the opposition bringing about a regime change or a process of gradual liberalization; the regime accepts international norms (ratifies treaties and institutionalizes domestically), and ultimately we see rule-consistent behavior due to the regime’s acceptance of the validity of human rights and to increased scrutiny under the monitoring and reporting mechanisms of the treaties.

WORLD SOCIETY APPROACH

A second perspective, the world society approach (for example, Boli-Bennett 1976; Meyer et al. 1997) perceives states to be embedded in an integrated cultural system that “promulgates cognitive frames and normative prescriptions that constitute the legitimate identities, structures, and purposes of modern nation-states” (Cole 2005, 477). Thus, with the proliferation of treaties codifying human rights norms, states’ legitimacy or “good nation” identity is increasingly linked to the formal acknowledgment of these norms (Cole 2005; Wotipka and Ramirez 2007). As Go (2003) notes, the approach posits that newly emerging or independent states will be likely to adopt standardized forms of government, and over time will appear to be similar to other nation-states around the world. As noted in Chapter 1, he finds strong evidence that “documentary constitutionalism has become a globally shared mode of organizing sociopolitical formations” (72). Further, he argues that the approach suggests not only that all states have constitutions, but also that all constitutions come in a very similar package because the larger world system dictates that they should. This perspective posits three mechanisms through which states are influenced by the world polity: the degree of participation in global civil society, particularly membership in international governmental organizations (IGOs) and international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) (Boli and Thomas 1997); participation in international human rights conferences (Goodman and Jinks 2004); and normative bandwagoning (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998). However, as Cole notes, many states join the traditionally weak human rights regime “not out of deep commitment, but because it signals their probity to the international community,” and thus “a decoupling is endemic to the human rights regime” (2005, 477). As Hafner-Burton and Tsutsui (2005) note, this convergence in organization forms and policies does not necessarily lead to changes in state repression, as formal changes are often nominal (1383 and citations therein).

I believe these approaches fall within Most and Starr’s framework in that they perceive that a regime’s opportunities to use the tools of repression are either facilitated or constrained by both the domestic and global environment and influenced by both domestic and transnational actors. The constructivist emphasis on the transformative power of international normative discourse and repeated interactions with state actors assumes that states are socialized to accept new norms. Thus, constructivists would argue that international socialization changes both the menu of appropriate choices and the values through which the regime will evaluate the choices.

Liberal Economic Theory

There are two schools of thoughts concerning the somewhat indirect relationship between human rights and global economic interdependence. As Gilpin (1987) notes, liberals believe that an interdependent economy, and trade in particular, facilitates economic development:

Liberalism maintains that an interdependent world economy based on free trade, specialization, and international division of labor facilitates domestic development. Flows of goods, capital, and technology increase optimum efficiency in resource allocation and therefore transmit growth from the developed nations to the less developed countries. Trade can serve as an “engine of growth” as the less-developed economy gains capital, technology, and access to world markets. This is a mutually beneficial relationship since the developed economies can obtain cheaper raw materials and outlets for their capital and manufactured goods. (266)

Ultimately, liberal trade policies are expected not only to facilitate economic development but also to contribute to an improvement in social and political conditions in less economically developed states, and over time to lead to the emergence of a middle class that increasingly make rights demands upon their government (Lipset 1959)—which will ultimately foster democracy and civil liberties (Meyer 1998; Moran 1998). As Apodaca (2001) notes, according to the positive model of globalization theory, the new globalization/economic liberalization “is privileging individuals and weakening abusive governments” (590). On the other hand, the dependency theory critique of liberal economic theory argues generally that more economically developed states exploit less economically developed states, which leads to uneven development and hinders the socioeconomic growth of the states whose economies are vulnerable to the demands of multinational corporations (MNCs) and multilateral lending institutions. This malign view of developing countries’ integration into the global economy holds that “economic globalization exploits the developing world by means of cheap labor, minimal skill transmissions, restrictions on technology transfers and on long-term commitments to stay and invest,” and thus “foreign capital reinforces and strengthens repression in developing countries” (Apodaca 2001, 591). Ultimately, the less economically developed state’s options are constrained by its economic relationships with the developed world, and its decisions are made to benefit MNCs and domestic elites rather than to look out for its own citizens. Thus, the two positions disagree on how globalization would affect the cost/benefit structure of using coercive force. And they also disagree about what controls the menu of appropriate policy tools and priorities—the values and interests of the general public or those of MNCs and economic elites that. As we will see in the next section, empirical evidence has been rather mixed.

Public Law Perspective

The opportunity and willingness framework is also appropriate for the public law perspective, which would posit that a potentially repressive regime would be constrained by a written constitution with a bill of fundamental rights and freedoms that are protected by an independent judiciary empowered with judicial review (for example, Rosenthal 1990; Ramseyer 1994; Prillaman 2000; and Mutua 2001). Written bills of rights greatly extend the reach of the rule of law and provide individual protection from the over-extension of governmental power, providing new duties and standards of justice and fairness that both politicians and bureaucrats are now required to meet, and, more importantly, they represent “catalogues of very important interests and activities over which the individual rather than the state has been given final control” (Beatty 1994, 16). In addition, the law itself may serve as a socializing agent and, when coupled with a strong civil society and a judiciary that is at least somewhat independent, may cultivate a budding rights consciousness within the state (MacGuigan 1965; Martin 1991; Murphy 1993; Tate and Vallinder 1995; Epp 1998). Thus, bills of rights and a judiciary empowered with judicial review could potentially change the menu of appropriate choices, change the costs of inappropriate choices, and influence the values through which the regime will evaluate the choices. Empirical evidence has been somewhat mixed, however. I next turn to the body of empirical literature on political repression.

The Empirical Literature on Political Repression

Over the last two decades we have seen tremendous growth in the body of empirical research that has sought to explain states’ human rights behavior, which in part has been driven by the creation and dissemination of large-N cross-national data sets. This research has primarily focused on two categories of human rights behavior that fall within the broader concept of political repression; however, increasingly, global cross-national studies have sought to explain other human rights, such as economic or basic needs rights, workers’ rights, women’s rights, and asylum or refugee rights. While this book’s focus continues within the larger set of studies, those examining political repression, I expect that the research here will also substantially inform studies of the broader set of human rights. And because this study is also informed in part by those studies, I try to incorporate their findings where appropriate.

