37? //a/

y

DANGEROUS CHANGES?

THE EFFECT OF POLITICAL REGIME CHANGES ON

LIFE INTEGRITY VIOLATIONS, 1977 - 1993.

THESIS

Presented to the Graduate Council of the

University of North Texas in Partial

Fulfillment of the Requirements

For the Degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

By

Sabine C. Zanger

Denton, Texas

August, 1998

Zanger, Sabine C., Dangerous Changes? The Effect of Political Regime Changes on Life

Integrity Violations. 1977-1993. Master of Arts (Political Science), August 1998, 95 pp.,

7 tables, 6 figures, 72 references.

This study develops a model of different types of political regime changes and

their effect on life integrity violations. The data covers 147 countries from 1977-1993.

Basic bivariate analyses and multivariate pooled cross-sectional time series analyses

employing Ordinary Least Squares regression with panel-corrected standard errors are

used. The results show that political regime change in general has no effect on state-

sponsored violence. Looking at different types of regime changes, the regression analysis

indicates that change from democracy to anocracy is positively correlated with levels of

repression at the level of p < .001. A change toward democracy from autocracy is

negatively related to human rights violations at the level of p < .01, once relevant control

variables are considered.

37? //a/

y

DANGEROUS CHANGES?

THE EFFECT OF POLITICAL REGIME CHANGES ON

LIFE INTEGRITY VIOLATIONS, 1977 - 1993.

THESIS

Presented to the Graduate Council of the

University of North Texas in Partial

Fulfillment of the Requirements

For the Degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

By

Sabine C. Zanger

Denton, Texas

August, 1998

Whereas Recognition of the Inherent Dignity

and of the Equal and Inalienable Rights

of all Members of the Human Family

is the Foundation of Freedom,

Justice and Peace in the World,...

Article 1.

All Human Beings are born Free and Equal in Dignity and Rights.

They are endowed with Reason and Conscience

and should act towards one another

in a Spirit of Brotherhood.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations

on December 10, 1948.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

LIST OF TABLES vi

LIST OF FIGURES vii

Chapter

I. INTRODUCTION 1

II. LITERATURE REVIEW 8

Conceptualizing Human Rights 8 The Nature of Human Rights 9 Western Liberalism as the Source of Human Rights 10 Universalism versus Cultural Relativism 13

The Repressive State 17 Do Human Rights Need Democracy? 18 The Role of Political and Socioeconomic Factors 22

Regime Change 34 Summary 36

in. THEORY AND OPERATIONALIZATION 38

Building a Model of Political Regime Change and Human Rights Violations 39 Change to Anocracy 42 Change away from Autocracy 43 Change from Democracy to Anocracy 44 Change to Democracy 45

The Dependent Variable: Life Integrity Violations 46 Measuring Regime Change 48 Operationalization of the Control Variables 53

Lagged Repression 53 Regime Type 54 Population Size 55 Economic Development 55 Civil and International Wars 56

IV

IV. METHODOLOGY AND ANALYSIS 58

Basic Descriptive Analysis 58 Multivariate Analysis 66

V. CONCLUSION 79

APPENDIX 85

REREFENCES 90

LIST OF TABLES

TABLE 1:

TABLE 2:

TABLE 3:

TABLE 4:

TABLE 5:

TABLE 6:

TABLE 7:

Construction of Democracy & Autocracy Indicators in

Polity III 86

Distribution of Regime Changes on a Continuous Scale 87

Summary of the Hypotheses and their Operationalization 88 Mean Scores for Human Rights Violations, taken from Amnesty International (AI) and State Department (SD) Reports before, during, and after Political Regime Changes 89

OLS Regression with Panel-Corrected Standard Errors, Impact of the Dummy Regime Change Variable 69

OLS Regression with Panel-Corrected Standard Errors, Impact of the Continuous Regime Change Variable 72

OLS Regression with Panel-Corrected Standard Errors, Impact of the Different Regime Change Dummy Variables 74

VI

LIST OF FIGURES

FIGURE 1:

FIGURE 2:

FIGURE 3:

FIGURE 4:

FIGURE 5:

FIGURE 6:

The Distribution of the Different Types of Political Regime Changes 52

PTS Mean Scores during Regime Change (N = 92) 59

PTS Mean Scores during Regime Change to Democracy from Anocracy (N = 15) 60

PTS Mean Scores during Regime Change to Democracy from Autocracy (N = 69) 62

PTS Mean Scores during Regime Change to Anocracy from Democracy (N = 13) 63

PTS Mean Scores during Regime Change to Autocracy (N = 20) 65

Vll

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

Over the last two decades, the subject of human rights has attracted increasing

attention among politicians and academics. Human rights influence foreign policies and

economic ties between countries, as the discussion about economic sanctions as a reaction

to repression in the People's Republic of China shows. Also the academic literature has

substantially increased over the last ten years. The "development and proliferation of

international human rights law and reporting, and a growing popular interest and concern for

human rights" (Poe 1997b, 1) can be observed.

This research attempts to identify and to explain how regime transitions affect human

rights violations. Human rights are understood in a more narrow sense of personal integrity

rights, identified as torture, political imprisonment, execution, and disappearance. The terms

'state repression', 'state terror', and 'human rights violations' are used interchangeably in this

study.

In general, research on state repression/human rights violations can be divided into

two basic groups, according to whether repression is treated as the cause or the result of

other phenomena. Extensive research has analyzed state-sponsored violence as a predictor

for foreign aid and vice versa. Other research has focused on the effect of foreign aid on the

level of government repression (Blanton 1994; Cingranelli and Pasquarello 1985; McCormick

and Mitchell 1988; Poe 1992; Poe and Meernik 1995; Poe and Siriangsi 1994; Regan 1995;

Schoultz 1981; Stohl and Carleton 1985; Stohl, Carleton, and Johnson 1984).

Another major branch of research aims to explain why human rights violations occur.

Scholars within this subfield concentrate on domestic and international factors that affect state

repression. Variables that have attracted the most attention are regime type, democracies and

military regimes in particular, level of economic development and economic growth rates, size

and growth of population, and civil and international wars (Davenport 1995, 1997; Fein 1995;

Garreton 1996; Gurr 1986; Henderson 1991, 1993; King 1997; Mitchell and McCormick

1988; Park 1987; Poe and Tate 1994; Poe, Tate, and Keith 1997; Poe et al. 1997b; Rummel

1985; Sloan and Tedin 1987).

Instead of dividing the human rights literature on the basis of whether state repression

is used as dependent or independent variable, the studies can be characterized according to

their definition of human rights and human rights violations. Based on Davenport (1997), Poe

(1997b) identifies "three separate traditions: human rights (...), state terror (...), and negative

sanction" (1997b, unpublished). King (1997) splits these three groups into two. The work on

human rights and state terror analyzes violations of "personal integrity rights" - torture,

imprisonment, politically motivated murder, and disappearances (e.g., Henderson 1991, 1993;

Mitchell and McCormick 1988; Poe and Tate 1994). The group that focuses on political, or

negative, sanctions is concerned with the violation of civil and political rights in a broader

sense (e.g., Davenport 1995, 1996, 1997; King 1997).

As mentioned above, various studies analyze the effect of regime type on the level of

human rights violations (Fein 1995; Garreton 1996; Gurr 1986; Henderson 1991, 1993; King

1997; Mitchell and McCormick 1988; Poe and Tate 1994; Poe, Tate, and Keith 1997; Poe

et al. 1997b). Studying threat perception and state repression, for example, Davenport (1995)

concludes that different regimes reacted differently to perceived threats. For example

democracies show a higher level of tolerance for dissident behavior than nondemocracies.

There seems to be a common understanding that the nature of a particular regime type has

some influence on the government's respect for basic human rights. The correlation between

a particular regime type and its level of human rights abuse is of interest not only to

academics, but also to policy makers. For example, Alexander Haig, Secretary of State under

President Reagan, saw violations of human rights as typical for communist countries

(Forsythe 1983). Jeane Kirkpatrick (1979), Ambassador to the UN under the Reagan

administration, argued that authoritarian regimes were more respectful towards human rights

than totalitarian, meaning leftist, regimes.

Little research has been done on the effect of regime change on repression. Many

studies are rather static and do not account for change. Most studies that do consider regime

change and its effect on state repression concentrate merely on democratization processes.

This paper tries to fill this gap in the human rights literature. In this research, I focus on

different types of regime change, such as on transition from an autocratic to a democratic

regime, and vice versa, and change toward mixed regime types, and their impact on state

repression.

The question, however, still remains, as to why this type of research is important.

What would we gain from a deeper insight into how governments treat their citizens during

a change in the political regime? Why is it necessary to do research on this subject? First of

all, the aim of most research on human rights is, presumably, to abate human suffering

someday. Every year the U.S. State Department and Amnesty International issue country

reports on human rights violations around the globe. These documents picture the situations

of millions of people that suffer under their own governments, which are meant to protect

them. It is not only in international wars where large numbers of people die, disappear and

are tortured. Violence is also used as a political tool by states against their own people and

against opponents within the system. The "Dirty War" in Argentina and the genocide under

Pol Pot in Cambodia, both in the late 1970s, or the massacres in Rwanda between 1990 and

1992 are only a few extreme examples of extensive state terror. Apart from these cases, which

captured the attention of an international audience, the reports from Amnesty International

and the U.S. State Department point out cases of life integrity violations that escape the

public eye, but that are nevertheless still present and terrorize the lives of people around the

world. If the international community is seriously interested in enforcing the Universal

Declaration of Human Rights, it is necessary to know the causes that lead to state repression,

before any effective action can be taken. Greater awareness of the reasons behind the problem

increases the chances of quicker and better aimed reaction when the problem occurs. It might

even enable international organizations or nation states to employ prophylactic strategies and,

therefore, prevent serious human rights violations before they take place.

In the case of political regime changes, it is important for several reasons to know

more about their effect on state-sponsored violence. At least for a decade now it has been "en

vogue" to urge countries to democratize. This foreign policy motto has usually been

combined with making the countries open up their economy to free market competition. In

the light of the protection of life integrity rights of the people, the question arises how these

movements affect the citizens. What happens to the freedom of the citizens during the

democratization process? Are the benefits of a democracy expected to be effective during the

process of change? Does the transition to an authoritarian regime have a greater effect on

repression than does the transition to democracy? Are the human rights records in a new

democratic regime really better than under a previous authoritarian rule? Are changes in

human rights violations more significant when a country moves directly from an autocratic

regime to a democratic one or when the democratization process occurs in a more gradual

way?

Several countries have also been sliding down on the democracy scale over the last

two decades. For example, Zimbabwe is one of the countries that show increasingly less

tolerance for political opponents, as well as Burundi, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan, and Haiti. The

question that the international community should be concerned about is not merely whether

more autocratic regimes will be more likely to repress their people, but also what will happen

during this transition period. If, for example, a change toward an autocratic regime increases

state repression, the United Nations, or other inter- or transnational organizations, could send

peace-keeping troops as soon as the regime change becomes apparent. Thus, the amount and

extent of repression used by the government during the transition period could be limited,

which is likely to be easier than controlling a situation that is already out of hand. To protect

human rights it appears to be crucial to react as soon as possible when human rights violations

become apparent, before oppression is too widespread to be controlled by international

forces. More knowledge on the relationship between human rights violations and regime

international forces. More knowledge on the relationship between human rights violations

and regime change might, therefore, enable the international community to limit the damage

of state-sponsored repression during the transition period.

For the purpose of this empirical study of state repression, I assume the existence of

basic universal rights. This study utilizes a pooled cross-sectional time series analysis to

answer these questions, covering 147 countries over the time period from 1977 to 1993

(N=2087). This research design allows researchers to analyze data across time and space

simultaneously. To measure human rights violation, I utilize the Political Terror Scale (PTS),

which was originally created by Michael Stohl, Mark Gibney, and colleagues (e.g., Gibney

and Dalton 1997; Poe and Tate 1994; Stohl and Carleton 1985). To capture changes in the

political regime type, I employ the Polity III data set, developed by Jaggers and Gurr (1995).

Various studies suggest that there is a statistically significant correlation between

variables, such as lagged repression, regime type, population size, involvement in civil or

international wars, and economic development on the one side and human rights violations

on the other side (e.g. Davenport 1995,1996; Henderson 1991,1993; King 1997; Mitchell

and McCormick 1988; Poe and Tate 1994). To account for the effects of these factors, I

include them in my analysis as control variables. The more democratic a country is the less

repression is expected to occur. Lagged repression, population size, and civil and

international wars are expected to be positively related to state violence, and economic

development is expected to decrease the use of state repression.

This thesis is structured as follows. In the second chapter, I discuss some of the main

arguments about human rights in general and analyze the relevant literature in the field of

personal integrity rights violations and negative state sanctions. I evaluate the strengths and

weaknesses of the main studies in the field of human rights and point out gaps in the existing

literature. In Chapter ID, I develop a theory of political regime change and life integrity

violations. This section presents the core procedures and assumptions of the study and shows

why and how regime changes might affect the use of state terror during the transition period.

I argue that the transition from one regime type to another creates high instability and

uncertainty among the elites and the masses of a country. While the political system is not

protected by the rules and institutions of an established regime, influential groups in societies

will try to gain as much power within the new system as possible. I expect that the fight for

power among the elites and the struggle of the masses for increasing their share of influence

in the future system will lead to higher human rights violations during this transition period.

However, I expect the level of state terror to vary according to the type of regime change. A

change to autocracy, for example, I expect to be associated with more serious violations of

personal integrity rights, whereas a change to democracy is expected to decrease government

repression. Based on this theory, I develop hypotheses and empirically test them in a pooled

cross-sectional time series analysis.

The fourth chapter describes the operationalization of the variables and the statistical

procedures utilized in this study. This chapter also shows and discusses the results from the

analysis. And finally in Chapter V, I conclude with some comments on the implications that

can be drawn from this study for future research and policy makers.

CHAPTER II

LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter discusses important work that has been done in the field of human rights,

state terror, and negative state sanction. The literature review is divided into four sections.

In the first section, I present the theoretical discussion about the concept of human rights in

general. The second section of this chapter focuses on research that tries to identify

characteristics of repressive states, and the third section discusses the basic arguments about

the concept of regime change. Finally, I conclude with a summary of existing literature in the

field of state repression and regime change and the significance of this study within this area.

Conceptualizing Human Rights

The concept of human rights has many facets. Scholars try to specify the nature and

essence of human rights and their origins and generalizability across cultures. The first part

of this chapter, which I have entitled "Conceptualizing Human Rights", is divided into three

sections. First, I discuss the nature of human rights, as well as various types and dimensions

of this concept. Secondly, I present various arguments about the source of human rights, and

their connection to Western liberalism. And lastly, I present the main arguments on both sides

of the debate about cultural relativism and universalism.