Measuring Political Repression

As Davenport (2007) notes, most cross-national studies of human rights tend to focus on two dimensions of state repression separately—primarily addressing the more severe category of repressions, violations of personal integrity (imprisonment, torture, killing, and disappearances) (for example, Poe and Tate 1994; Poe, Tate, and Keith 1999; Cingranelli and Richards 1999a, 1999b; Keith 2002a), or, to a somewhat lesser extent, addressing the broader category of civil liberties restrictions, or negative sanctions as they are sometimes referred to in the literature (for example, Davenport 1995a, 1995b, 2007a, 2007b; Keith 2002; Walker and Poe 2002; Howard and Carey 2004). Studies of abuses of personal integrity have tended to dominate the field, in part because of the egregious nature of the repression, but also in part because, as Risse et al. (1999) note, “these basic ‘rights of the person’ have been most accepted as universal rights, and not simply rights associated with a particular political ideology or system” (3). Studies of personal integrity abuse have tended to employ the dominant indicators in the field: the Political Terror Scale (PTS) or Cingranelli and Richard’s (CIRI) physical integrity measures. The Political Terror Scale (PTS) was originally developed by Stohl and others (Gibney and Stohl 1988; Poe 1992; Gibney and Dalton 1996) and is maintained by Gibney (2011). The CIRI measures are similar to the Political Terror Scale, but the dimensions are disaggregated to measure imprisonment, torture, disappearances, and killings separately (Cingranelli and Richards 1999a, 1999b); however, they are frequently used as an additive index. Studies of the second category of repression, civil liberties restrictions, have also tended to use two dominant measurements: Taylor and Jodice’s (1983) negative sanctions (Davenport 1995a, 1995b, 1996) and Freedom House’s (McColm 1990) Civil Liberties Index (Keith 2002b; Walker and Poe 2002; Davenport 2007b). While most literature to date has focused on political repression as either restrictions of civil liberties or violations of personal integrity, Davenport’s (2007a) most recent work conceptualizes state repression in terms of the degree of lethality that encompasses both the violence dimension captured within the PTS measure and the restrictions captured within the Freedom House measure. These measures will be discussed and examined more fully in Chapter 3.

Major Findings in the Empirical Literature

Political scientists have created a significant body of research examining both domestic and international influences on political repression. In the past couple of decades we have seen the creation and dissemination of large cross-national data sets that encompass all countries and increasingly longer periods. Over time, both our measurements and statistical methodologies have improved substantially. The majority of large-N cross-national studies of state repression have typically focused on explanatory factors that are primarily domestic. These factors largely reflect rational actor assumptions, and they capture both agent (regime) and environment dimensions (domestic threat and opposition and socioeconomic conditions). As Davenport and Armstrong (2004) note, over time a “standard” model has emerged in the repression literature (Poe and Tate 1994; Poe, Tate, and Keith 1999 and citations therein). The standard model has typically included measures of domestic threats or opposition, regime type (democracy, autocracy, military, and leftist), and socioeconomic conditions (economic development, population, and colonial legacy). These influences represent the most consistently studied expectations in the cross-national literature. Some of these factors have proven to be more significant than others in empirical analyses. I discuss these findings in the section that follows. Each of the eight conditions in this standard model represents the domestic context or environment of the state, with one exception (international war, which is a part of the broader state concern with threats to the regime). This context either creates or constrains the regime’s opportunities to repress or affects the regime’s decision-making calculation of the advantage or disadvantage to exercising repressive tools as a means to achieve its policy goals. The body of empirical work has gradually expanded beyond domestic influences to examine a variety of international or transnational influences, including bilateral aid, multilateral lending programs, international treaty regimes, trade relations, and foreign investment. In this section I seek to identify the most important factors that have been shown to constrain or facilitate a state’s choice to employ the tool of repression, while at the same time identifying some of the weaknesses that still limit our understanding of such behavior. I discuss domestic influences first, then the international or transnational influences, noting, of course, that increasingly these contexts are difficult to separate from each other.

Domestic Influences

DOMESTIC THREATS AND OPPOSITION

Theoretically, the most significant environmental factor in state repression may be the presence of significant domestic opposition or a perceived challenge to the regime’s hold on power, especially if there is a threat (actual or perceived) that the regime’s challengers may resort to violent tactics. The regime may choose to employ coercive force to prevent, contain, or punish such threats. The most potentially disruptive form of domestic threat, civil war, has received the most empirical attention, and its effect has been demonstrated to be the strongest of many factors, in terms of impact, statistical robustness, and consistency across a variety of measures of repression and other human rights behavior (for example, Poe and Tate 1994; Davenport 1995c; Cingranelli and Richards 1999a; Keith 1999, 2002a, 2004; Richards 1999; Poe, Tate, and Keith 1999; Apodaca 2001; Regan and Henderson 2002; Davenport and Armstrong 2004; Keith and Poe 2004; Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2005; Abouhard and Cingranelli 2006). To illustrate its magnitude, Poe, Tate, and Keith (1999) demonstrate that an ongoing civil war would increase the level of repression over time by around 1.5 on a 5-point scale of repression, with other factors in the model held equal (308).

Political scientists have also sought to understand the impact of less severe forms of threat, as well as other dimensions of threat, such as variety of strategies and frequency of conflict. Davenport (1995c) found that deviance from past norms of conflict, the frequency of conflict, and the variety of strategies engaged each increases the likelihood that a state will resort to civil liberties restrictions; however, once these factors are controlled, the presence of domestic violence becomes statistically insignificant. As Davenport notes, “the insignificance of this variable is probably attributed to the fact that its presence generally leads to the implementation of other tools of behavioral control including state-sponsored terrorism, armed attacks and political executions” (701). Davenport (1999) confirmed these findings generally, but also found that the presence of domestic violence decreased the odds of negative sanctions. I further test Davenport’s supposition that this negative effect is likely because the regime engages in different forms of repression when violence is present, especially since the empirical literature on personal integrity rights has consistently demonstrated this expectation.

Poe et al. (2000) found that the repressive response to domestic threats was dependent not only upon the level of the threat but also upon the prior level of repression. Generally the greater the level of the threat, the more likely a regime was to engage in coercive force, although some regimes did in fact engage in repression even when they were not seriously threatened. However, where repression levels were already high, nonviolent protest and nonviolent rebellion had little or no effect, but these threats did have some effect on repression in states that had exercised only low to moderate levels of repression in the past. On the other hand, violent opposition or rebellion increased the level of repression regardless of the prior level of repression, unless repression was already quite high. The analyses also showed that regimes responded in most cases by lessening the repression once the threat ceased; this result suggests that regimes do weigh the potential cost of engaging in political repression, perhaps in fear of their supporters’ defecting if repression continues once the threat diminishes or perhaps in response to the economic costs in terms of resources or the loss of support of international actors (Poe et al. 2000, 58). Regan and Henderson (2002) also found that the level of threat was positively associated with repression, and that the impact of threat was greater than that of regime type. They also found that when controlling for threat, less-developed states with intermediate levels of democracy had the greatest odds of using coercive force. Political scientists now have multiple measures capturing a fuller range of repressive tools that regimes have at their disposal, as well as multiple measures capturing the most significant dimensions of threat. In Chapter 6 I examine more fully the theoretical expectations in regard to both internal and external threats, as well as formal regulations of regime behavior during times of threat.