The Nature of Human Rights

The nature of human rights has been the subject of controversial debates among

political theorists and philosophers. As one of the predominant contemporary human rights

theorists, Jack Donnelly (1989) approaches the concept of human rights by defining the

meaning of the element "right". According to Donnelly's understanding, a right contains three

parts, a right-holder ("A"), the object of the right ("x"), and a duty bearer ("B"). When "A

has a right to x with respect to B" (Donnelly 1989, 10), then, for example, a citizen ("A") has

the right to be free from torture ("x"), and the government ("B") has the duty to ensure that

the citizen can enjoy this right. A certain right might demand positive action from the side of

the duty-bearer to enable the right-holder to enjoy his or her right. In our example, this could

mean that the government has to protect its citizens from being tortured by guerilla groups.

Often the importance of a right becomes apparent only when the enjoyment of it is

denied. Donnelly calls this phenomenon the "possession paradox" (1989, 11). It is this

"possession paradox" that comes into play with human rights violations. Often, it is not until

a government uses oppression against its people that the victims themselves and especially the

international community become aware of how crucial it is to protect the basic personal

integrity rights of each human being.

It is inherent to rights in general that they place a duty on someone. Rights have to be

enforced and protected. In the case of personal integrity rights, due to the sovereignty of a

state over the use of force within its territory, the duty to protect human rights lies, in the first

place, in the hands of the government. Because protecting the lives of their citizens is so

crucial, this obligation turns into a source of legitimacy for the government. If a government

10

cannot ensure the enjoyment of the basic human rights of its citizens, it loses its legitimacy

(see Donnelly 1989).

The question still remains, why personal integrity rights should be protected in the

first place. Raz, quoted by Freeman, offers a more specific definition of rights than Donnelly:

"A has a right to x only if the interest A has in having x is a sufficient reason for imposing a

duty on B" (Raz, quoted in Freeman 1995, 30). A similar statement is made by Henry Shue

(1996). He argues that "to have a right is to be in a position to make demands of others, and

to be in such a position is, among other things, for one's situation to fall under general

principles that are good reasons why one's demands ought to be granted" (Shue 1996, 13).

The concept of "sufficient reason" or "general principles" poses the question of what upon

grounds individuals can claim the possession of certain rights. Human rights theorists have

tried to answer these questions in specifying what is meant by "sufficient reason" and "general

principles."

Various scholars trace the beginning of human rights theory back to the work of

Hobbes and Locke (e.g., Almeida 1998; Donnelly 1989; Freeman 1994). Extensive research

has been done on Hobbes' and Locke's concept of human rights in relation to the state. Since

they are seminal theorists in the area of human rights, I briefly present the main argument of

this discussion on Hobbes' and Locke's view of citizens' rights in the following section.

Western Liberalism as the Source of Human Rights?

The question of where human rights come from and what exactly they are has

occupied theorists and philosophers for centuries. Not surprisingly, a consensus on a

11

definition of human rights has not yet been found. It is not the purpose of this study to

contribute to the discourse on the foundation and source on human rights. Instead, I focus

on presenting some core arguments from the early theories by Hobbes and Locke.

Hobbes creates theories of the state around individuals' natural rights. Laws are

derived from the need to protect the individual. In Hobbes' theory of the state, the foundation

for the political system is the natural right of self-preservation and not moral principles

(Almeida 1998). The Leviathan only comes into existence for the purpose to protect the lives

of the citizens. Hobbes justifies the "absolutist authority in the name of the individual right of

self-preservation" (Almeida 1998, 7). This idea is often borrowed by dictators and used in

their rhetoric to back up totalitarian rule. Locke, on the other side, does not create an

absolutist authority, but combines individual rights with constitutional constraints. Although

individual rights are transferred to a public authority, this transfer is limited (Donnelly 1989).

Locke includes the citizens' right of resistance when their government jeopardizes their

individual and natural rights (Freeman 1998).

According to Freeman "Modem human rights theory began with John Locke's claim

that we have certain natural rights because we have been made by God to last during his, not

our pleasure" (Freeman 1994, 497). Locke's idea of natural rights is also pointed out by

Tully. In contrast to Hobbes, "Locke's answer is that political power is a natural property of

individuals... It follows from this premise of political individualism that people are self-

governing, because they are able to exercise political power themselves; naturally free,

because they are not naturally subject to the will of others; and, third, naturally equal, because

they equally possess and have the duty and rights to exercise political power" (Tully 1993,

12

because they are not naturally subject to the will of others; and, third, naturally equal,

because they equally possess and have the duty and rights to exercise political power" (Tully

1993, 15). Locke derives the existence of a universal individual right from people being

naturally free, equal, and self-governing.

Donnelly (1989) makes the argument that human rights are based on human needs,

which evolve from human nature. Donnelly and Rhoda Howard vaguely define human

dignity as the "nature and worth of the human person and his or her proper (political) relation

with society" (Howard and Donnelly 1986, 802).

Human dignity and human values are usually seen as the foundation for human

rights. But there is no consensus over what exactly human dignity and human values are and

where they come from. Freeman points out, that some scholars claim that there are "no

theoretical foundations for human rights" (Freeman 1994, 497). In their opinion, "our

prejudices are all that we have and there is no point in regretting that we lack what we cannot

have" (ibid.).

Instead of theorizing over the roots and fundamental reasons for human rights, human

rights activists usually focus on the human rights violations of repressive governments and

try to improve the situation of the people who suffer under these government. In addressing

human rights violations in various countries with different cultures, activists are confronted

with two principles that conflict with their cross-borders activism: state sovereignty and

cultural diversity. The question arises whether there are boundaries to the applicability of

human rights. Are some human rights guaranteed and accepted in certain cultures, but not

in others? Or is the concept of human rights a universal one, which should be respected in

13

the same way by all governments around the world? The controversy between universalists

and cultural relativists evolves around this problem of the generalizability of human rights.

Universalism versus Cultural Relativism

According to Freeman, "Cultural relativism underlies the assertion that external

agents should not interfere with the internal affairs of nation-states on grounds of

sovereignty" (Freeman 1994,494). This implies that a concept of human rights from one

culture cannot be transferred into another culture. According to cultural relativists, it cannot

be expected that there is the same respect for human rights across cultures.

Donnelly argues that "human rights represent a distinctive set of social practices, tied

to particular notions of human dignity that initially arose in the modern West in response to

the social and political changes produced by modern states and modern capitalist market

economies" (1989, 50). Looking at non-Western conceptions of human rights, such as in

Islam, traditional Africa or China, it seems that the individualism of human rights is specific

to the Western approach. The Western concept of human rights is based on the idea that each

individual possesses basic rights merely by being a human being.

In communitarian societies, community rights take precedence over individual human

rights. Howard and Donnelly define communitarian societies as "those that give ideological

and practical priority to the community (sometimes embodied in the state) over the

individual" (1986, 808). The basic difference between communitarian and liberal societies

is not the general absence of rights in the former, but that in community based societies the

rights of individuals are derived from their role in society. In these societies, rights are based

14

on criteria such as age, gender, lineage, and achievement (see Donnelly 1989). In short, "The

view of human dignity found in all communitarian societies is that the individual realizes

himself as part of the group by unquestioningly filling his social role or being loyal to the

state" (Howard and Donnelly 1986, 813).

Donnelly (1989) takes the position that only individuals are subjects of human rights.

Therefore, other actors such as organizations or ethnic groups, for example, do not have

human rights. Other scholars, on the other hand, assign human rights to groups as well.

Freeman (1995) differentiates between individual and collective human rights. According

to his argument, collective human rights are "not reducible to individual human rights. The

right to collective self-determination is not reducible to any set of individual human rights,

though it may be dependent on and necessary for such rights" (Freeman 1995, 39). He goes

even further and states that "Liberal individualism has traditionally failed to recognize its

own dependence on the assumption that nation-states have collective rights" (Freeman 1995,

39/40). Based on his perception of the liberal concept of human rights, individual rights are

also community rights, in the sense that they are based on the nation-state. Freeman argues

that in Locke's classic liberal theory "every individual equally had a set of natural rights, and

that government was legitimate only if it was based on the consent of the governed and

protected the fundamental rights of all" (Freeman 1995,25).

This crucial difference in the conceptualization of human rights leads to the question

of whether the Western idea of individual human rights is only applicable to Western

societies, or whether this concept can be expanded to all countries around the world.

15

One point of view suggests that the concept of human rights is a particularly Western

idea and has no relevance for other cultures. Cultural relativists perceive culture as the "sole

source of the validity of moral right or rule" (Donnelly 1989,109). Therefore, based on this

understanding, human rights are culture specific, and "outsiders are not competent to solve

problems that are internal to another culture" (Freeman 1994,494-495). An opposing view

is held by universalists, who see culture as being irrelevant to the legitimacy of moral rights

and rules.

A necessary tension arises between these two positions, because radical universalists

deny any national or subnational ethnic autonomy in defining and protecting human rights,

whereas for cultural relativists, it is culture which sets the standards for human rights.

Arguably there exists a cross-cultural consensus about some basic human rights (see

Donnelly 1989). Article 2 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that

"Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without

distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other

opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status." According to Donnelly

(1989), this is widely accepted as the lowest common denominator for protecting peoples'

basic rights. Freeman (1994), however, argues that a consensus does not produce a moral

obligation for dissident minorities to adopt the same view on human rights as the majority.

He points out that there might be a universal acceptance of human rights in word, as ideal

standards. But in practice human rights are not equally accepted or implemented (Freeman

1994). Hence, the "weakness of the practical consensus" (Freeman 1994,493) weakens in

turn the theoretical consensus.

16

It seems that the disagreements between cultural relativists and universalists will not

be solved in the near future. For the purpose of this empirical global study, I build upon

Donnelly's argument that certain human rights, such as the right to life integrity, should be

universal. Independent of specific cultural backgrounds and traditions, people should be free

from torture, arbitrary imprisonment, and killing. Shue (1996) classifies these rights as basic

rights. Basic rights are defined as "everyone's minimum reasonable demands upon the rest

of humanity" (Shue 1996, 13). Basic rights are different from other rights because the

"enjoyment of them is essential to the enjoyment of all other rights" (ibid,). He argues that

threats to physical security are the "most serious [...] hindrances to the enjoyment of any

right" (Shue 1994, 21). Everyone should be free from torture, killing and arbitrary

imprisonment, because "Being physically secure is a necessary condition for the exercise of

any other right" (ibid.).

Donnelly (1989) identifies four categories of human rights. The first category

includes personal rights, which are "minimal guarantees for individual bodily and moral

integrity" (Donnelly 1989, 34). This category corresponds with Shue's basic rights.

Donnelly's second category presents legal rights, meaning "procedural protection for

individuals in their dealing with the legal and political system" (ibid.). Civil liberties, the

third category, guarantee independence from the state, and the last category, political rights,

"empower citizens to participate in and ultimately control the state" (Donnelly 1989,35).

As mentioned earlier, it is not the task of this study to contribute to the philosophical

questions of whether universal human rights exist or where they might come from. The

presentation of the theories on human rights from Hobbes and Locke give a brief insight in

17

common arguments made about the origins of the rights of citizens. For the purpose of this

global empirical analysis, I assume the existence of some global basic rights, consistent with

the thinking of Hobbes and Locke, as well as Donnelly (1989), Howard and Donnelly (1986),

and Shue (1994). In analyzing data from 136 countries and drawing the same conclusions

from the empirical results for all countries, the concept of human rights is applied to all

countries in the same way.

The Repressive State

All human rights require both positive actions of the government and some form of

restraints on the state (Donnelly 1989). Therefore, "human rights have a special reference to

the state, in order to keep it an instrument to realize, rather than undermine, equal concern

and respect" (Howard and Donnelly 1986, 803). Because the concept of human rights is so

closely connected to national governments, it becomes obvious that the regime type of a

country plays a crucial role for the enjoyment or violation of personal integrity.

Howard and Donnelly state that "Individuals - regardless of who they are or where

they stand - have the inherent dignity and moral worth that the state must not merely

passively respect, but for which it must demonstrate an active concern. Furthermore,

everyone is entitled to this equal concern and respect" (1986, 803).

This study focuses on instances in which governments did not respect the "inherent

dignity and worth" of each individual, but rather employed repression against its people. Gurr

characterizes state terrorism generally as "coercive, life-threatening action" (1986,46). This

rather broad conceptualization of state terrorism focuses on the violation of basic life

integrity rights. Goldstein defines political repression as "government action which grossly

18

discriminates against persons or organizations viewed as presenting a fundamental challenge

to existing power relationships or key government policies, because of their perceived

political beliefs." (Goldstein 1978, xvi). This more detailed definition widens the spectrum

of human rights and also includes the violation of civil liberty rights and political rights, such

as free speech and political participation.

These two definitions of state violence reflect the two main groups in human rights

studies. As outlined in Chapter I, one groups looks at state terror as violations of "personal

integrity rights" - torture, imprisonment, politically motivated murder, and disappearances

(e.g., Henderson 1991, 1993; Mitchell and McCormick 1988; Poe and Tate 1994). This

approach is based on Gurr's (1986) definition of state terror cited above. To capture state-

sponsored terror, the effects of government actions on the people, such as killings and

disappearances, are measured.

The other group focuses on political, or negative, sanctions and views human rights

violations in the wider sense of civil and political rights violations (e.g., Davenport 1995,

1996, 1997; King 1997). These studies build upon the definition by Goldstein (1978) and

measure human rights violations from the government's point of view. This group measures

a government's actions in the form of negative state sanctions, instead of measuring the

violations from the side of the affected people.

In the following section, I discuss the achievements and shortcomings of important

studies of both areas that try to identify indicators that are most likely to lead to some form

of human rights violations.

19

Do Human Rights Need Democracy?

Some scholars argue that human rights are most likely to be respected and protected

under a "liberal" regime (see Donnelly 1989; Howard and Donnelly 1986). The question

whether democracies do indeed have better human rights records than more authoritarian

regimes or not has attracted much attention (Davenport 1997; Diamond et al. 1988; Fein

1995; Garreton 1996; Gurr 1986; King 1997; Mitchell and McCormick 1988; Poe and Tate

1994; Rummel 1985; Schmitter and Karl 1996).

Diamond et al. (1988) utilize Dahl's (1971) concept of "polyarchy" to specify the

determinants of a democratic state. Based on this definition, a democracy is characterized by

competition for offices, participation of the people in the decision-making process, and the

respect for civil and political liberties. This conceptualization of democracy already includes

the protection of several human rights. In an article analyzing the relevant literature, Rummel

(1985) comes to the conclusion that freedom inhibits domestic violence. He names this

phenomenon the "Freedom/Domestic Violence Proposition".