REGIME CHARACTERISTICS

Democracy: As I noted above, political democracy has proven to be one of the more potent and consistent explanators in political repression models; almost four decades of research support the expectation that higher levels of democracy are associated with lower levels of repression, across both categories of repression (for example, Hibbs 1973; Ziegenhagen 1986; Mitchell and McCormick 1988; Henderson 1991; Poe and Tate 1994; Davenport 1995c, 1999, 2007a; Poe, Tate, and Keith 1999; Richards 1999; Zanger 2000; Apodaca 2001; Keith 2002a; Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2005). As discussed above, more recent studies of democracy’s influence on repression have urged us to look beyond a simple linear relationship and have indeed demonstrated that the relationship is not as simple as we have generally theorized. Gartner and Regan (1996) and Regan and Henderson (2002) demonstrated that the impact of democracy on human rights abuse is curvilinear when controlling for the level of threat, with semi-democracies more likely to repress than full democracies and autocracies. Their work was, however, limited to only less-developed countries.

Davenport and Armstrong (2004) demonstrate that we have probably misspecified democracy’s role in our models, specifically showing that democratization tends to have no impact until it reaches a critical threshold. Using the Polity measure of democracy, they find that at the lower levels of the scale (below 8) there is no impact, but as states progress into the intermediate level there is some negative effect on repression, and as states reach the highest level of democracy there is a strong negative effect (548). Other scholars have perceived democracy as a multidimensional concept and have sought to understand which dimensions of democracy are more likely to lessen the use of political repression (Gleditsch and Ward 1997; Keith 2002a; Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2005). Gleditsch and Ward (1997) examined empirically the components of the Polity measure and demonstrated that the measure is primarily driven by its executive constraint dimension and that the other dimensions, which measure patterns of executive recruitment and the extent and competitiveness of participation, were “not especially powerful in determining the degree of democracy” (380). They conclude that to use the data “summarily to classify modern polities as democracies directs attention away from the actual data that have been collected on authority patterns” (380). Thus, they urged scholars to move beyond discrete classification of “democracy” or “autocracy” and to focus more on the sub-dimensions of this measure. Studies of political repression do not use the Polity data as a dependent variable, nor do we typically use the data to divide countries into two discrete categories; rather, we use the index to control for the level of institutional democracy attained in the country.

Nonetheless, Keith (2002a) followed Gleditsch and Ward’s suggestion and tested the four components of the Polity democracy measure separately; two of the components produced statistically significant relationships: constraint on the chief executive and the competitiveness of political participation. While Ward and Gleditsch’s analysis revealed that the Polity democracy measure was largely driven by executive constraint, Keith found the competitiveness of political participation to be a more powerful explanator. Not surprisingly, the combined maximum impact of the two individual components was approximately equal to that achieved by the composite measure. Regardless of the construction of the democracy measure, its impact was one of the largest in the analysis. Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2005) confirmed this result, and also demonstrated that improvement of the state’s level of democracy did not make a difference in human rights until the state achieved full democracy, supporting Davenport and Armstrong’s analysis. Additionally, they demonstrated that the significant components of democracy had a sharp threshold effect, and they concluded that “real improvements in human rights do not occur smoothly but reflect a discontinuous step function achieved only when a society becomes fully democratic” (453). Ultimately, they concluded that accountability through a competitive party system is a critical feature of democracy, but for it to be effective in reducing human rights abuses, institutional foundations must first be put into place. In Chapter 3 I engage in a thorough examination of democracy, its various components, and effects.

Types of Autocracy: Currently, Davenport’s work (2007b) represents the most comprehensive examination of autocratic regimes’ use of political repression, in particular demonstrating that there is variation among types of autocratic regimes in their use of repression. He uses Geddes’ (1999) categorization of autocratic regimes, which distinguishes two extreme types on this dimension: personalist systems and single-party systems, with some regime types such as military regimes and military hybrid systems fitting in between. His work demonstrates that only military regimes influence the level of restrictions, and they do so in a negative direction. When he adds interactions for the end of the Cold War, the military regime’s effect remains, but then he finds that both personalist and single-party regimes are less repressive. In regard to personal integrity rights, the military regime’s effect disappears, and only the single-party autocracy measure influences the level of repression, and it does so in a negative direction. Controlling for the various types of autocracy removes the effect of the leftist regime variable, which as discussed above has performed somewhat inconsistently in previous work.

Marxist-Leninist Regimes: The expectation that leftist regimes will be more likely to repress than non-Marxist regimes has not been consistently supported, even though it has been considered a part of the standard model. While Mitchell and McCormick (1988) did find that leftist regimes were more repressive than non-Marxist authoritarian regimes, Poe and Tate (1994) found such a link only when employing measures of human rights based on Department of State reports, which suggested quite plausibly a bias in the Department of State reports of the 1980s. Subsequent analyses that expanded the time frame beyond the 1980s have failed to support the hypothesis that leftist regimes are more repressive; in fact, the analyses have suggested the opposite (Poe, Tate, and Keith 1999; Keith 2002a, Keith, Tate, and Poe 2009). Thus, past repression in leftist regimes may actually reduce the need for future repression or the need for more severe forms of repression, such as those measured by abuse of personal integrity rights. Interestingly, Davenport (2007b) found that that a leftist regime is more likely to increase civil liberties restrictions, but, as with the studies above, that regime type decreases the odds of personal integrity abuses. The latter finding is not unexpected, since he uses the same data set (Poe, Tate, and Keith 1999; Keith 2002a); however, it is interesting that when he adds the autocracy types to his model, the effect of a leftist regime disappears altogether. I explore the Marxist/Marxist-Leninist influence further in the next chapter, examining the influence on both the broader category of civil liberties restrictions and the more severe personal integrity abuse. I continue to compare the measures based on Amnesty International reports with those based on Department of State reports to control for possible ideological biases.

Military Control: Despite the strong theoretical arguments that would lead us to expect that military regimes will be more repressive than nonmilitary regimes, empirical evidence has been rather mixed. Poe and Tate (1994) found no such effect; however, subsequent studies of longer periods yielded the expected effect, although its impact remained somewhat minor (Poe, Tate, and Keith 1999; Keith, Tate, and Poe 2009). These studies have employed Madani’s (1992) classification, which follows McKinlay and Cohen (1975), where military regimes are defined as those that have come to power “as a consequence of a successful coup d’état, led by the army, navy or air force, that remained in power with a military person as the chief executive, for at least six months in a given year” (Madani 1992, 61; see McKinlay and Cohen 1975, 1). This operationalization also includes a small number of mixed regimes “with either a civilian as the chief executive and several military persons in the cabinet or a military head of government who nominated a civilian as the head of government and himself worked behind the scenes” (Madani 1992, 61).