Similarly, Gurr argues that "democratic principles and institutions inhibit elites from

using state violence" (1986, 57). He clearly identifies reasons for why state repression is

unlikely to occur in democracies: "Democratic political norms emphasize compromise in

conflict and participation and responsiveness in relation between rulers and ruled, traits that

are inconsistent with reliance on violence as an instrument of rule or oppression" (Gurr 1986,

58). Again, the respect for individual human rights seems to be an inherent feature of

democratic regimes.

20

Leaders in democratic states are faced with regular elections, in which the electorate

voices its opinion on past and on potential policies of the candidates. "Modern political

democracy is a system of governance in which rulers are held accountable for their actions

in the public realm by citizens, acting indirectly through the competition and cooperation of

their elected representative" (Schmitter and Karl 1996, 50). Democracies are built on the

principle of compromise and cooperation. The accepted norms of democracies as well as

their institutional structures seem to prevent governments from utilizing terror as a policy

option.

The question remains, how much democracy does a country need until government

repression becomes highly unlikely. It has been argued that stable autocratic systems often

show less abuse of life-integrity rights than unstable democracies (Fein 1995). In the

following section, I discuss a study that statistically analyzes the "relation between life

integrity violations and freedom in 145 states during 1987" (Fein 1995,170). This research

is based on the "More Murder in the Middle" hypothesis, which argues that authoritarian and

stable democracies are less oppressive than partial and unstable democracies. Fein theorizes

that by opening up the possibility of greater class and group conflict, the expansion of

democracy actually increases the motives for repression among elites and parties fearing a

populist victory" (1995,173).

To measure the level of life integrity violation Fein utilizes Amnesty International

Reports. To capture political rights and civil liberties she uses Freedom House rankings. Her

analysis examines 145 states during 1987. Her results indicate that there is little difference

in life-integrity violations between partly free and unfree states, "but partly free states are

21

Looking at the impact of civil liberties and political rights separately, Fein ranks the

countries on two different scales, one representing their respect for civil liberties and the other

one their respect for political rights. Comparing the countries that are ranked second on the

two scales in respect to their protection of life integrity, the author finds that "second best

states on civil liberties have much better records in terms of protecting life-integrity than do

the second best states on political rights" (Fein 1995, 176). This appears to support the

intuitive assumption that political rights are, in general, more likely to be violated by

governments employing repression in the form of killing, torture, political imprisonment, and

disappearances. Taking a closer look at the utilized data, however, the statistical result

appears to be self-evident. In the Freedom House measure Gastil defines political rights as

"rights to participate meaningfully in the political process [and] ... civil liberties as rights to

free expression, to organize and demonstrate, as well as rights to a degree of autonomy such

as is provided by freedom of religion, education, travel and other personal rights" (Gastil

1988, quoted in Fein 1995, 175). This way of measuring democracy might not be able to

clearly separate the respect for human rights from a certain form of political regime type,

namely democracy. In this measure, states can only be coded high on "rights to free

expression, to organize and demonstrate" if they usually abstain from using repression

towards their opponents. Therefore, countries with high civil liberties are automatically on

the "better half' of the human rights scale.

Fein (1995) also tests for the effect of ethnic discrimination, war, development, and

inequality on life-integrity violations. However she does not clearly define these terms. It is

not clearly explained in her theory why she would expect a certain outcome either. Overall,

22

this study addresses an interesting topic, namely the relationship between different degrees

of democracy and government oppression. But again, this article captures only one moment

in time and also contains many flaws in its theory and operationalization, so that its findings

could be questioned for their validity and reliability.

The Role of Political and Socioeconomic Factors

Mitchell and McCormick (1988) try to identify economic and political indicators of

human rights violations. In the first part of their article, they discuss three key theories about

state repression, and in the second part they develop and empirically test a model of human

rights violations.

Mitchell and McCormick present three hypotheses, one borrowed from Robert

McNamara, former Secretary of Defense under President Kennedy and President of the World

Bank from 1986 until 1981. McNamara sees a linear relationship between wealth and the

human rights records of a particular country. He argues that economic modernization leads

to political stability, which in turn leads then to less human rights violations (see Mitchell and

McCormick 1988).

The second hypothesis is taken from the political scientist Samuel Huntington. It

hypothesizes the opposite of McNamara's theory on economic wealth and repression.

According to Huntington's argument, as presented by Mitchell and McCormick, the really

poor are too poor to protest, therefore, there is no need for governments to use repression.

This view perceives a curvilinear relationship between economic wealth and repression,

meaning that the very poor and very rich countries are expected to show low levels of human

23

rights violations, whereas countries between these two extremes are expected to have higher

state repression.

The third and last hypothesis is based on Marxist theory. This theory is based on the

assumption that capitalist countries with economic interests want "favorable conditions for

investment in the Third World" (Mitchell and McCormick 1988, 479). To establish and

maintain these favorable investment conditions, the capitalist counties try to prevent any

reforms that would give more benefits to the workers. Therefore, according to Marxist

theory, high involvement with external capitalist interests prevents revolution, contains

reform, and finally, leads to state repression (Mitchell and McCormick 1988).

The presentation of these arguments is both interesting and important, because it

points out different relationships between economic wealth and state repression. However,

Mitchell and McCormick do not build on these theoretical statements in the second part of

their article. The authors do not focus on testing the conflicting hypotheses on economic

development and repression. Instead, the empirical section of the study tests some hypotheses

that are not directly related to the argument made in the beginning. The authors do not

develop a theoretical framework from which they draw their hypotheses. More detailed

explanations for why they choose to analyze certain phenomena could improve the reader's

understanding of their argument.

In the empirical analysis, Mitchell and McCormick (1988) utilize three explanatory

variables. The first one is colonial experience. They hypothesize that British colonies have

better human rights records than do other colonies. The second political condition is

24

"newness" of the state, the last one is regime type. They also implement various control

variables, such as income, trade, and size of population.

The operationalization of the variables is not very convincing, however. For their

dependent variable, human rights violations, they code the Amnesty International Report 1985

for each country on a two-dimensional scale. The first scale measures the "degree of aibitrary

imprisonment, the other [one is] based upon the systemic use of killings and torture of

prisoners" (Mitchell and McCormick 1988, 484). It is not obvious why killing and torture

should be in the same category, and disappearance in another. They do not mention how they

capture disappearances in their measure. Their indicator for human rights violations is created

by adding up the two scales, the one that captures killing and torture, and the other one that

captures disappearances. Adding up the two scales to one indicator without weighting one

scale seems to distort the human rights records of some countries. It does not appear to be

adequate to put a country with hardly any imprisonment but widespread killing in the same

category as a country whose government keeps a high number of political prisoners, when it

is easier to kill the opponents than to imprison them.

To capture "newness" of a state, they employ a simple dichotomous measure. States

that achieved their independence before 1944 are coded "old" states, and states, which

became independent after 1944 are coded as "new" states. This cut-off seems to be very

arbitrary; the authors do not explain why they choose the year 1944 and why they only have

these two categories to capture the length of a state's independence.

The results of their analysis show that out of the three political variables, which are

colonial experience, newness of state, and regime type, only regime type is significantly

25

correlated with repression. Totalitarian regimes, which are operationalized as "second world,

Marxist nations" (Mitchell and McCormick 1988, 493), seem to be more repressive than

authoritarian regimes, which are operationalized as "military regimes and traditional

monarchies" (Mitchell and McCormick 1988, 488). The regime type hypothesis is only

confirmed for the political prisoner category, not for the torture/killing category. In general,

liberal regimes showed higher respect for human rights than authoritarian regimes.

The results confirm the hypothesis that the type of regime is an important indicator

for a country's human rights records. The major drawback is that this analysis focuses on one

point in time, employing only one annual report on human rights violations. Because it is a

static approach, this model cannot tap the question of how a change in regime type affects

state repression.

Henderson (1991) performs a similar analysis. His study also focuses on political and

socioeconomic variables. He utilizes a global cross-sectional analysis, but, as Mitchell and

McCormick (1988) do, captures one point in time and, therefore, misses any dynamic trends.

Henderson tests several hypotheses. The first one measures the correlation between

democracies and state repression. His findings support the argument presented above, that

democracies are likely to show higher respect for basic human rights than do other political

regimes (see Gurr 1986; Mitchell and McCormick 1988; Rummel 1985; Schmitter and Karl

1996).

The second hypothesis analyzes the impact of inequality on repression, where

inequality is expected to be positively related to state terror. The result shows a small but

statistically significant coefficient of 0.006 (Henderson 1991). However, the

26

operationalization of the independent variable is extremely questionable. The author uses the

inequality index as developed by Ward (1978). This is problematic, because the data used for

the independent variable is almost 10 years older than the data utilized to measure the

dependent variable. The phenomenon of inequality is likely to have changed over the past ten

years, but Henderson argues that a "slow pace of change in equality should allow any

conclusions to remain relevant" (1991,129). This argument, however, is not convincing and

not sufficient for explaining the use of these data.

Another problem arises with the hypothesis that an increase in the economic growth

rate leads to an increase in repression. The statistically significant coefficient of -.06 supports

the hypothesis (Henderson 1991). But looking again at the operationalization of the variable

that is supposed to measure economic growth, the validity of the result becomes questionable.

Henderson (1991) utilizes the average change in energy consumption rate from 1973 to 1984

to measure economic growth and correlates this with repression measured in 1985. Measuring

changes in energy consumption over this period of time is most likely distorted by the first

world oil shock and the creation of the OPEC cartell. I suggest that a dynamic process such

as growth could be captured better in a time-series analysis than comparing average growth

rates during previous 11 years with state violence measured only for one point in time. The

employed measurement does not seem to produce the expected results. In short, this study

by Henderson (1991) offers an interesting concept about correlates of life integrity violations,

because it includes political as well as socioeconomic variables. Due to the utilized data and

based on the statistical method employed, however, one can not be very confident about the

reliability of the results.

27

In a more complex study, Poe and Tate (1994) analyze the effect of various indicators

on human rights abuse, using pooled cross-sectional time series, covering 153 countries from

1980-1987. Their model contains the following explanatory variables: democracy, leftist

regimes, military regimes, population size and growth, level of development and economic

growth, British cultural influence, international war experience and civil war experience. They

also utilize lagged repression.

This article falls under the category of studies that explore correlates of state

terrorism, therefore, analyzing the violation of basic life integrity rights, in contrast to broader

civil and political rights. Opposed to Mitchell and McCormick, the human rights violations

of a country are coded on a one-dimension ordinal scale from one (almost no human rights

violations) to five (extensive repression). The information on murder, torture, forced

disappearance, and imprisonment for political reasons is obtained from reports of the U.S.

State Department and Amnesty International. This coding system was originally employed by

Gibney and Stohl (see Gibney and Dalton 1997; Gibney and Stohl 1988; Stohl and Carleton

1985).

Poe and Tate (1994) test several hypotheses. British cultural influence and the level

of development are expected to decrease state terrorism, whereas population size and growth

and economic growth are hypothesized to increase repression. Looking at regime types,

democracies are expected to show less state terror, whereas leftist and military regimes are

predicted to have higher human rights violations. The authors also test for the impact of the

experience of international and civil wars. Both phenomena are expected to result in an

increase in life integrity violations. This is based on the theoretical argument that civil and

28

international wars are perceived as a threat to the regime. Leaders who face some form of

threat are more likely to react with repression than they would be under normal conditions

(Poe 1997a, 1997b).

Based on their findings, Poe and Tate conclude that "population size, economic

standing or development, international war, civil war, and democracy affect levels of

repression" (Poe and Tate 1994, 865). The coefficients for these variables are found to be

statistically significant in the hypothesized directions. A strong coefficient for the lagged

endogenous variable indicates that state repression does not change quickly. Once the

apparatus for state repression has been set in place, it appears to have a self-perpetuating

effect (Davenport 1996). The relationship between military and leftist regimes turns out to

be statistically insignificant, as well as rapid increases in population and economic growth

rates. These results are confirmed in a similar study by Poe, Tate, and Keith, which analyzes

similar variables, but extending the time period from 1976 to 1993 (Poe, Tate, and Keith

1997).

Due to the utilized data and statistical methods, the study by Poe and Tate (1994) is

more sensitive to changes in time than the other studies discussed above. The analysis covers

a time-span of eight years. It is interesting to note that democratic regimes do have a

significant impact on the level of human rights violations, while militaiy and leftist regimes

do not (Poe and Tate 1994). This confirms the popular intuition and previous findings that

political regime types do play a role in countries' respect for human rights. But like most

other studies in this field, it does not say anything about regime changes in particular, this

question still remains unanswered.

29

Another study by Poe, Tate, and Lantrip (1997) concentrates on regional samples,

using again similar independent variables as in the above discussed article by Poe and Tate

(1994). In contrary to the results of the global analysis (Poe and Tate 1994), they find a

strong relationship between human rights violations and military and leftist regimes for the

Latin American and Caribbean regions (Poe, Tate, and Lantrip 1997). Therefore, the type of

regime might have an impact on human rights violations in some regions, but not in others.

The question on how the transition from one regime type to another affects state repression

is, again, not addressed.

Davenport (1995) performed a similar multivariate time-series study, covering 53

countries from 1948 to 1982. A basic difference of this approach in relation to the ones

discussed above is the conceptualization of the dependent variable. Davenport (1995) sees

repression from the point of the government as negative sanctions applied by the state. In this

operationalization, negative state sanctions include "censorship, ... as well as political

restrictions" (Davenport 1995, 694). The difference between the negative state sanction data

and the Political Terror Scale (PTS) is not only that the former measures sanctions employed

by the state, but the latter focuses on the violations suffered by the people. Also, Davenport's

negative state sanction measure is an event count measure, and the PTS is a standard-based

measure, where countries are assigned values according to previously determined categories.

Davenport (1995) analyzes the impact of political conflict and various state

characteristics, such as system type, coercive capacity, economic development and

dependency, on repression. He also controls for lagged repression. Later research (Davenport

1996) has supported the notion of including a lagged endogenous variable.

30

Davenport's findings (1995) show that the level of democracy and economic

development decrease the use of state repression, whereas lagged repression and political

conflict increase it. Furthermore, Davenport concludes, "all regimes do not respond to

domestic threats in the same manner" (Davenport 1995, 707). According to his findings,

nondemocracies appear to react most sensitively to multidimensional threats, whereas

transition-states are in the middle, and democracies seem to be the least sensitive regimes in

reaction to perceived threat. The linear relationship found between the level of democracy and

repression as a reaction to threat perception contrasts the "more murder in the middle"

hypothesis as presented by Fein (1995). The opposing findings ask for further investigation

of the relationship between political regimes and their respect for human rights

Several aspects of Davenport's analysis (1995) are important for this study. Like

findings from other articles (e.g., Mitchell and McCormick 1988; Poe and Tate 1994), it

reinforces the assumption that the political regime type plays a significant role for the level

of state repression. But, again, it leaves the question unanswered of what might happen during

a regime change. Like in other studies, lagged repression is highly significant (see Poe and

Tate, 1994; Poe, Tate and Keith, 1997; Davenport 1996). The level of human rights violations

does not seem to change very quickly. One explanation of this phenomenon could be that

there is a self-perpetuating effect, "the coercive apparatus seeks to justify its continued

existence and increases its access to resources" (Davenport 1995, 691).