Davenport (2007b), who utilizes a different categorization of military regimes, also fails to find an effect for military or hybrid military regimes on personal integrity abuse but does find evidence that military regimes are less likely to restrict the broader civil liberties category of repression (as defined and measured by Freedom House). Davenport uses Geddes’ (1999) somewhat broader definition, which delineates military regimes as those in which “a group of officers decides who rules and influences policy” (Davenport 2007b, 493; Geddes 1999, 4). He also includes in his analysis a military-personalist hybrid measure that fails to demonstrate any effect on either type of repression. Thus, as a whole the empirical analysis suggests that military regimes are not more likely to engage in personal integrity abuses such as torture, killing, and disappearances, and, even more interesting, that military regimes may be less likely to engage in restrictions on civil liberties. In explaining these different results Davenport notes: “It seems reasonable to suggest that these political systems reduce civil liberties restrictions because they tend to avoid involving themselves with the political processes which are normally responsible for these repressive activities (i.e., legislatures and courts) … and more inclined to use repressive techniques which are more directly within the realm of their expertise—physical violence” (500).

While I find Davenport’s explanation plausible, there is evidence of military regimes’ curbing freedom of the press, detaining protestors, and engaging in lower forms of repression. The nature of the Freedom House civil liberties measure also makes it somewhat problematic to assume that it does not capture physical violence, as its survey on civil liberties does include questions about political terror, physical harm, and violence. Also, as I read Davenport’s table, the military-regime measure did not have a statistical effect on any of the personal integrity models, a result that parallels previous findings (Poe, Tate, and Keith 1999). I continue to explore this perplexing relationship in each of the following chapters.

THE DOMESTIC SOCIOECONOMIC ENVIRONMENT

Economic Development and Growth: As I noted above, one of the earliest-identified and most consistent influences on political repression is the effect of the level of economic development or wealth (McKinlay and Cohen 1975, 1976; Mitchell and McCormick 1988; Henderson 1991; Poe and Tate 1994; Keith 1999, 2002a; Poe, Tate, and Keith 1999; Richards 1999). Most recent studies have consistently used per-capita gross national product or gross domestic product (GDP) to measure economic development and growth, and most have supported the hypothesis that higher levels of economic development do lead to less state repression, regardless of the category of repression. However, these studies have demonstrated that the size of the impact is typically not substantively significant; coefficients on average approach zero, especially when the models incorporate factors beyond the limited standard model, many of which represent a more viable policy alternative to improve human rights conditions than the level of increase in economic development that would be required to produce even a modest improvement (for example, Keith 2002a; Keith, Tate, and Poe 2009). Over time economic growth has been dropped from many models because of its repeated failure to achieve statistical significance; nonetheless, I continue to test it here, as the time frame of my current dataset represents the largest period under study thus far. In the section on international factors that follows I discuss the impact of other important economic factors that have a transnational character and are more controversial in regard to their influence.

Population Size and Growth: As with the domestic economic environment, population size and level of growth are seen as conditions associated with popular unrest stemming from scarcity within the state. Population size, typically logged, has consistently been shown to positively increase levels of repression, but, as with economic development, population growth has proven to be insignificant as studies of repression have extended over time and controlled for additional influences. I continue to examine these dimensions of population in subsequent chapters.

Colonial Experience: Over time the inclusion of a control for British colonial experience has become standard in explanatory models of state repression (for example, Davenport and Armstrong 2004; Keith 1999, 2002a; Poe and Tate 1994; Poe, Tate, and Keith 1999; Howard and Carey 2004). Interestingly, though, the results have been somewhat inconsistent. For example, the variable was not statistically significant in Poe and Tate’s early work, which examined repression in the 1980s, but the variable was statistically significant in all four of their models in their 1999 study (Poe, Tate, and Keith), which expanded the data back to 1976 and forward to 1993. However, Keith (2002a) and Keith, Tate, and Poe (2009), which extended the analyses forward to 1996 and added measures of constitutional protections and institutional provisions, found the measure to be statistically insignificant. Keith (2004) found some evidence of colonial influences, in that rights-related constitutional provisions performed better in countries with Iberian colonial experience; and Keith and Ogundele (2007) found that in Sub-Saharan Africa former francophone colonies had better human rights protection than anglophone ones and that constitutional protections and institutional provisions of former francophone colonies outperformed those of anglophone ones. In my work here, I examine these findings fully, along with other colonial legacies such as the type of legal system.

Domestic Law and the Judiciary

A growing body of empirical studies has examined the question of whether constitutional provisions for rights and an independent judiciary constrain the likelihood that states will repress their own citizens. Most of these studies have examined the role of specific rights typically embedded in bills of rights, and to a lesser extent institutional constraints such as provisions for an independent judiciary, state of emergency clauses, or provisions for federalism. The earliest analyses (Boli-Bennett 1976; Pritchard 1986) found evidence that not only were the constitutional provisions not associated with improved rights behavior, but also the associations were in the opposite direction, suggesting a harmful effect. However, Blasi and Cingranelli (1996) found some evidence of a weak direct effect. These early studies tended to utilize simple bivariate analysis of the association between constitutions and various rights measures, and additionally they tended to be limited to a single year; thus the generalizability of the results is significantly limited. Over time the analyses have become more statistically sophisticated, and the depth of analysis has extended to longer periods and a broader set of countries, beginning with Davenport (1996), which presents a rigorous and comprehensive analysis of the impact of constitutional provisions on state use of negative sanctions on its citizens. He, too, finds limited effects: only three constitutional indicators (out of fourteen) demonstrate a statistically significant effect on state repression, and several other provisions appeared to increase sanctions, although their coefficients did not achieve statistical significance. As Davenport notes, his sample is limited and not representative of the world and his time frame ends in 1982, well before the development of constitutions in the Third Wave of democratization and the post-Communist era. Nonetheless, the initial skepticism generated by his analysis continues across subsequent studies. Cross (1999) finds no statistically significant association between constitutional provisions for reasonable searches and human rights protection, but he does find that judicial independence increases the probability of political rights and protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. Cross’s effort to analyze the impact of judicial independence on human rights is commendable; however, his measure of judicial independence is the subjective rating devised by the late Charles Humana (1992) which provides no replicable operationalization of the concept of judicial independence. Additionally, the study is limited to a small, not fully representative sample of countries.