Davenport's (1995) results about domestic threat are supported by a study by Poe,

Tate, Keith, and Lanier (1997). According to their analysis, "when threats were present,

average levels of human rights abuses increase substantially in their immediately subsequent

31

time frame" (Poe et al. 1997,24). Another piece by Poe about violent and nonviolent threats

finds that "in contrast to nonviolent threats, violent ones increase the probability that regimes

will react by undertaking more human rights abuses, even where existing repression levels are

already quite high" (Poe 1997b, unpublished).

A more recent study by King (1997) utilizes the same operationalization of repression

as Davenport (1995), employing the negative state sanction approach. King (1997)

statistically analyzes the impact of domestic unrest, the extent of institutional democratization,

and the level of economic development on negative state sanction. To measure the level of

democratization, King (1997) utilizes Gurr and Jagger's Polity III data set on regime type and

political authority. These data have the advantage that they use only institutional categories,

such as constraints on the chief executive and the openness of executive recruitment (Gurr

and Jaggers 1995) for determining the level of democracy. The respect for civil and political

rights is not included, which is important for studies on human rights.

King's (1997) results parallel Davenport's (1995) and Poe and Tate's (1994) findings,

that the more democratized a country, the more it respects the rights of its citizens. King also

draws the conclusion that in transitional states, political activities of the masses are perceived

as threats by the elites and, therefore, are prone to experience oppression from the

governments. However, it does not seem to be appropriate to utilize the results of this

research for making conclusions about political regimes in transition periods, because the

study focuses on partial democracies, and not on regimes during a transition period. King

(1997) analyzes countries that are on the middle of the democracy-spectrum, meaning that

these countries show some democratic institutions, which are not fully developed. Hence, this

32

does not mean that these countries are undergoing a regime transition. They might be stable

partial democracies. It is apparent, that changes in the political regime type have not yet been

systematically analyzed in the research by King (1997).

Only one study (Davenport 1997) could be found that analyzes the effect of regime

change on state repression. In this study, Davenport (1997) tests, in a pooled cross-sectional

time-series analysis of 49 countries from 1948 to 1982, the relationship between changes in

the level of democracy and the use of negative state sanctions. He considers short- and long-

term effects and employs economic development, political conflict, dependency, and lagged

repression as control variables. To measure the dependent variable, state repression, he

employs the indicator of negative sanctions as developed by Taylor and Jodice (1983), and

for the level of democracy he utilizes Gurr's (1990) Polity III data set. The author also

includes the occurrence of national elections as an indicator of democratization.

Utilizing this complex model, Davenport (1997) statistically tests several hypotheses.

The first hypothesis states that democracies show less repression than autocracies. He also

expects that the process of democratization decreases repression, whereas the process of

autocratization increases repression. He hypothesizes generally, that a change in the system

type increases repression. This, however, is not consistent with the expectation of

democratization decreasing negative state sanctions. A regime change results in an increase

in repression, because during the period of change leaders are expected to be more sensitive

to domestic threat and are more eager to maintain domestic order, and, therefore, more

willing to use repression during the transition period (Davenport 1997).

33

Davenport's (1997) findings reveal interesting patterns. He concludes from his

statistical analysis that the more democratic a country, the more the country respects the

rights of its citizens. However, extreme moves away from and toward democracy seem to

increase repression, as well as changes toward autocratic regimes (Davenport 1997). Also

interesting to note is that by employing an ARIMA intervention model, Davenport finds that

the impact of change on negative state sanctions seems to be contemporaneous and short-

termed (Davenport 1997). The variance he explains with his models ranges from 49% to 52%

(Davenport 1997).

Davenport's (1997) study is an important asset to the existing research in this field.

This approach accounts for the impact of dynamic processes, namely regime changes. The

author does not exclusively focus at the level of democratization, but also on regime changes

away from democracy. He also analyzes the duration of the impact of regime change on

negative state sanctions. Nevertheless, some procedures in this study remain unclear,

particularly the way the regime change variable is coded. The author creates a dummy

variable to capture cases of polity interruption, polity interregnum, polity transition, and

missing values. The dummy variable for change is coded "1" when one of these situations is

present, and "0" when not (Davenport 1997). This method is questionable for a few reasons.

First, it is not clear why missing data should appear as change. Data might simply not be

available, without any change in the system occurring. From Davenport's description of his

regime change dummy variable, it is not clear why missing value equals change. Secondly, it

is also not obvious why polity interruption, polity interregnum, and polity transition are

necessarily indicators for a political regime change. The fact that a country is occupied by a

34

foreign nation, which is coded as "polity interregnum" in the Polity III data, does not

automatically indicate any kind of regime change. The national government is temporarily not

in political control over the country. Therefore, in the correct sense of the meaning of

negative state sanction, during the period of "polity interregnum" it is not the national

government which is responsible for any sanctions on political and civil liberties. Also, a

country that is occupied by a foreign force does not automatically undergo a regime change.

It seems to be a good intention to include these cases, which are otherwise coded as

missing values. But this should be explained with a specific theoretical justification, which is

not given. To sum up, this research by Davenport (1997) analyzes questions so far untapped

about regime change and human rights violations with statistically sophisticated methods. But

still far more research in this area needs to be done.

Regime Change

After examining the pertinent literature on human rights violations, the conclusion can

be drawn that regime type is a crucial predictor of that country's respect for human rights.

Many questions about the role of democracies and partial democracies are still unanswered,

however. Unfortunately, only few studies have looked at the effect of regime change on state

terror. The following part deals with work that has been done on political regime change.

In order to identify regime change, it is necessary to first specify a definition for

regime. Lawson defines a political regime as "the formal and informal organization of the

center of political power, and of its relations with the broader society. A regime determines

who has access to political power, and how those who are in power deal with those who are

35

not" (Lawson 1993, 185). A similar definition is offered by Kitschelt (1992). According to

his conceptualization, political regimes are "rules and basic political resource allocations

according to which actors exercise authority by imposing and enforcing collective decision

on a bounded constituency" (Kitschelt 1992, 1028). Both definitions address the basic

structure of the political system, not specific governments. And both definitions stress the role

of political regimes in determining the allocation and legitimate use of power within the

country. Because a political regime determines the allocation and use of domestic power, it

becomes self-evident that citizens or groups of societies have vivid interests in shaping, or at

least in influencing, the regime type of their country. A regime change is defined as "a change

in (or abandonment of) the principles and norms governing the nature of the regime" (Lawson

1993, 186).

Many case studies have been done on regime changes in particular countries, but only

few articles address the issue of regime change in a general manner. Lichbach (1981)

compares and tests the structuralist and functionalist argument of regime change. According

to the structuralist argument, "regimes change because they are not constructed properly; that

is, when the polity's political institutions are flawed" (Lichbach 1981, 54). "Flawed" in this

case essentially means being unable to produce consistent polities. According to Gurr (1974),

consistent polities are a crucial component of a stable regime. "The authority characteristics

of'coherent' polities are logically or psychologically consistent with one another and thereby

enhance the polity's capacity to endure" (Gurr 1974, quoted in Lichbach 1981, 55). It seems

that Gurr uses the terms 'coherent' and 'consistent' interchangeably. Coherent polities can

only be produced on the basis of coherent institutions. Therefore, incoherence within the

36

institutions leads to disruptions within the political process. And disruptions within the

political process are likely to result in more frequent changes of the political regime type,

according to the structuralist argument.

The functionalist argument for regime change is based on the performance of the

respective regime. It hypothesizes that a regime change will take place when the polity

experiences performance crises. Lichbach's analysis (1981) suggests that both functionalist

and structuralist arguments offer valid explanations for many occurrences of regime change.

Lichbach statistically tests both arguments and finds empirical support for both the

structuralist and the functionalist view on regime change.

Summary

The discussion of existing literature in the field of state repression and human rights

violations leads to the following conclusion. There seems to be an agreement on the effect of

certain variables on the level of human rights violations in a country. Larger populations are

associated with more repression, whereas higher economic development is associated with

less repression, once other variables are controlled for. It is also undisputed that fully

developed democracies have low human rights violations, when other factors are held equal.

And finally, previous state repression is found to be an important indicator of the present use

of repression (Davenport 1997,1996; Henderson 1991, 1993; Mitchell and McCormick 1988;

Park 1987; Poe and Tate 1994). On the other hand, there are divergent positions, particularly

on classifying the relationship between different level of democracies and state repression

(Davenport 1997; Fein 1995; King 1997; Rummel 1985).

37

There are basically three major critiques that can be made about the existing body of

literature on human rights. First, the theoretical concepts, which the empirical analyses are

based on, are often not very well elaborated. Assumptions are often not clearly stated. The

description of theoretically expected interactions and relationships between the explanatory

variables and the phenomena that are sought to be explained often lack clarity as well. Instead

of deriving hypotheses from a well-developed theory in a logically consistent manner,

explanatory variables that have been found to be important in previous studies are merely

added to the equation. Secondly, many studies only take a snapshot in time. Because they are

static, they have difficulty capturing any kind of change. And thirdly, the impact of different

types of regime changes have not yet been included into models of state repression in a

systematic and comprehensive way.

In the next chapter I formulate a theory that attempts to address these shortcomings

in the existing literature.

CHAPTER IE

THEORY AND OPERATIONALIZATION

The review of the literature showed that many different variables have been

examined for their effect on government oppression. In this study, I attempt to develop an

approach that builds on findings from previous work and expands on it. The goal of this

paper is to contribute to the body of knowledge on why human rights violations occur,

focusing on the effect of political regime changes on state repression.

Previous work revealed the crucial role of the political regime type of a country to

predict its respect for basic human rights of its citizens (Fein 1995; King 1997; Poe and

Tate 1994; Rummel 1985). Due to limitations in the research designs of many pieces, no

conclusions could be drawn on dynamic effects, such as the impact of a change in regime

type on the respect for life integrity rights. I propose advanced pooled cross-sectional

time series analysis to explore some questions of how different types of political regime

changes are correlated to certain levels of human rights violations.

In this chapter, I discuss several theories in the field of human rights and political

regimes. Some of these theories have conflicting expectations regarding the effect of

particular kinds of regime changes on state repression. This chapter presents several

hypotheses that are drawn from a variety of theoretical perspectives and explains the

operationalization of the variables used to statistically test the models.

38

39

Building a Model of Political Regime Change

and Human Rights Violations

Examining the literature on political regimes, it becomes apparent that the concept

of power is closely entangled with political regimes. Political regimes are identified as

"rules and basic political resource allocation" (Kitschelt 1992, 1028), or elsewhere as

"the formal and informal organization of the center of political power" (Lawson 1993,

185). The group that establishes a new political regime determines the distribution of

power and sets the ground rules on how the power will be used in the new system. The

regime decides, which individuals, social groups, alliances etc., hold power. Thus, a

regime change is usually characterized by a change in the power distribution within the

country. The structure and nature of a political regime clearly has an enormous impact

on all parts of society.

As defined in Chapter II, regime change can be characterized as "a change in (or

abandonment off the principles and norms governing the nature of the regime" (Lawson

1993, 186). The period of the change itself can, therefore, be characterized by an absence

of established rules and clear power allocation in the system. The political regime has

started to break free from its old structures and constraints, and it has not yet fully

adopted its new shape. During the transition period from the old to the new regime, the

political system is in an extremely malleable condition.

This openness of the system and the uncertainty about the future regime affects

both the powerful elites and the masses. The groups or individuals that were in charge of

the country under the old regime are likely to hold on to as much power and influence

40

during the transition period as possible, in order to still have a share in the new regime.

On the other hand, groups who had no significant influence under the former regime are

most likely to fight for their "fair" share of the system so that they might be able to shape

the future distribution of political influence to their liking. Thus, the instability during the

time of a political regime change creates tension among the different segments of the

population. I theorize that this instability coupled with the fight over influence in shaping

the new regime results in an increase in human rights violations.

Arguably domestic unrest and violence in general might increase during a

transition period. However, in this study, I focus only on violence exercised by the state.

Violence within a country can only be classified as state terrorism, if "terrorism occurs

with the explicit or implicit approval of authorities" (Gurr 1986, 48).

These expectations are supported in several publications. In a cross-national

study, Markus and Nesvold (1972) test the impact of political instability on governmental

coerciveness. Their results indicate a linear relationship: "The higher (lower) the level of

instability, the higher (lower) the level of coerciveness in the same time period" (Markus

and Nesvold 1972, 236). Gurr goes even further and argues more specifically that state

terrorism "should be seen as arising from conflict situations created by interactions

among elites and their opponents" (Gurr 1986, 45). This statement supports the argument

made above, that the struggle among groups of society during a regime change leads to

higher state violence during this period of time. Also, weak regimes are perceived as

being more likely to use violence toward their opponents than strong regimes (Gurr

1986). A regime during a transition period is prone to be a weak regime, because it lacks

41

an established and organized center of power (Lawson 1993). Hence, an increase in state

violence appears to be likely.

The notion that weak regimes are more likely to employ oppression than strong

ones is also supported by Poe (1997a). Utilizing a formal decision-making model for the

reaction of regimes that perceive domestic threats, "Leaders of particular states are

hypothesized to be willing to take action to increase their Strength, or decrease the Threat

posed to their regime by their political opponents, in periods of Alarm when they

perceive that the Threat is increasing relative to Strength" (Poe 1997a, n.d.). Because the

position of the ruling elite is usually questioned during a regime change, the rulers

perceive their political strength as very weak. At the same time, "their perception of the

probability that a movement posing a domestic Threat (T) will topple their regime" (ibid.)

is very high. Hence, in order to change the Strength/Threat-ratio to their favor, the leaders

are likely to use oppression against domestic opponents "to induce terror in the populace"

(ibid.).

Based on these assumptions, namely that the change of a political regime type

leads to an increase in instability, and, in turn, higher levels of instability lead to an

increase in state repression, every type of change is expected to result in higher life

integrity violations. I, therefore, hypothesize the following:

Hi: A change from one political regime type to another increases the level of life integrity violations in the same year when the change occurs.

42

Change to Anocracv

Different types of regime change do not necessarily have to show that same

pattern in human rights violations during the transition period. According to Fein (1995),

for example, totalitarian regimes produce better human rights records than do partial

democracies. This poses the question, whether a shift from a partial democracy to an

autocracy is coupled with a decrease in government repression, and, vice versa, whether a

transition from an autocratic regime to a partial democracy results in an increase in state

violence.