My previous work has built upon these early studies, expanding the analysis to the global set of countries across a twenty-year period and also expanding the set of constitutional provisions. Keith (2002a) examined ten constitutional provisions associated with internationally recognized human rights and found some evidence to support the optimistic perspective, and while the traditional freedoms associated with bills of rights (freedom of speech, religion, assembly, association, and press) were not found to improve state protection against personal integrity abuse, provisions for public and fair trials did significantly improve states’ behavior, even when controlling for the broad range of factors known to influence this type of behavior. In addition to the failure of the basic constitutional freedoms to influence human rights, neither the provision for the right to writ of habeas corpus nor a provision banning state torture influenced states’ human rights behavior. Keith’s (2002b) examination of the impact of seven provisions increased the likelihood that states would protect fundamental freedoms and rights; these included provision for separation of powers, guaranteed terms of office for judges, fiscal autonomy for the judiciary, and a ban against exceptional courts. However, again, the remaining provisions failed to produce the expected effect; these included the provision for exclusive judicial authority and finality in its decision-making process, along with the provision for enumerated qualifications for judges. Keith cautioned that her analysis is limited to formal provisions for judicial independence, which do not guarantee that the judiciary actually achieves the level of independence that would be necessary to stand against the regime in protecting fundamental rights. In this book I seek to address that need.

Prior to Howard and Carey (2004) there was not a systematic replicable measure of actual judicial independence available for all countries that went beyond formal provisions. A few studies have created subjective ratings for a significant albeit nonrandom set of countries; however, these evaluations are not replicable (for example, Johnson 1976; Cross 1999; La Porta et al. 2004). Howard and Carey created an indicator of de facto judicial independence based on assessments within the Department of State’s human rights country reports that measure the degree to which judiciaries function in practice independently of the executive and legislature, are free from corruption and bribery, and afford basic criminal due process protections to criminal defendants. Howard and Carey do find that across a ten-year period and the global set of countries the level of judicial independence does influence states’ provision of civil and political rights. While I applaud Howard and Carey’s standardsbased measure of judicial independence, I have concerns about the use of their measure in regard to our human rights analysis, because one of the measure’s three components considers whether the state “afford[s] basic criminal due process to criminal defendants” (287). This component seems at best indirectly related to consensus definitions of judicial independence, as we will see in Chapter 4. More importantly, my strong interest in exploring the potential influence of judicial independence on human rights leads us to be very sensitive to possible overlaps between operationalizations of independent variables linked to human rights and our primary human rights measures, the Political Terror Scale (Gibney and Dalton 1996), frequently referred to as a measure of the abuse of personal integrity, and Cingranelli and Richards’ measures of physical integrity (Cingranelli and Richards 1999). Both measures assess the degree of abusive or politically motivated state behavior, including imprisonment, torture, disappearance, and extrajudicial killings, which seem by their very nature to deny basic due process rights. Even if, arguably, the targets of the abuse are not in fact criminals, we are still measuring in our dependent variable the same forms of abuse, which encompass an abuse of procedural due process as well. Thus, we are left with the need for a more appropriate measure of de facto judicial independence, and in Chapter 4 I will present an alternative measurement that builds upon Howard and Carey’s work.

The mixed results described above have continued to appear in more recent work. Keith and Poe (2004) found that, as expected, certain provisions for states of emergencies, which have been promoted by international organizations such as the International Lawyers Association and the International Commission of Jurists, have unintended consequences and are associated with increased levels of human rights abuse during most types of internal threat, while under some circumstances other provisions have the intended effect. Our combined model (Keith, Tate, and Poe 2009) again found rather mixed effects for constitutional provisions for bills of rights, judicial independence, and states of emergency, with several provisions producing a beneficial effect, and many producing either no effect or a harmful effect.

Overall, then, recent empirical analyses suggest that there is some justification for the optimistic expectation that legal provisions for rights and judicial independence (both de jure and de facto) may increase the level of state human rights protections. However, confidence in the generalizability of these results is somewhat constrained by some of the limitations associated with these previous studies. First, none of these studies extend beyond 1996, which limits our understanding in regard to the most of the post-Cold War period. Second, the studies examine a wide range of human rights behavior, but typically each study examines only one type or measure of behavior, and thus the empirical tests are not as robust as they could be. Third, only Keith (2002b) and Howard and Carey (2004) examine the global set of countries. Fourth, most of the studies examine one set of constitutional provisions in isolation from the others. Fifth, the studies do not examine the full set of causal links or the paths of influence; for example, they do not explore the path from formal judicial independence to actual judicial independence to human rights protection, nor do they deal with issues of endogeneity. Finally, the studies lack an appropriate measure of judicial independence, at least in regard to core human rights, such as personal integrity abuse. In Chapters 4 through 6 I take steps to deal with these issues in a rigorous manner.

International or Transnational Influences

EXTERNAL THREATS/INTERNATIONAL WAR

As noted above, the expected nexus between international war and civil conflict was demonstrated by Stohl’s early work (1975, 1976) to the extent that international war increased the level of domestic violence. And at least one early study examined the effect of international wars on repression; Rasler’s (1986) study of the twentieth-century United States found evidence that administrations did indeed increase levels of repression during wars. Subsequently, large-N studies have confirmed the effect of participation in international wars on domestic political repression (Poe and Tate 1994; Poe, Tate, and Keith 1999; Cingranelli and Richards 1999a, 1999b), and over time international war has become a key component of the standard model of human rights behavior (Keith 1999, 2002; Richards 1999; Apodaca 2001; Davenport and Armstrong 2004; Abouharb and Cingranelli 2006, 2008; Landman 2005). It is interesting to note that the impact of international war is substantially lower than that of civil wars. For example, Poe, Tate, and Keith (1999) find the impact of participation in a civil war to be at least three times the impact of being a participant in an international war. This result is somewhat intuitive even though external threats such as interstate war are potentially more serious than civil wars; often civil wars are a greater threat to a regime because of the proximity and ability of the opposition to inflict damage, especially compared to some interstate wars, which may be fought far away from at least some of the belligerents’ states, such as in the Persian Gulf War or the war in Iraq. In Chapter 6 I continue our examination of a variety of threats, both external and internal, and their interactive effects, especially in regard to the independence of the judiciary.