In order to address this question, I utilize three different categories of political

regimes and analyze the changes between them. In addition to the two main categories

'democracy' and 'autocracy', I implement a third category 'anocracy' for mixed regime

types, meaning regimes that lie in between a democratic and an authoritarian regime.

Gurr originally used the expression "anocratic polity" to describe a regime whose

essential quality was "its relative lack of political power and institutionalism" (1974,

1487). In this study, the term 'anocracy' is used to describe a political regime that cannot

be identified as a coherent democracy or autocracy but one that shows mixed institutional

attributes (see also Enterline 1997; Gurr 1990; Maoz and Abdolali 1989).

The character of mixed institutional structures and power distributions might

result in instability and might encourage different groups of society to drag the system

into their preferred direction.

H2: A political regime change to an anocratic regime increases the level of life integrity violations during the year of the change.

43

Change awav from Autocracy

A different type of regime change, which is analyzed in this paper, is the change

toward democracy. Opening a formerly closed system to political participation can be a

dangerous and destabilizing process. Garreton supports the assumption that newly

democratized states are likely to display higher human rights violations during the

transition period, because "political actors [...] are not wholly integrated into the

democratic game and sometimes even conspire against it" (Garreton 1996, 40). The

government within a new democracy might be afraid of "too much" political activity of

the masses and of the increasing influence of interest groups, such as labor unions, that

try to enter and shape the system. Usually "antidemocratic or authoritarian values,

mentalities, and attitudes" (ibid.) are still present after a country changed from an

authoritarian regime to a democracy. While leaders try to hold on to their exclusive

power, the people might push for faster opening and more political participation. The

ruling elites are not used to sharing their power, and the masses are not familiar with

democratic institutions and procedures. Therefore, the learning process might often be

difficult and violent. Hence, in addition to the instability-factor, a change away from an

authoritarian regime carries several other problems as outlined above, which are apt to

lead to greater repression.

H3: A political regime change away from an authoritarian regime leads to an increase in life integrity violations during the year of the change.

44

Change from Democracy to Autocracy

Looking at regime changes away from democracies, the following factors might

increase the threat perception of the regime in relation to its own strength and, therefore,

lead to an increase in state repression. In a democracy the public is used to participation

in the political process and shaping, to a certain extent, policy outcomes. The people are

likely to protest vehemently when the opportunity to participate is taken away from them,

by banning political parties, for example. Hence, the masses fight for maintaining their

political rights and influence in politics. If an authoritarian leader comes into power by

fraudulent elections or by a violent overthrow of a legitimately elected government, the

new ruler needs the assistance and backup of other powerful elites in the society.

However, if opposing elites are not satisfied with their assigned share of power and

influence, they might try to fight against the new ruler and push him or her out of power

again. All of these phenomena and procedures clearly increase the perceived threat by the

old leaders and are likely, therefore, to increase the use of repression.

Also, authoritarian and totalitarian regimes are widely perceived as showing low

respect for the human rights of their citizens (Donnelly 1989; Howard and Donnelly

1986; Forsythe 1989). Unlike democratic regimes, political leaders in an autocratic

regime are not subject to regular elections and are not responsible to the same extent as a

democratic leader to the masses as a whole. Autocratic leaders might have to comply

with certain requirements of other elites in order to stay in power. But an autocratic

system does not usually provide for institutionalized channels for citizens to contribute

inputs into the policy-making process. The lack of these guaranteed and organized

45

procedures might force people to use "alternative" ways of making their opinion

acknowledged, such as violent protest and open rebellion against the government. Often

this leads to domestic unrest. A shift towards autocracy is expected to increase the use of

state repression in two ways. First, as described above, people that are used to participate

in the policy-making process are not likely to merely have these rights taken away from

them without resistance. And second, new autocratic leaders are likely to try eliminating

political opponents as soon as they get into power, probably with the use of physical

violence and oppression.

Two further hypotheses can be derived from these theoretical arguments:

H4: A political regime change away from a democratic regime leads to an increase in life integrity violations during the year of the change.

H5: A political regime change toward an authoritarian regime leads to an increase in life integrity violations during the year of the change

Change to Democracy

Based on previous work it can be hypothesized that moving toward a democratic

regime decreases state repression as soon as the transition process begins (Mitchell and

McCormick 1988; Poe and Tate 1994; Rummel 1985; Schmitter and Karl 1996). In this

case, the prospect of more freedom and civil and political rights under the new regime

might immediately lead to a greater respect for human rights, in spite of the instability-

factor of the regime change itself. As discussed in Chapter II, the respect for human

rights is seen as an inherent feature of democracies, democratic "traits ... are inconsistent

with reliance on violence as an instrument of rule" (Gurr 1986, 58). Therefore, it is likely

46

that the "democratic traits", which prevent the use of state repression, outweigh the

violence increasing instability during the transition period. The following hypothesis is

based on this "Freedom/Domestic Violence Proposition" (Rummel 1985).

H& A political regime change toward a democratic regime decreases the level of life integrity violations during the year of the change.

The Dependent Variable: Life Integrity Violations

As outlined at the beginning of Chapter I, the human rights literature can be

divided into two main groups. One group looks at human rights violations in the form of

personal integrity rights, such as the right of being free from torture, imprisonment,

politically motivated murder, and disappearances (Henderson 1991, 1993; Mitchell and

McCormick 1988; Poe and Tate 1994). The other group focuses on political, or negative,

sanctions and is concerned with the violation of civil and political rights in a broader

sense (Davenport 1995, 1996, 1997; King 1997). This study falls under the first category.

To measure the dependent variable, life integrity violations, I employ the Political

Terror Scale (PTS), which was originally created by Stohl, Gibney, and colleagues, and

later extended by other researchers (Stohl and Carleton 1985; Gibney and Dalton 1997;

Poe and Tate 1994; Poe, Vazquez, and Zanger 1998). The advantages of this measure are

that it concentrates on basic life integrity violations and that is available for many years

and covers almost all countries.

Amnesty International Human Rights reports and U.S. State Department Country

Reports were utilized for assigning categories to countries according to their respect for

life integrity rights. The contents of these two sets of reports were analyzed and a value

47

from one to five was assigned to each country for each year, according to where it fit on

the following scale:

Level (1) "Countries ... under a secure rule of law, people are not imprisoned for their views, and torture is rare or exceptional ... political murders are extremely rare."

Level (2) "There is a limited amount of imprisonment for nonviolent political activity. However, few persons are affected, torture and beating are exceptional... political murder is rare."

Level (3) "There is extensive political imprisonment, or a recent history of such imprisonment. Execution or other political murders and brutality may be common. Unlimited detention, with or without trial, for political views is accepted"

Level (4) "The practices of (Level 3) are expanded to larger numbers. Murders, disappearances are a common part of life ... .In spite of its generality, on this level terror affects primarily those who interest themselves in politics or ideas."

Level (5) "The terror of (Level 4) have been expanded to the whole population ... . The leaders of these societies place no limits on the means or thoroughness with which they pursue personal or ideological goals." (Gastil 1980, as quoted in Stohl and Carleton 1985)

For the statistical analyses in the following chapter, both data sets, the one based

on the Amnesty International reports and the other one based on the State Department

reports are employed. For the multivariate analysis, I do for most parts not present the

results from utilizing the State Department reports, because the difference is negligible.

As previous research has shown, in comparison to the Amnesty International reports, the

State Department seems to be slightly biased against leftist countries, whereas they tend

to treat their allies and trading partners less harshly in their human rights reports than

48

Amnesty International does (Poe, Vazquez, and Zanger 1998). Although the biases of the

State Department reports are not very strong, for the most part, I only present the results

obtained from utilizing Amnesty International reports, because the differences in the

statistical results were extremely small. Where differences between the two exist, I

discuss the State Department results in the footnotes.

The original Political Terror Scale (PTS) from Gibney and Stohl (see Gibney and

Dalton 1997; Lopez and Stohl 1992; Stohl and Carleton 1985) was extended to 1993. For

the countries Amnesty International did not issue reports in a particular year, the score

was taken from the State Department Country Reports.

Measuring Regime Change

The operationalization of regime change used in this study is based on the May

1996 version of Jagger and Gurr's Polity III: Regime Type and Political Authority 1800-

1994 data (Jaggers and Gurr 1995). The advantage of this data set is that this it has

widely been used for measuring levels of democracy and autocracy (Bennett 1997;

Davenport 1996, 1997; King 1997; Maoz and Abdolali 1989; Maoz and Russett 1992,

1993; Ray 1995; Siverson and Starr 1994). In addition to its availability for all the years

and countries necessary for this study, the Polity III data set is especially suited for this

analysis of human rights violations, because it operationalizes the regime types based on

institutional characteristics. Other measures such as the Freedom House Index (see Gastil

1980) and the Liberal Democracy Measure by Bollen (1993) include civil and political

rights into their measure of democracy. When correlating democracy with a human rights

49

measure, it is more appropriate to use a measure that employs institutional characteristics.

In including the respect for civil and political rights the measure of the dependent and

independent variable interfere with each other.

The Polity III data set operationalizes regime type with two different scales. One

captures institutional democracy, with values ranging from 0 to +10, with +10 standing

for a fully developed institutional democracy. The second scale measures the degree of

institutional autocracy, also ranging from 0 to +10. Democracies are coded based on "the

competitiveness of political participation, the openness and competitiveness of executive

recruitment, and the level of constraints on the chief executive" (Jaggers and Gurr 1995,

471). Authoritarian regimes are characterized according to "a lack of regulated political

competition and a lack of concern for political and civil liberties" (ibid.). The specific

categories for the construction of democracy and autocracy can be seen in Table 1 in the

Appendix.

To obtain a single continuum for the institutional characteristics of political

regimes, the autocracy score is subtracted from the democracy score, "ranging from

positive ten for states that are purely democratic to negative ten for those which are

purely autocratic" (Jaggers and Gurr 1995, 473). I collapse these 21 categories into three

general groups of regime types, autocracy, ranging from -10 to -4, anocracy, ranging

from -3 to +3, and democracy, ranging from +4 to +10. As used in other studies, an

anocracy is a mixed regime type with institutional characteristics from both democracies

and autocracies (Enterline 1997; Gurr 1990; Maoz and Abdolali 1989; Maoz and Russett

1993).

50

For this study, several dummy variables are created on the basis of these three

categories to test the six hypotheses regarding the effect of particular kinds of regime

changes. The first two variables measure regime change in general, without

distinguishing between different types of changes. The first one is the dummy variable

'regime change.' A country year is coded "1" in this dummy variable when a country

moves from one of the three regime type categories into another category, and it is coded

"0" for the years with no change.

The second variable is created to account for continuous change. For this variable,

the continuum democracy-autocracy (the autocracy score subtracted from the democracy

score) is lagged one period in time. Then the lagged variable is subtracted from the

original democracy-autocracy variable. The Polity III data set measures "polity

interruption" (-66) and "polity interregnum" (-77) (see Gurr, Jaggers, and Moore 1989).

Although the countries coded "-66" or "-77" might experience high instability during

these years, which might in turn increase their human rights violations during that time, it

is not clear, who is exercising the violence during that time. But it is highly unlikely that

it is "the state", which represses the people, because in both cases, the national

government is not in control of the political power during a time of a polity interruption

and polity interregnum. Because this study focuses on state terror and not domestic

violence and unrest in general, I code these cases as missing values, as well as the first

year 1977 in the utilized data set.

The first year after a country was coded as "-88" in the original data set is

assigned the difference between the value of first year after the year coded "-88",

51

subtracted from the value of the last year before the country year coded "-88". This

continuous regime change variable ranges from -15 to +16. The distribution of this

variable can be seen in Table 2.

This table contains several interesting findings. It shows that for the vast majority

of the country-years there was no regime change (N = 1923). This indicates that political

regimes are, overall, extremely stable. The type of regime change found most often is a

move toward democracy of one point on the democracy-autocracy scale (N = 65). There

were clearly more changes toward democracy than changes toward autocracy during the

time between 1977 and 1993. And most of these changes toward democracy occurred in

countries that previously fell clearly in the autocracy category. For example, 40 cases

represent a change toward democracy of 10 point or more on the democracy-autocracy

scale (see Table 2 in the Appendix). This supports Huntington's argument that the late

twentieth century is experiencing a third wave of democratization (Huntington 1991).

To test hypotheses 2 to 6, several more specific regime change variables are

created, indicating the various directions of change. Hypothesis 2 argues that a change

toward anocracy increases the level of repression. To statistically test this hypothesis, two

variables are created, one indicating the transition from democracy ("democ—»anoc"), the

other one the transition to anocracy from autocracy ("autoc—•anoc"). Both dummy

variables are coded "1" for the year a change occurred, and "0" for all the other years1.

To capture change to democracy from anocracy and autocracy, dummy variables are

1 Like in the other regime change variables, the year 1977 is coded "99", as well as the years indicating either "regime interruption" or "regime interregnum."

52

created in the same way. Only one dummy variable is created to measure change toward

autocracy, because there are not enough cases to split this variable into two.

The value "-88" in Polity III for a polity transition is dealt with differently. If a

country was not coded as a democracy (or autocracy or anocracy respectively) in one

year, but was coded as a democracy the first year following the year in which the country

was assigned the value "-88", then all the transition years (-88) and the first year after

that were coded as "1". This indicates that a regime change to democracy (or to autocracy

or to anocracy respectively) was taking place. The distribution of the different types of

changes is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1 - The Distribution of the Different Types of Political Regime Changes

Types of Regime Changes

i To Democracy from Anocracy • To Democracy from Autocracy

s To Anocracy from Democracy • To Anocracy from Autocracy

i To Autocracy

Looking at the 34 changes toward anocracy, for most countries (21 cases) these

were movements away from autocracy, and only 13 times a country underwent a

transition away from a democratic regime toward an anocratic one. Only 20 shifts to

53

autocracy are identified in this data set. Clearly, most regimes tended to democratize,

when they underwent a regime change during this time.

Table 3 in the Appendix summarizes the hypotheses and the variables that are

used to test them.

Operationalization of the Control Variables

The review of the literature on human rights has shown that besides regime type,

several other factors have been found to be correlated with the use of state repression.

The selection of the control variables for this study is based on the results from the global

analysis on personal integrity by Poe and Tate (1994). In this piece, the authors test

various socioeconomic variables in a pooled cross-sectional analysis. The results show

that lagged repression, the size of the population, as well as the involvement in civil and

international wars were positively related to the level of state violence, whereas the

higher economic development in a country, the lower the human rights repression was

(Poe and Tate 1994). These results are supported by a variety of other research papers

(Davenport 1996; Henderson 1991, 1993; King 1997; Mitchell and McCormick 1988).

Lagged Repression

Gurr hypothesizes that if elites used violence to secure their position in the past,

they are likely to employ violence in the future (Gurr 1986). This brings past levels of

human rights violations into play. In having previously employed repression to deal with

54

domestic opposition and threats, the national government has shown that it does not fear

to use repression as a policy-tool.