BILATERAL,MULTILATERAL, AND GLOBAL ECONOMIC INFLUENCES

Bilateral Aid. U.S. foreign assistance is a significant component of U.S. foreign policy and has received considerable attention by scholars, commentators, and critics of the United States, especially during the Cold War. Most scholarly attention has sought to determine what factors actually affect U.S. aid allocation and has been especially concerned with whether a state’s human rights practices affect these decisions as mandated by Congress or whether geopolitical and economic interests truly drive these decisions (for example, Carleton and Stohl 1987; Cingranelli and Pasquarello 1985; Poe 1992; Poe et al. 1994; Poe and Sirirangsi 1994; Meernik, Krueger, and Poe 1998; Apodaca and Stohl 1999; Neumayer 2003a, 2003b, 2003c). Considerably less attention has been given to the question of whether U.S. aid influences human rights practices of recipient states. Regan’s (1995) study is the only empirical study I am aware of that examines this question specifically, beyond two studies supported by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) itself (Finkel et al. 2006, 2008) and a study by Knack (2004), a senior research economist for the World Bank who examined the impact of western foreign assistance on democratization in recipient states. While there are strong theoretical links between aid and improved human rights practices, both direct and indirect, there is also some justification to expect that aid will not influence human rights or that it might have a harmful effect. While Knack agrees that foreign aid can potentially contribute to democratization by providing support for electoral processes, strengthening legislatures and independent judiciaries, promoting of civil society organizations, and improving education and per-capita income levels, he argues that it may also undermine some components of democratization such as accountability and stability. Not only are we left with mixed theoretical expectations, but also the small number of empirical studies examining this question have been somewhat mixed in their findings, though generally pessimistic that aid will reduce levels of political repression. Beginning with Shoultz’s (1981) early analysis of U.S. economic aid to Latin America, we see that aid was sometimes used to support dictatorial regimes and sometimes used to overthrow nonrepressive regimes for more repressive ones that supported key U.S. policy goals during the Cold War. Regan’s (1994) cross-national analysis of U.S. economic aid in 1979–1988 found that it accounted for little change in recipient states’ human rights behavior. In fact, he found that it would take a $250 million increase in economic aid to a state to produce a 1-point change in his 15-point repression scale. It is tempting to attribute these findings to the limited period or geographic region (in the case of Shoultz) under analysis, especially since it is the height of the Cold War and, in the case of Regan, to attribute the result to the possibility that his aggregate index may not appropriately capture all the potential variations in state repression.

However, two comprehensive analyses of the USAID democracy and governance aid commissioned by USAID itself have consistently demonstrated that while spending in the other subsectors of aid (elections, civil society, and governance) all produce the desired effects, spending on the human rights component of the rule-of-law program has a strong negative effect on states’ human rights protection, regardless of numerous controls, including controls for endogeneity, and regardless of which measure of human rights is employed (Finkel et al. 2006, 2008). As the investigators note in the final report of their second study, their “effort to untangle the web of relationships that may underlie this distressing and presumptively anomalous relationships and to model them statistically has been largely unsuccessful in its basic purpose” (Finkel et al. 2008, 57). Apodaca (2001) has examined the influence of bilateral aid from OECD Development Assistance Committee countries during 1990–1996, and while she does find that the bilateral aid reduced the likelihood of repression, the size of its impact is rather small, and it achieves only marginal statistical significance. Apodaca is more optimistic about her findings than subsequent work supports. Knack (2004) also examined the influence of foreign aid from the OECD countries, but over a twenty-five-year period (1975–2000) that overlaps somewhat with the fifteen-year period of Finkel et al.’s 2008 study (1990–2004) and is inclusive of Apodaca’s entire period. In his more extensive analysis Knack found no effect from either of his measures of development assistance on either of his two measures of democracy. As Knack admits, his data do not allow for the disaggregation of aid intended to promote democracy from aid intended for other purposes, and thus urges some caution in interpreting his results. Thus, while scholars seem somewhat reluctant to accept these null or negative findings, we are left with the dilemma that aid may actually promote political repression, at least under some circumstances, as indeed Knack posited as a counterhypothesis. Recent empirical studies of the influence of multilateral aid programs have been just as pessimistic.

Multilateral Aid/Structural Adjustment Programs. While some scholars might argue that there are direct links between structural adjustment programs and improved human rights through the program requirements of a reduced or limited state, most neoliberal arguments link structural adjustment programs indirectly to human rights practices through increased levels of economic growth or wealth, which have been weakly linked to increased human rights protection. Critics, however, argue that the programs have harmful effects on the economic well-being of citizens, especially women and the poor (for example, Buchmann 1996; Sadasivam 1997; Zack-Williams 2000; Fields 2003), and on workers’ rights (Abouharb and Cingranelli 2008); and other scholars have argued that regimes’ reduction in subsidies, social welfare programs, and public employment have led to mass protests to which recipient states have responded with repressive action (for example, Pion-Berlin 1984; Keith and Poe 2000; Abouharb and Cingranelli 2008). In addition, increasingly rigorous analyses have consistently demonstrated that the programs do not even lead to economic growth (for example, Pion-Berlin 1984; Harrigan and Mosley 1991; Rapley 1996; Prezworski and Vreeland 2000; van de Walle 2001; Vreeland 2003); thus even the hypothesized indirect benefits seem unlikely.

These results bring into serious question the expectation that the loans will lead to improved human rights, since this influence is expected to come indirectly through economic growth and political stability. Interestingly, empirical studies have also demonstrated that the programs do not lead to increased political stability but rather increase the probability of civil conflict (for example, Sidell 1988; Di John 2005; Keen 2005; Abouharb and Cingranelli 2008). A growing number of empirical studies have addressed specifically the impact of these programs on human rights. The earliest empirical study to my knowledge is Pion-Berlin’s (1984) analysis of the impact of International Monetary Fund (IMF) loans on repression in Argentina during 1958–1980, which demonstrated that the stabilization programs increased repression against labor groups. Subsequent studies of personal integrity abuse have also demonstrated a link between these programs and increased state imprisonment, torture, killing, and disappearances (Franklin 1997; Keith and Poe 2000). The most comprehensive and rigorous study to date (Abouharb and Cingranelli 2008) demonstrates that not only do the structural adjustment programs (both IMF and World Bank) fail to deliver economic development, but also the agreements fail even to promote increased political stability. They demonstrate that instead, the deleterious economic and social effects of the agreements have destabilized the countries with increased levels of civil conflict—antigovernment demonstrations, riots, and rebellion in particular. The increased civil conflict in turn increases the state’s level of physical integrity abuse (torture, murder, disappearance, and political imprisonment). Indeed, the likelihood of physical integrity abuse increases the longer the state participates in a structural adjustment agreement, even when controlling for selection effects and most of the known factors that affect such abuse. And similarly, the longer the state participates in a structural adjustment agreement, the weaker the state’s protection is of worker rights. Thus, we are left with overwhelming evidence that multilateral aid is generally harmful to a broad range of rights, and that some components of bilateral aid have either no effect or a deleterious effect. The evidence in regard to trade openness and foreign economic penetration is mixed but somewhat more optimistic than that of the aid relationship.

Trade Openness and Foreign Economic Penetration. Empirical studies that have tested the liberal perspective on the linkage between trade and human rights protection, though small in number, have consistently confirmed these expectations (Apodaca 2001, 2007; Harrelson-Stephens and Calloway 2003). Apodaca (2001, 2007) found that exports had the third-strongest impact in predicting personal integrity abuses in 1990–1996, with only democracy and conflict producing larger effects. Her model controls for several important domestic conditions (conflict, population, democracy, and education expenditures) and international factors (conflict, bilateral and multilateral aid, foreign direct investment, and portfolio investment). Harrelson-Stephens and Calloway (2003) examine three measures of trade openness over a significantly longer period than Apodaca (1976–1996): trade openness (the sum of exports and imports divided by GDP, which captures the level of trade but not the symmetrical nature of trade between states), level of exports relative to GDP, and a 4-point trade liberalization index. They find that, when controlling for the standard human rights model, each of their trade openness measures does demonstrate a decrease in the likelihood of state repression in three separate models, supporting liberal expectations. However, they do caution that the coefficients are rather small. But given the effect over time through the lagged dependent variable, they calculate .5 decrease in the 5-point personal integrity abuse scale in ten years’ time. This is roughly comparable to the impact that Poe, Tate, and Keith (1999) found for the presence of international war and about half the effect they found for economic development, which, interestingly, fails to achieve statistical significance in Harrelson-Stephens and Calloway’s model. Apodaca’s (2007) study, which covers a longer period (1989–2002) than her first study, confirms her earlier finding even though she employs a different measure of trade openness (exports plus imports as a percentage of GDP). Thus much of the initial empirical evidence does support the liberal perspective that open trade has a positive effect on at least one dimension of human rights, the right to personal integrity.

The evidence examining the effect of foreign investment has been much more inconsistent and in one study has varied depending upon the category of repression. Apodaca (2001) found that foreign direct investment (FDI) did lead to moderate decreases in repression of personal integrity rights for the period 1990–1996; however, she also found that the portfolio investment did not have a statistically significant effect. She had in fact hypothesized that this type of investment, which tends to be “short-ventures, highly mobile, and subject to capital flight,” places more restrictions on the regime’s taxing and spending policy options, and in particular restricts spending on social welfare programs while doing little to enhance economic growth (595). In her 2007 study of the years 1989–2002 the effect of FDI disappears, although here her model is more focused on the media and thus controls for an additional set of measures than in her 2001 study. She does not include the portfolio measure here either, so the results are somewhat difficult to compare. Richards, Gelleny, and Sacko’s (2001) analysis of both categories of political repression in 1981–1995 provides some additional insight into these mixed findings. They also find that FDI reduces the likelihood of political repression, but only in regard to the civil liberties restriction category, not the personal integrity category. This finding contradicts Apodaca’s earlier study of the seven-year period but fits with her longer study. However, contrary to Apodaca, they find that portfolio investment decreases the odds of repression of personal integrity rights but has no effect on civil liberties restrictions. They also find that foreign debt increases the repression of civil liberties restrictions but has no effect on personal integrity rights. Ultimately, these mixed results suggest that it is still premature to draw firm conclusions about the effect of foreign investment.

International Treaties

Most empirical studies of state compliance with international human rights treaty obligations focus on the state’s provision or protection of the guaranteed rights embedded in the document. The bulk of the empirical compliance literature, while grounded in rich theoretical debate concerning the influence of human rights treaties, has largely been limited to tests of whether being a state party produces a positive or negative effect, when controlling for a variety of factors. It does not enable us to determine which of the mechanisms that are hypothesized to be at work are actually operative. Realist theory views treaty commitments as cheap talk and therefore predicts no effect or perhaps even a negative effect. Rationalist theory does not provide as clear an expectation, but because of the lack of direct benefits from compliance and the weak enforcement mechanisms that make noncompliance relatively costless (except, possibly, in terms of reputation), treaties would be expected to have a weak effect at best. The decoupling effect posited by the world society approach would predict that we would observe no direct effect and a negative effect over time. Thus, three theories predict little or no effect or even a negative effect. The expectations of the domestic institutions approach would be conditional, expecting better human rights, but only in democratic regimes or regimes with effective legal institutions. The normative perspectives, however, would predict compliance due to norm diffusion and the effect of transnational human rights networks, but perhaps would make the expectations contingent upon the strength of the networks (Neumayer 2005).

Empirical evidence of the influence of participation in an international human rights treaty has been mixed. For example, Keith (1999) finds no effect from the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) on personal integrity rights or civil rights and liberties, unless controlling for state derogations. Hathaway (2002) finds that most treaties within the human rights regime do not significantly affect human rights behavior, and that participation in some of the treaties, such as the Genocide Convention and the Convention Against Torture (CAT), produces negative effects, a result that is confirmed by Hafner-Burton and Tsutsui (2005) in regard to a wide range of treaties. On the other hand, the two most exhaustive compliance studies (Landman 2005 and Simmons 2009) found consistent evidence of an association between rights behavior and state commitment to a variety of treaties within the international human rights regime. Landman finds that commitment to the ICCPR and the CAT, even while controlling for the level of reservations, decreased state repression of personal integrity rights, torture, and civil and political rights. Simmons extends Landman’s work and finds that participation in the ICCPR, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), and the Children’s Convention are associated with the provision of several related rights. In the case of the CAT and the ICCPR in regard to fair trials she finds that the influence is limited to a narrow set of circumstances. For example, the impact of the CAT is conditioned on the strong rule of law. In most empirical studies of compliance, the theoretical mechanisms (for example, cost/benefit calculations and power relationships) are merely assumed rather than directly tested in the models. Kelley’s (2007) work on bilateral nonsurrender agreements represents a significant exception and takes advantage of a unique opportunity to test particular costs that a state could not have anticipated when it became a party to the Rome Statute. Contrary to realist expectations, she finds that approximately half of the countries pressured by the United States went against their own self-interest and resisted the pressure, incurring diplomatic and sometimes economic costs. She does find some evidence to support realist assumptions in that states that have Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) status with the United States, poor states, and members of the “Iraq coalition of the willing” were more likely to sign nonsurrender agreements.

We find another notable exception within the asylum literature. A growing body of research has examined the United States’ obligations under the Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and under the CAT to respect the norm of nonrefoulement.¹ Most of these empirical studies have demonstrated that U.S. foreign policy interests (security and trade relationships) and domestic policy interests (economic and national security concerns) influence decisions on who receives a grant of asylum in the United States (Rosenblum and Salehyan 2004; Salehyan and Rosenblum 2008; Rottman, Fariss, and Poe 2009; Keith and Holmes 2009). Overall, the weak association of human rights with treaty commitment supports realist expectations. However, most of these studies do not specifically operationalize and test the underlying assumptions that would predict no effect; thus our confidence in this conclusion is rather weak. Moreover, Kelley’s findings and those in the asylum literature, which account more directly for realist and rationalist assumptions, suggest that interests may not matter as much as the realists think; and, indeed, their analyses demonstrate that norms and domestic political contexts also matter.