Empirical findings of Davenport's studies (1995, 1996) on lagged repression

support the argument to include a lagged endogenous variable in order to improve the

explanation of why state-sponsored human rights violations occur. He points out that,

once established, "the coercive apparatus seeks to justify its continued existence and

increases its access to resources" (Davenport 1995, 691). Also King (1997) argues that

the states' capacity for violence is an important factor in explaining governments' use of

repression. The resources used for government oppression might have a self-perpetuating

effect. Once the oppression apparatus is set up, it is likely to be used again. Thus, I expect

that the higher repression at time t, the higher repression will be at time t+1.

Regime Type

I include a continuous regime type variable to control for political regime type.

Incorporating a variable for regime type allows separating the effects the regime types

have on human rights violations from the effects that regime changes have on the levels

of state repression. To measure regime type I employ a continuous scale based on the

Polity III data set. This regime type variable is obtained by subtracting the autocracy

score from the democracy score, which creates a continuum ranging from -10

(autocracy) to +10 (democracy) as described above. This variable is expected to be

negatively related to life integrity violations, meaning that the more democratic a country

is the less violence it uses against its people.

55

Population Size

Henderson (1993) argues that population size is another indicator that is

correlated with state terrorism. In referring to Henderson's article (1993), Poe and Tate

(1994) point out two ways in which large populations may lead to higher repression.

First, merely because of a country having a larger number of people, it can use repression

against more people than a state with a very small population. And secondly, a larger

population size is expected to increase human rights violations, because "a large

population places stress on national resources and brings the threat of environmental

deterioration, further reducing available resources" (Poe and Tate 1994, 857).

Based on these previous empirical findings, the size of a country's population is

hypothesized to be positively related to life integrity violations, meaning the larger the

population size, the more life integrity violations are expected. Based upon the measures

of Poe and Tate (1994) population size is operationalized by employing the natural

logarithm of total national population. The natural logarithm was taken due to the skewed

distribution of the variable's values.

Economic Development

Various studies support the argument that the higher the level of economic

development in a country, the lower the level of repression in that country (Davenport

1995; Henderson 1991; King 1997; Mitchell and McCormick 1988; Poe and Tate 1994).

According to Henderson, "It is only logical to think that, with a higher level of

development, people will be more satisfied and, hence, less repression will be needed by

56

the elites" (1991, 1226). In a country with high levels of economic development,

governments are less likely to be faced with extreme domestic opposition. A ruling elite

that enjoys strong backup from its people can also build upon a Strength/Threat ratio that

is favorable to them (see Poe 1997a). It is therefore less likely to use violence against the

people. To operationalize economic development, I follow previous research such as Poe

and Tate (1994) and employ GNP per capita measures.

Civil and International Wars

In recent years various scholars have suggested that leaders' perception of

domestic threat and the presence of domestic violence are important factors in

determining a country's use of terror against its own people (Davenport 1995; King 1997;

Poe 1997a, 1997b; Poe and Tate 1994; Poe et al. 1997a). In testing four different subsets

of domestic threat, Poe concludes that "in contrast to nonviolent threats, violent ones

increase the probability that regimes will react by undertaking more human rights abuses,

even where existing repression levels are already quite high" (Poe 1997a, n.d.). Civil war

presents the most serious and most violent domestic threat to the elites in power, where

"the authority of the regime in power is being challenged by an armed and organized

resistance controlled by a shadow government" (Poe and Tate 1994, 850). It is therefore

expected that the presence of civil war increases the life integrity violations during this

period of time.

57

Also the involvement in an international war is found to be positively correlated

with human rights abuse (Poe and Tate 1994). Governments may respond with repression

not only to internal threats but also external threats. This argument is supported by Gurr:

"Regimes facing external threats are likely to use violence against domestic opponents"

(1986, 60).

The operationalization of civil and international wars is borrowed from Poe and

Tate's study (1994). Both their measures of civil war and international war are based

upon Small and Singer (1982). To classify civil wars, "First, the government, as the

central authority in a country, must be involved as a direct participant in the war. Second,

there must be an effective resistance" (Poe and Tate 1994, 859). Civil war includes 1000

battle deaths and organized violence (see Small and Singer 1982). For a violent conflict

to classify as an interstate war the following criteria had to be met. "(1) [Tjhere was a

total of a thousand or more battle deaths suffered by all of the participants in the conflict,

(2) the particular country suffered at least a hundred fatalities or had a thousand or more

personnel taking part in the hostilities" (Poe and Tate 1994, 859, based on Small and

Singer 1982).

CHAPTER IV

METHODOLOGY AND ANALYSIS

Basic Descriptive Analysis

This chapter builds statistical models in order to empirically test the hypotheses

that have been developed in the previous chapter. To get a first impression of how the

levels of state repression change before and after a regime change, I utilize mean scores

of both human rights measures, based on Amnesty International and the U.S. State

Department. The measures are taken from the time points before, during, and after a

political regime change occurred. The results of this analysis are displayed in Table 4 in

the Appendix.

Figure 2 shows the changes of the mean scores for human rights violations before,

during, and after any type of regime transition. This graph is based on the dummy regime

change variable. In every year this variable is coded "1" if a regime change between the

categories democracy, anocracy, and autocracy occurred. The mean scores from the

Political Terror Scale (PTS) are taken from five periods in time, two years before the

change, one year before the change, the year of the change, and one year and two years

after the regime change took place. The x-axis presents the time, the y-axis the mean

59

scores of the level of life integrity violations. The point 3 on the x-axis indicates the year

= t, where the regime change took place. This is pointed out by the vertical line .

Both the scale based on Amnesty International reports and the one based on State

Department reports are utilized. The graph shows the difference of these two measures. It

also demonstrates how both series of mean scores move together. The sample for this

analysis is all cases where a regime change took place.

Figure 2 - PTS Mean Scores during Regime Change (N = 92)

Political Regime Change

CO

<D O

CO c a <D

CO

H

4.0-

3.8-

3.6-

2.6.

t = Regime Change

t-2 t-1 t t+1 t + 2

Amnesty International-"*- State Department

Figure 2 does not confirm Hypothesis 1, which posited that during a political

regime change levels of life integrity violations increase. In the year previous to the

transition, x = 2, state terror is at the highest level during this particular five year time

11 = regime change, therefore 1 = t.2*, 2 = t_i; 3 = t; 4 = t+i; 5 = t+2

60

period. In the year following the change, x = 4, the level of repression decreases and rises

again in the second year after the regime shift, x = 5.

To get a clearer picture, the following figures show the PTS mean scores

separately for different types of regime changes. Both Figure 3 and Figure 4 display the

mean scores for human rights violations during regime transitions toward democracy.

Figure 3 shows the countries that were previously anocratic, and Figure 4 the ones that

were autocratic before the transition to democracy.

Figure 3 - PTS Mean Scores during Regime Change from Anocracy to Democracy (N = 15)

Change from Anocracy to Democracy

4.0

<L> O O

W G a <D

00 H P-4

t = Regime Change

— t-2 t-1 t t+1 t+2

— A m n e s t y International"-*— State Department

The hypothesis on democratization suggests that a transition toward a democratic

regime decreases levels of human rights abuse. It is expected that democratic norms,

such as making compromises, and democratic procedures, such as regular elections of the

executive, prevent leaders from utilizing violence and terror against their political

61

opponents. Therefore, as soon as a country adopts democratic institutions and procedures,

human rights are likely to be more respected by the government than they were under the

previous regime. Figure 3 and Figure 4 support this expectation. The graph in Figure 3

indicates a clear decrease in the level of repression from the year before until the year

after the change. However, it also shows a sudden increase in the second year after the

transition occurred. For the State Department scores the tendencies are not as clear, but

they also indicate the sharp increase in the second year after the change. This observation

raises the question of why human rights violations might increase in the second year after

a country adopted democratic institutions. One explanation for this upward trend might

be that the democratic norms and procedures are still new and neither the ruling elites nor

the masses are familiar with them. The new leaders might still feel insecure in allowing

full participation. One could argue that after a "honeymoon-period" of one year of

democracy, the elites utilize more pressure and violence against their political opponents

than before. From the view of the masses, on the other side, the citizens might not be

willing to accept any limitations to their newly acquired rights to participate in politics

and, therefore, fight for their political rights when they are in danger. As a result of that,

in a newly established democracy, the level of repression might increase shortly after the

change took place.

Overall the State Department scores are much lower than the Amnesty

International scores. This phenomenon applies to all types of changes for all five time

points with only a few exceptions. The highest mean value is reached by a score based on

62

the State Department. The time point is the year of the change to anocracy from

democracy.

Theoretically the values on the PTS range from 1 to 5, as outlined in Chapter HI.

But the mean scores taken during the two years before until the two years after a regime

change actually only range from 2.45 to 4.00. The lowest mean score of 2.45 is found in

the year of the regime transition from autocracy to democracy, measured with the

Amnesty International scale. The highest value of 4.00 is based on the State Department

scale and is shown in Figure 5 below.

Figure 4 - PTS Mean Scores during Regime Change from Autocracy to Democracy (N = 69)

Change from Autocracy to Democracy

CO <L> U O O

m

a a

I H 01

3.8-

3.6-t = Regime Change

3 . 4

3 . a

2.8-

2 .6 .

t-2 t-1 t t+1 t+2

— A m n e s t y International-*- State Department

As shown in Figure 4, for a change to democracy in a country that was previously

an autocracy, the Amnesty International and State Department mean scores display a

63

clear downward trend. This, again, confirms the hypothesis that a change toward

democracy is correlated with a decrease in human rights violations.

Figure 5 shows the mean scores for state terror during the regime transition from

democracy to anocracy. This supports the hypothesis that the level of state-sponsored

repression increases in the year of a regime change. It also supports the two more specific

hypotheses, that a change toward anocracy increases repression and that a change away

from democracy increases repression as well.

Figure 5 - PTS Mean Scores during Regime Change from Democracy to Anocracy (N = 13)

Change fromDemocracy to Anocracy

4 Z 1

4 . 0 -

3 . S -

G 3 . 6 . o 3 . 6 .

O KS1 3 . 4 C5 AJ

s 3 . 2 .

UO ^ ft. H J .V>

OH 2 . 8 -

2 . 6 -

Regime Change

t-1 t t+1 t+2

• Amnesty International-*- Sate Department

It is interesting to note that there is a clear upward trend in repression, leading up

to the year of the change. This could suggest that the new elites need to use violence and

64

repression to bring about a change away from a democratic system. The people might

fight for the democracy, which could result in a violent reaction of the leaders.

This is one of the two mean score graphs in which the State Department scores

are higher than the Amnesty International ones. The level of life integrity violations

based on State Department reports during the year in which a change from a democratic

to an anocratic regime occurs reaches the mean of 4.00. As mentioned above, this is the

highest level of repression reached by the PTS mean scores during the five years of all

types of regime transitions.

Based on the simple descriptive analysis, the most dangerous type of transition

appears to be the one to anocracy from democracy. Citizens that are used to living in a

democratic country are not willing to merely give up their political participation they

enjoyed under the democratic regime. Leaders that want to take away democratic

institutions seem to exercise severe terror on the population in order to reach their goal.

The mean scores taken from the time of changes from anocracy to autocracy are

ambiguous. The complete results can be seen in Table 4.

The graph in Figure 6 clearly indicates, like Figure 5, that regime change

increases the level of state repression. Figure 6 supports the more detailed hypothesis that

a regime shift toward autocracy is correlated with an increase in human rights violations.

In this graph, the Amnesty International and State Department mean scores move

together very closely, more than in the other graphs. It is interesting to note, however,

that the level of life integrity violations significantly decreases, once the autocratic

regime is established. This could indicate that autocratic rulers get ride of their opponents

65

as soon as they get into power. The use of widespread terror seems to become

unnecessary once the system is established.

Figure 6 - PTS Mean Scores during Regime Change to Autocracy (N = 20)

Change to Autocracy

w i~i O 0

C/D §

1 C/D H 0M

t = Regime Change

t-1 t t+1 t+2

• Amnesty International-*- State Department

To summarize the results, several hypotheses are supported by the simple

descriptive analysis. The democratization-hypothesis is supported, meaning that there is a

strong relationship between democratization and decreasing human rights violations. The

repression mean scores are clearly declining, starting the year before the actual change.

The results are consistent for both measures, the Amnesty International and State

Department scores. The hypothesis that a shift away from democracy increases state

terror during the transition, and the one that a change toward anocracy results in an

increase in the year of the change are supported as well. Again, both the Amnesty

66

International and the State Department mean scores increase during the year of the

change from a democratic regime to an anocratic one. Also, the change toward autocracy

is correlated with an increase in life integrity violations. It remains to be seen, however,

whether these results hold true in sophisticated multivariate analysis.

Multivariate Analysis

To analyze the hypotheses in a more sophisticated research design, I employ a

pooled cross-sectional time-series (PCT) design. This technique has attracted increasing

attention among political scientists over the last decade. The main advantage of this

approach is that it allows to test hypotheses across time and space simultaneously (Beck

and Katz 1995; Sayrs 1989; Stimson 1985). The problem with PCT data, however, is that

two methodological difficulties may arise. The first one is autocorrelation of the error

terms. Correlated error terms may reduce the standard errors and, therefore, raise the t-

value. This leads the researcher to be more apt .to reject the null-hypothesis, when such a

conclusion is unfounded. The second problem that may arise in a PCT design is

heteroskedasticity, which means that the error term is unequally distributed.

Heteroskedasticity also biases the standard errors, which poses a threat to inference

(Ostrom 1990; Stimson 1985).

Several approaches have been used to deal with the problem of autocorrelation

and heteroskedasticity in PCT designs. One commonly used method is the Generalized

Least Square (GLS) approach (Stimson 1985).

67

Beck and Katz argue, however, that GLS "can lead to dramatic underestimates of

parameter variability" (1995, 634) in the PCT context. Small standard errors inflate the t-

statistics, which leads to overconfidence in the statistical significance of the empirical

results. According to Beck and Katz, the best solution available to date for dealing with

PCT designs is a combination of ordinary least squares parameter estimates with "panel-

corrected standard errors" (1995, 635) (PCSE). Beck and Katz utilize Monte Carlo

analysis to compare the GLS approach on the one side with the OLS with PCSEs

approach on the other. They find that OLS with PCSE leads to more accurate results than

GLS and is therefore superior to the GLS method. The statistical results presented below

are obtained by employing OLS regression with panel-corrected standard errors, as

recommended by Beck and Katz (1995)3. Autocorrelation is controlled by including the

lagged dependent variable in the model.

The first model tests the impact of any type of regime change on the level of life

integrity violations, utilizing the regime change dummy variable, which is explained in

Chapter EI. Including the control variables, Model 1 is as follows:

AI,j = a + PiPTS(t-i)j + {^Population Sizetj + (^Economic Development^ + P4Civil

Wartj + [^International Wartj + ^Regime Typetj + p7Regime Change^ + etj.

' For ail multivariate analyses the statistical program STATA was utilized.

68

The dependent variable AItj is life integrity violations, based on Amnesty

International reports. piPTS(t.i)j is the lagged endogenous variable, a the constant and etj

the error term. The statistical results from this model are shown in Table 5.

All models were tested with two different dependent variables. First, I utilized the

Political Terror Scare (PTS) that is based mainly on Amnesty International reports, and

secondly, I employed the PTS that is based mainly on State Department reports. As

described in the previous chapter, missing data in the Amnesty International based PTS

scale were replaced by State Department data, when available, and vice versa. The

coefficients and their statistical significance employing the State Department measure

were almost identical to the results utilizing the Amnesty International based scale.

Due to the great similarity of the results, the tables only show the results with the

Amnesty International measure as dependent variable, because the Amnesty International

reports on human rights have found to be slightly more consistent than the human rights

reports issued by the U.S. State Department (Poe, Vazquez, and Zanger 1998). The State

Department based results are reported in the footnotes when there are significant

differences between utilizing the Amnesty International or State Department measure.

The z-value is comparable to the better known t-ratio. The distribution of the z-

values for a large number of N is almost identical to the distribution of the t-values (see

Hamilton 1992). The t-ratio is a test of statistical significance. It is calculated by dividing

the coefficient by its standard error4. P > I z I stands for the level of statistical

significance. The chi2 statistic indicates whether "the hypothesis that all coefficients are

69

zero" (Hamilton 1992, 227) can be rejected. It is a measure of fit for the whole model.

The first model shown in Table 5 is highly statistically significant with a chi2 statistic of

6137.39.

Table 5 - OLS Regression with Panel-Corrected Standard Errors, Impact of the Dummy Regime Change Variable Dependent Variable: PTS Amnesty International

Coefficient Beta Coefficient

Panel Corrected Standard Error

P > I z I

Constant PTSm Population Sizet

GNP per capitat

Civil Wart

International Wart

Regime Typet

Regime Changet

-.183 .138 -1.318 .187 .685*** .688 .018 38.309 .000 063*** .083 .009 6.717 .000

-.00002*** -.103 -.000002 -8.903 .000 .374*** .087 .056 6.634 .000 .128* .030 .053 2.425 .015

- Oil*** -.010 .002 -5.314 .000 .048 -.080 .074 .647 .517

N R2

Adjusted R2

chi2 (7) Pr > chi2 *

**

= 2037 = .722 = .721 = 6137.39 = .0000 = Significant at the .05 level (two-tailed test) = Significant at the .01 level (two-tailed test) = Significant at the .001 level (two-tailed test)

The statistical significance of several explanatory variables in this model and in

the following ones could be tested with one-tailed tests. There is no reason to believe why

civil and international wars would decrease state repression. A one-tailed test for these

t = b / seb

70

two variables would be appropriate, because the relationship between civil and

international wars and repression can be expected to be negative. However, for the

explanatory variables of interest in this study, namely the regime change variables, it is

necessary to utilize two-tailed tests of statistical significance. For the regime change

variables it is crucial to test the kind of relationship and to analyze whether they have a

negative or a positive effect on the dependent variable. To be consistent and for

simplicity reasons then, two-tailed tests are used for all variables. Practically this makes

no difference in the inferences drawn from the results.

Table 5 show that the regime change dummy variable fails to reach statistical

significance. It has no effect on the level of life integrity violations, once the impact of

other factors (lagged repression, population size, GNP per capita, involvement in civil or

international war) is held constant. The first hypothesis as stated in the previous chapter,

therefore, has to be rejected. Political regime change, in and of itself, does not increase

state-sponsored violence during the year of the change. All the other independent

variables, which were borrowed from Poe and Tate (1994), are highly statistical

significant at the .05 level of statistical significance or better. Lagged repression is

positively related to present human rights violations and has the greatest impact on the

dependent variable. As expected, population size and involvement in civil and

international war are positively correlated with state terror, whereas economic

development is negatively related to human rights violations.

To test for multicollinearity, I utilized Pearson's correlation and the Klein test.

Multicollinearity is present when the independent variables are highly correlated. This

71

inflates the standard errors and, therefore, biases the inference of statistical significance.

The Pearsons's correlation correlates every independent variable with all the other

independent variables. The results showed that the correlation of the explanatory

variables is so small that it does not pose a problem for the regression analysis. The

strongest correlation between is -.415 between regime type and GNP per capita. The

Pearson's r for all the other correlations of the independent variables is lower than .2

Therefore, this test provides no evidence of mulitcollinearity posing a serious problem for

the statistical analysis. In the Klein test each of the independent variables is regressed on

the others and then the R2 from the model are inspected. The results from the Klein test

again clearly show that there is no difficulty with multicollinearity. The results for the

tests for high multicollinearity are the same for the following two models.

In the next model I replace the dummy regime change variable with the

continuous regime change variable. This variable measures changes on the democracy-

autocracy continuum from one year to the following year. The operationalization of the

variable is described in a more detailed form in Chapter III. The equation for Model 2,

employing a change variable that measures continuous regime change, is as follows:

Altj = a + p1PTS(t-i)j + p2Population Sizetj + p3Economic Development^ + p4Civil Wartj +

(^International Wartj + PeRegime Typetj + ^Continuous Regime Change^ + etj.

The results of Model 2 are shown in Table 6 below. The statistical results are

similar to the ones from the previous model. In comparison to the regime change dummy

72

variable, this directional regime change variable that measures change on a continuum

has a higher z score, but still fails to reach statistical significance at the .1 level. The

model as a whole, again, is highly statistically significant, but the regime change variable

is not. As mentioned above, multicollinearity is not a serious problem in this second

model either. Based on these first two models, Hypothesis 1 has to be rejected. Political

regime change is not positively related to levels of life integrity violations in the year the

change occurs.

Table 6 - OLS Regression with Panel-Corrected Standard Errors, Impact of the Continuous Regime Change Variable Dependent Variable: PTS Amnesty International

Coefficient Beta Coefficient

Panel Corrected Standard Error

z P > | z |

Constant -.171 .138 -1.242 .214 PTSt-i .687*** .692 .018 38.398 .000 Population Sizet .046*** .081 .010 4.670 .000 GNP per capitat -.00002*** -.107 -.000002 -9.103 .000 Civil Wart .372*** .085 .056 6.606 .000 International Wart .125* .029 .052 2.377 .017 Regime Typet -010*** -.072 .002 -4.974 .000 Regime Changet -.008 -.042 .007 -1.248 .212

N R2

Adjusted R2

chi2 (7) Pr > chi2 *

**

***

= 2034 = .723 = .723 = 6133.58 = .0000 = Significant at the .05 level (two-tailed test) = Significant at the .01 level (two-tailed test) = Significant at the .001 level (two-tailed test)

73

In the following section, I divide the regime change variables into different types

of regime changes, as was done in the previous simple analyses. The following five

regime change variables are included in Model 3: change from anocracy to democracy;

change from autocracy to democracy; change from democracy to anocracy; change from

autocracy to anocracy, and change to autocracy. The variable names were created in the

following way. The first part of the name stands for the old regime type, and the second

part presents the new one. The arrow indicates the direction of the change (e.g.,

'anoc—•democ' indicates a regime change from anocracy to democracy). Because of the

small number of cases the variable 'change to autocracy' does not distinguish what

regime the country was before the change. The equation for Model 3 is:

AI t j = a + PiPTS(t-i)j + p2Population Sizetj + ^Economic Development^ + ^Civil Wartj +

pslnternational Wartj + ^Regime Typetj + P7Change from Anocracy to

Democracy (Anoc-»Democ)tj + pgChange from Autocracy to Democracy

(Autoc—>Democ)tj + PgChange from Democracy to Anocracy (Democ—>Anoc)tj +

PioChange from Autocracy to Anocracy (Autoc—>Anoc)tj + PnChange to

Autocracy (Change—»Autoc)tj + etj.

The fit of the model increase from chi2 = 6137.39 in Model 1 and 6133.58 in

Model 2 to chi = 6446.79 in the third model with the different regime change variables.

Again, the null-hypothesis that the model as a whole is not significantly different from

74

zero can be rejected. The model with the highest fit is, based on the chi, Model 3 with

the different kinds of regime changes as independent variables.

Table 7 - OLS Regression with Panel-Corrected Standard Errors, Impact of the Different Regime Change Dummy Variables Dependent Variable: PTS Amnesty International

Coefficient Beta Coefficient

Panel Corrected Standard Error

z P > 1 z 1

Constant -.151 .137 -.100 .272 PTSm .696*** .690 .018 38.654 .000 Population Sizet .059*** .081 .009 6.365 .000 GNP per capitat -.00002*** -.105 -.000002 -8.852 .000 Civil Wart .346*** .085 .056 6.133 .000 International Wart .121* .030 .052 2.321 .020 Regime Typet -.010*** -.074 .002 -5.098 .000 Anoc—•Democt -.103 -.006 .161 -.639 .523 Autoc—>Democt -.332** -.035 .124 -3.671 .008 Democ—>Anoct 1.111*** .043 .279 3.977 .000 Autoc—*Anoct -.157 -.005 .145 -1.085 .278 Change—>^Autoct .299 .012 .229 1.305 .192

N R2

Adjusted R2

chi2 (11) Pr > chi2 *

**

= 2024 = .725 = .724 = 6446.79 = .0000 = Significant at the .05 level (two-tailed test) = Significant at the .01 level (two-tailed test) = Significant at the .001 level (two-tailed test)

The R2 and the adjusted R2 also increase from Model 1 to Model 3, but the

changes are very small. All three models explain between 72.2% (Model 1) and 72.5%

(Model 3) of the variance in the dependent variable. The difference in the R2s between a

75

model that excludes the regime type and regime change variables to Model 3 is very

small. The main reason for this is that most of the variance is explained by the lagged

endogenous variable alone. As mentioned above, the correlation matrix of the

independent variables and the results of the Klein test (not shown) clearly indicate that

high multicollinearity is not present.

The effects of lagged repression, population size, civil and international wars,

gain, are highly positive and statistically significant. Economic development and regime

type are negatively related to human rights violations, also statistically significant at the

.001 level. In this model, two of the five regime change variables are highly statistically

significant in the expected direction.

The variable that measure change from autocracy to democracy loses its statistical

significance when the State Department reports are used instead of the Amnesty

International reports to measure the level of life integrity violations5. The regime change

from autocracy to democracy is negatively related to human rights violations in the year

the change occurs. The results show that when an autocratic country becomes a

democracy, its level of state-sponsored terror decreases by .33 units in the same year. In

the previous chapter, hypothesis 3 states that a change away from autocracy increases

human rights violations. Based on these results, hypothesis 3 has to be rejected. The

change away from autocracy to democracy decreases life integrity violations.

This result is contrary to the argument made by Garreton (1996), which states that

newly democratized countries show high levels of human rights violations. Also Figure 4,

76

which graphed PTS mean scores, shows that during a regime shift from autocracy to

democracy, the amount of state-sponsored terror is declining. One explanation for the

downward trend of repression during a regime transition to democracy in a country that

was previously autocratic might be that the population of that country is less apt to use

violent protest against the political leaders. Alternative ways of participating in the

political system and voicing one's opinion are available to citizens under a democratic

regime. Previous studies have shown that democracies have, in general, better human

rights records than other political regimes (Davenport 1997; Diamond et al. 1988; King

1997; Poe and Tate 1994; Schmitter and Karl 1996). Hypothesis 6 argues that a change

toward democracy decreases repression in the year of the change. This hypothesis is

supported. Based on the statistical results from this study, it appears that the

characteristics that cause democracies to have relatively few life integrity violations

outweigh the remaining elements of a previous autocratic regime already in the year the

regime change takes place.

The second regime change variable that is statistically significant at the .001 level

is the change from a democracy to an anocratic regime (Democ—»Anoc). During this type

of change, the level of state repression increases by 1.111 units6. In the previous chapter,

the graph of the change in the PTS mean scores during this type of regime change also

shows an increase in state repression in the transition year. Hypothesis 2 states that a

change toward a mixed regime with both democratic and autocratic features increases the

level of human rights violations. This hypothesis is supported only for countries that were

5 Utilizing the State Department based measure, the corresponding coefficient is -.149 with z = -1.254

77

democratic before the change. Hypothesis 4 argues that a regime transition away from

democracy results in an increase in state-sponsored violence in the same year. This

hypothesis is supported as well.

There are at least three possible explanations for the increase in state repression

during a regime shift from a democracy to an anocracy found in this analysis. First, as

mentioned earlier, citizens that are used to living under a democratic regime are probably

willing to fight for the rights they enjoyed under the democracy, when these rights are

endangered by the rise of a more authoritarian leader. Domestic unrest and violence

might be the result of people trying to hold on to the procedures, rules, and institutions

that allowed them political participation in the democracy and facilitated the people's

active involvement in politics.

Secondly, the rising leader, or elite group, is likely to perceive the people's

reaction to the shift away from democracy as a threat to the newly established regime.

This might lead to more repression from the side of the newly powerful group. This

argument is borrowed from Poe (1997b). He states that leaders are more likely to use

violent repression against their people when the perceived Strength/Threat ratio becomes

less favorable for them.

Finally, the third possible explanation for the rise of life integrity violations

during the change from a democratic country to an anocratic regime is the following. As

argued by Fein (1995), political regimes that are neither strongly democratic nor clearly

autocratic but "in the middle" show high human rights violations. In a mixed regime, as

6 Utilizing the State Department based measure, the corresponding coefficient is 1.145 with z = 4.099***

78

indicated by the category "anocracy", the country does not have clear characteristics of

either a democracy or an autocracy. Both the group of society that is in favor of a

democracy and the one that prefers an autocratic system might be present in that country.

Both groups are likely to try to move the system further into the direction they prefer,

because the regime does not have clear features of either a democracy or an autocracy.

The anocratic regime shows mixed characteristics from both types of political regimes.

This might result in a very unstable and violent atmosphere in the country, which tends to

display greater repression.

CHAPTER V

CONCLUSION

This research sought to contribute to the knowledge of why and when human

rights violations are likely to occur. It explored the effects of particular types of political

regime changes on levels of state-sponsored violence. This study grew out of the body of

work that has been done on political regime types and their impact on state repression.

Previous research suggest that democracies show significantly less human rights

violations than other political systems (Davenport 1997; Diamond et al. 1988; Fein 1995;

Garreton 1996; Gurr 1986; King 1997; Mitchell and McCormick 1988; Poe and Tate

1994; Rummel 1985; Schmitter and Karl 1996). Others make the argument that mixed

regimes are more repressive than authoritarian governments (Fein 1995).