Assumptions of the domestic institutions approach have received much more specific empirical attention than those of realist and rationalist theory; presumably because scholars can more readily observe and more directly measure domestic institutional contexts than cost/benefit calculations or the diffusion of norms. Several studies have examined the conditional or interactive effect of democratic regimes on treaty compliance. When Hathaway (2002) limited her analysis to democratic regimes she continued to find no effect of the ICCPR and negative effects of the CAT on human rights behavior; but she did find that participation in the Genocide Convention, CEDAW, and the ICCPR’s Optional Protocol produces a significant positive effect on related human rights. Neumayer (2005) examines whether the impact of ratification is conditional upon regime type, and finds that in pure autocracies, ratification of the CAT and the ICCPR is associated with worse human rights practices, but that ratification has a “more and more beneficial effect” as democracy strengthens.² Landman (2005) conceptualizes and models ratification as a function of the underlying processes of democratization, economic development, and global interdependence, which he finds influence human rights moderately but consistently across the various treaties that constitute the international human rights regime. It is difficult to separate out the influence of democratic institutions in his human rights analysis, although we do know that the relative weight of democratization is likely to be rather small because its effect on ratification is minor relative to that of other factors. As reported above, Powell and Staton’s (2009) study of the CAT makes a significant contribution by moving our attention to the domestic legal system. They find that as the effectiveness of the judiciary increases, the joint probability of ratifying the CAT in full and then violating the treaty decreases; however, they find only mixed evidence that the joint probability of not ratifying and torturing increases with an effective judiciary in place. Kelley (2007) also demonstrates that states with a stronger domestic commitment to the rule of law are less likely to violate their treaty commitment by signing a nonsurrender agreement.

Finally, if we broaden the scope of compliance to include the asylum literature, Salehyan and Rosenblum (2008) make a significant contribution, demonstrating that public and media attention to immigration and asylum issues increases the impact of humanitarian concerns in U.S. asylum outcomes. However, their findings in regard to congressional influence on human rights concerns in asylum outcomes are less encouraging, as the effect is contingent upon partisan politics and whether congressional hearings are framed in terms of immigration enforcement, which reduces the humanitarian dimension of the outcomes, or in terms of refugee and asylum issues, which increases the importance of the humanitarian dimension. Overall, the literature clearly demonstrates that domestic institutions and politics influence a state’s compliance with its treaty obligations, and that the influence of democratic institutions extends beyond the traditional electoral components to the judiciary and the rule of law.

Measuring norms is probably the most difficult task that empiricists face in testing normative approaches, and thus most empirical studies of compliance have examined surrogate indicators. Powell and Staton (2008) test regional and global norms, as indicated by past rates of torture, in their CAT models; however, they find little evidence that norms influence state torture practices. Kelley’s (2007) study of bilateral nonsurrender agreements provides the best opportunity to examine the influence of norms on state values. She finds that even while controlling for a significant number of realist assumptions, states that have demonstrated a prior normative affinity for the International Criminal Court (ICC) are less likely to sign nonsurrender agreements; however, she does not find that human rights norms influence signing of the nonsurrender agreements. Even though the asylum literature has consistently demonstrated that security and material interests strongly influence U.S. asylum decisions, these studies have also consistently demonstrated that humanitarian norms (especially human rights conditions) do influence U.S. compliance with its commitments under international law (Rosenblum and Salehyan 2004; Salehyan and Rosenblum 2008; Rottman, Fariss, and Poe 2009; Keith and Holmes 2009). The presence of transnational networks or civil society pressure (typically measured as the number of INGOs in which citizens have membership) is much easier to measure than the presence of norms; however, the direct link between treaty ratification and civil society pressure is not typically tested in human rights models. Both Hafner-Burton and Tsutsui (2005) and Powell and Staton (2008) find that as the number of INGOs to which citizens belong increases, so does the level of protection of human rights. Neumayer (2005) provides the most rigorous analysis, examining specifically the effect of treaty commitment on human rights behavior, conditioned upon the strength of civil society organizations. His results are mixed: he does find that the stronger the state’s participation in INGOs, the greater the beneficial effect of ratification of the CAT on human rights behavior; however, the results do not hold for ICCPR ratification. He also finds mixed results in regard to regional treaties.

For example, ratification of the Inter-American torture convention with INGO participation is beneficial, but the effect does not hold for the European torture convention. Overall, the observable effect of norm diffusion is weak and inconsistent at best. The evidence of a strong positive influence by NGOs on states’ human rights practices is more convincing; however, we must keep in mind that the civil society link through treaty ratification is not directly demonstrated except in Neumayer’s work. In the following chapters I continue to explore the role of norms diffusion and treaty ratification in regard to state commitment to constitutional freedoms and subsequent state rights behavior.

Moving the Literature Forward

In this book I seek to build upon this substantial body of human rights literature, examining the core assumptions of multiple subfields in political science through the organizing concepts of opportunity and willingness, arguing that state actors’ choice to employ various tools of repression is shaped factors based in both the agent (for example, democratic values, ideological preferences, resources, etc.), the structure (for example, competitive party system or independent judiciary) and environment (for example, domestic and external threats). I argue that these factors influence which options (tools of repression) are available or deemed appropriated and that they shape the consequences and costs and benefits of employing the tools of repression. I also seek to move the literature forward in several ways. I expand what has become known as the “standard model” of repression forward in time to cover almost three decades and the global set of states. I expand the standard model to reflect developments in the literature concerning the conceptualization and measurement of democracy, and I explore measurement issues in regard to civil liberties. I also explore more thoroughly the conflicting expectations in the literature regarding the effect of military regimes and Marxist/Marxist-Leninist regimes. Subsequently, I expand the standard model to account for state embeddedness in global society and liberal economic theory. This book’s primary contribution lies in the substantive examination of the role of judicial independence. I first address why states commit formally to the norm judicial independence, and then examine the circumstances that shape the actual achievement of judicial independence within the state. I also present a new measure of de facto judicial independence and examine its relationship with both categories of repression. Throughout these analyses I model and control for selection effects. I also examine interaction between judicial independence and the transnational network and domestic circumstances. I also examine state constitutional commitment to individual freedoms and due process rights, first examining factors that influence commitment, especially prior commitment to the ICCPR and then examining the influence of that commitment on repression of the specific rights promised in the provisions, controlling for selection effects. Finally, I examine the influence of threats on repression of personal integrity rights and restrictions of civil liberties. Ultimately, I examine the effectiveness of states of emergency provisions in models that condition the level and type of threat. I believe these analyses offer one of the rigorous assessments of the role of the judiciary and the role of law on state decisions to repress their own citizens.