In order to protect people from state repression it is important to know the

potential causes for state-sponsored violence. The question that has not attracted much

attention in academe yet was how a change from one regime type to another affected the

use of violence by governments against its opponents. The purpose of this study was to

reveal some patterns of regime transitions and their effect on human rights violations,

employing a pooled cross-sectional time series design.

The empirical results of this study indicate several interesting phenomena. First,

simple descriptive analysis and multivariate regression analysis suggest that a regime

change in general does not affect the level of violence and government repression. The

79

80

level of life integrity violations does not increase during the time period of the regime

transition.

The next step in this study was to examine how particular kinds of political

regime changes affected state repression. The changes in the mean scores obtained from

the Political Terror Scale (PTS) during certain kinds of transition show several interesting

findings. First, the mean scores for repression were decreasing during the transition to

democracy from a former autocratic regime, starting the year before the change. This

supports findings from previous studies on the correlation between democracy and state

repression (e.g., Davenport 1997; Fein 1995; King 1997; Mitchell and McCormick 1988;

Poe and Tate 1994;). As discussed in Chapters III and IV, the norms and practices

associated with a democratic system seem to inhibit leaders from using violence against

its opponents. Already in the years of the change toward democracy the level of life

integrity violations appears to decrease significantly. However, similar findings did not

arise for countries that were anocratic and then become democracies.

The second interesting result from the descriptive analysis shows, as hypothesized

in Chapter III, a change toward anocracy does indeed increase the violations of life

integrity rights, but only in countries that previously were democratic. I examined the

bivariate relationship between repression and the PTS mean scores during a transition

from democracy to anocracy. The line graph indicates that the level of repression is

higher in the year of the regime change than it is two years before or after the change.

Thirdly, a similar graph suggests that the transition to autocracy increases repression

during the year of the change as well.

81

The first two of these three bivariate results are supported by the multivariate

OLS regression analysis. The effect of democracy on human rights abuse is negative and

statistically significant. Again, this only applies to countries that were an autocracy

before the transition. Also, the results of pooled cross-sectional analysis confirm that the

change of a democratic system to an anocratic one is positively related to repression,

meaning the level of human rights violations increases in the year of the change.

However, the regression analysis does not confirm the increase in repression during the

change toward autocracy.

The OLS regression analysis with panel-corrected standard errors also supports

the results from the global analysis of life integrity violations by Poe and Tate (1994).

The level of repression used in the previous year has a significant impact on the present

level of human rights violations (see also Davenport 1996). It seems that once the state

apparatus for repression is in place, it develops a self-perpetuating effect. Additionally,

leaders that have used terror in the past are generally willing to use violence again in the

future.

This study also strengthens the argument that both internal and external threats, in

the form of civil and international wars, increases the violations of life integrity rights

(King 1997; Poe and Tate 1994). And, as found in other research, economic development

decreases the level of state-sponsored violence (Davenport 1995, 1996; Henderson 1991;

Mitchell and McCormick 1988; Poe and Tate 1994).

The findings on political regime changes and human rights violations contain

several important implications for policy making by governments and by non-

82

governmental organizations. The democratization of non-democratic countries seems to

have positive effects on the respect for personal integrity rights. This supports the idea of

Western democracies, which have pressured non-democracies to adapt democratic

institutions and procedures. However, it is also important to keep in mind other elements

that affect the use of repression. For example, utilizing economic sanctions to force a

government to allow political participation might not improve the country's human rights

record, but rather worsen the situation, since cutting economic resources could hinder the

country's economic development and puts pressure on the national governments. It can

also increase domestic pressure and even lead to domestic unrest and violence. Both

elements, less economic development and rising domestic unrest, change the leader's

perception of his or her strength in relation to the threat they face (Poe 1997a). Academic

research suggests that these developments are likely to increase the government's use of

repression (ibid.).

Scholars seem to agree that democracy improves a country's human rights

records, once other factors are controlled. Nevertheless, in promoting human rights,

politicians have to be careful in choosing the tools with which they try to make an

authoritarian country democratize.

The results of this research also showed that the shift of a political regime from a

democracy to an anocracy is positively correlated with the use of state repression.

Therefore, the international community, in the form of the United Nations or other

organizations such as Amnesty International, should be alert when a democracy adopts

more and more autocratic elements and becomes an anocracy. Knowing that this is a

83

dangerous situation for the population of the country, the international community could

monitor powerful elites more closely. This might enable international organizations to

protect integrity rights after the first signs of serious violations and, therefore, help to

prevent the leaders from utilizing extensive and widespread repression.

The knowledge of what leads governments to use repression is a crucial element

in effectively protecting citizens from killing, torture, and arbitrary imprisonment. The

academic community has discovered important relationships between several

socioeconomic and political factors and repression. Nevertheless, this study raises several

questions that should be addressed in future research. It seems clear that some types of

political regime changes affect the level of state repression. This poses a question of what

happens when new leaders come into power and take over the system, without

immediately changing its structure significantly. What kinds of succession bear the

potential to increase the use of state-sponsored violence? This is a particularly interesting

and relevant question for counties in which the personality of the leader plays a crucial

role. Looking at China, Russia, and North Korea, for example, the saliency of succession

becomes apparent.

Besides trying to uncover potential causes behind human rights violations, other

questions need to be addressed that have not yet received much scholarly attention. If the

goal of the field of human rights studies is to protect people from the violations of their

basic rights by their governments, future research should make the effectiveness of

various policy tools the subject of analysis. What types of groups and organizations are

most likely to prevent and diminish the use of state tenor? Are governmental

84

organizations more successful than non-governmental groups? Axe bilateral actions

preferable to multilateral actions, or vice versa? What kinds of diplomatic actions are

most likely to reach aggressive leaders and affect their behavior? These are some of the

areas academic research on human rights should address in the future. Much in this field

of study has been discovered, but many more questions need to be approached in order to

better explain and prevent the violations of life integrity rights.

APPENDIX

TABLES

85

Table 1 - Construction of Democracy & Autocracy Indicators in Polity III

86

Authority Coding Democracy Autocracy

Authority Coding Score Score

Competitiveness of Political Participation 0 (a) Competitive 3 0

(b) Transitional 2 0

(c) Factional 1 0 (d) Restricted 0 1 (e) Suppressed 0 2

Regulation of Political Participation 0 1 (a) Factional/Restricted 0 1

(b) Restricted 0 2 Competitiveness of Executive Recruitment

(a) Election 2 0 (b) Transitional 1 0 (c) Selection 0 2

Openness of Executive Recruitment 0 (a) Election 1 0

(b) Dual: Hereditary/Election 1 0 (c) Dual: Hereditary/Designation 0 1 (d) Close 0 1

Constraints on Chief Executive (a) Executive Parity or Subordination 4 0 (b) Intermediate Category 1 3 0 (c) Substantial Limitations 2 0 (d) Intermediate Category 2 1 1 (e) Slight to Moderate Limitations 0 2 (f) Intermediate Category 3 0 3 . (g) Unlimited Power of Executive 0 4

Source: Keith Jaggers and Ted Robert Gurr. 1995. "Tracking Democracy's Third Wave with the Polity III Data." Journal of Peace Research 32:472.

87

Table 2 - Distribution of Regime Changes on a Continuous Scale

Value of Regime Change

Frequency

-15 1 -14 3 -13 1 -12 2 - 11 1 -10 1 - 8 2 - 7 2 - 5 3 - 4 1 - 3 3 - 2 12 - 1 29 0 1923 1 65 2 21 3 13 4 8 5 4 6 3 7 5 8 1 9 3 10 7 11 2 12 6 13 5 14 10 15 5 16 5

Total 2147 Missing 522 Total ~~ 2669

88

Table 3 - Summary of the Hypotheses and their Operationalization

Hypothesis Summary Statement Variables

Hypothesis 1 Every type of political regime change increases the level of repression.

Dummy Regime Change: change; Continuous Regime Change:

continuous change.

Hypothesis 2 A regime change to an anocracy increases the level of repression.

Change from Democracy to Anocracy. democ—*anoc, Change from Autocracy to Anocracy: autoc—*anoc.

Hypothesis 3 A regime change away from an autocracy increases the level of repression.

Change from Autocracy to Democracy: autoc—*democ, Change from Autocracy to Anocracy: autoc—*anoc.

Hypothesis 4 A regime change away from a democracy increases the level of repression.

Change from Democracy to Anocracy: democ—+anoc;

Hypothesis 5 A regime change to an autocracy increases the level of repression.

Change to Autocracy: change-* autocracy.

Hypothesis 6 A regime change to a democracy decreases the level of repression.

Change from Anocracy to Democracy: anoc—*democ; Change from Autocracy to Democracy: autoc—*democ.

89

Table 4 - Mean Scores for Human Rights Violations, taken from Amnesty International (AI) and State Department (SD) Reports before, during, and after Political Regime Changes

Two Lags Before

One Lag Before

During One Lag Two Lags After After

Change AI 2.91

SD 2.73

3.06

2.83

2.88

2.81

2.80

2.66

2.88

2.75

Change to AI 2.86 Democracy FromAnocracy SD 2.57

2.87

2.47

2.67

2.50

2.62

2.46

3.00

2.67

Change to AI 3.20 Democracy From Autocracy SD 2.92

3.23

2.91

2.89

2.60

2.79

2.45

2.71

2.51

Change to AI 3.00 Anocracy From Democracy SD 2.60

3.14

3.14

3.71

4.00

3.50

3.17

2.82

3.45

Change to AI 2.89 Anocracy From Autocracy SD 2.78

2.90

2.70

2.90

2.67

2.81

2.81

2.95

2.89

Change to Autocracy

AI 2.86

SD 2.93

3.53

3.41

3.61

3.61

3.11

3.28

3.00

2.87

REFERENCES

Almeida, Joao M. 1998. "Human Rights, State Sovereignty, and International Society/' Paper presented at the International Studies Association Meeting, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.

Beck, Nathaniel, and Jonathan N. Katz. 1995. "What to Do (and Not to Do) with Time-Series Cross-Section Data in Comparative Politics." American Political Science Review 89:634-647.

Bennett, Scott D. 1997. "Measuring Rivalry Termination, 1816-1992." Journal of Conflict Resolution 41:227-54.

Blanton, Shannon Lindsey. 1994. "Impact of Human Rights on U.S. Foreign Assistance to Latin America." International Interaction 19:339-358.

Bollen, Kenneth A. 1993. "Liberal Democracy: Validity and Method Factors in Cross-National Measures." American Journal of Political Science 37:1207-1230.

Carleton, David, and Michael Stohl. 1987. "The Role of Human Rights in the U.S. Foreign Assistance Policy: A Critique and Reappraisal." American Journal of Political Science 31:1002-1018.

Cingranelli, David L., and Thomas E. Pasquarello. 1985. "Human Rights Practices and the Distribution of U.S. Foreign Aid to Latin American Countries." American Journal of Political Science 29:539-563.

Cingranelli, David, and David L. Richards, Jr. 1997. "Which Personal Integrity Rights Does a State Choose to Violate and Why?" Paper presented at the Comparative Human Rights and Repression Conference, Boulder, Colorado, USA.

Dahl, Robert. 1971. "Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition." New Haven: Yale University Press.

Davenport, Christian. 1995. "Multi-Dimensional Threat Perception and State Repression: An Inquiry into why States Apply Negative Sanctions." American Journal of Political Science 39:683-713.

Davenport, Christian. 1996. "The Weight of the Past: Exploring Lagged Determinants of Political Repression." Political Research Quarterly 49:377-405.

90

91

Davenport, Christian. 1997. "Regime Change and Political Repression. Direction, Coherence, and Persistence." University of Boulder, Colorado. Typescript.

Diamond, Larry, JuanLinz, and Seymour M. Lipset, editors. 1988. Democracies in Developing Countries, Volume 4. Boulder: Lynne Rienner.

Donnelly, Jack. 1989. Universal Human Rights in Theory and Practice . Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Enterline, Andrew J. 1997. "Regime Changes, Geographic Neighborhoods, and Interstate Conflict, 1816-1992." Paper presented at the American Political Science Association Meeting, Washington DC, USA.

Fein, Helen. 1995. "More Murder in the Middle: Life-Integrity Violations and Democracy in the World, 1987." Human Rights Quarterly 17:170-191.

Forsythe, David P. 1989. Human Rights and World Politics. 2 ed. Lincoln, Nebraska. University of Nebraska Press.

Freeman, Michael. 1994. "The Philosophical Foundations of Human Rights." Human Rights Quarterly 16:491-514.

Freeman, Michael. 1995. "Are there Collective Human Rights?" Political Studies 43:25-40.

Freeman, Michael. 1998. "The Foreign Policy of Democratic Nationalism: New Labour and Human Rights 1997-." Paper presented at the International Studies Association Meeting, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.

Garreton, Manuel A. 1996. "Human Rights in Democratization Processes." In Constructing Democracy. Human Rights, Citizenship, and Society in Latin America, ed. Elizabeth Jelin and Eric Hershberg. Westview: Boulder.

Gastil, Raymond D. 1980. Freedom in the World: Political Rights and Civil Liberties, 1980. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books.

General Assembly of the United Nations. 1948. Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 10 December.

Gibney, Mark, and Matthew Dalton. 1997. "The Political Terror Scale." In Human Rights and Developing Countries, ed. David L. Cingranelli. Greenwich CT: JAI Press.

Goldstein, Robert J. 1978. Political repression in Modern America: From the 1879 to the Present. Cambridge: Schenckman Publications Corporation.

92

Gurr, Ted Robert. 1974. "Persistence and Change in Political Systems, 1800-1971." American Political Science Review 68:1482-1504.

Gurr, Ted Robert. 1986. "The Political Origins of State Violence and Terror: A Theoretical Analysis." In Government Violence and Repression. An Agenda for Research, ed. Michael Stohl and George A. Lopez. Westport, CT: Greenwood.

Gurr, Ted Robert. 1990. Polity II: Political Structures and Regime Change, 1800-1986. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research.

Gurr, Ted Robert, Keith Jaggers, and Will H. Moore. 1989. The Polity II Codebook. University of Colorado at Boulder, Center for Comparative Politics.

Hamilton, Lawrence C. 1992. Regression with Graphics: A Second Course in Applied Statistics. Wadsworth, California: Duxbury Press.

Howard, RhodaE., and Jack Donnelly. 1986. "Human Dignity, Human Rights, and Political Regimes." American Political Science Review 80:801-817.

Henderson, Conway. 1991. "Conditions Affecting the Use of Political Repression." Journal of Conflict Resolution 35:120-142.

Henderson, Conway 1993. "Population Pressures and Political Repression." Social Science Quarterly 74:322-333.

Jaggers, Keith, and Ted Robert Gurr. 1995. "Tracking Democracy's Third Wave with the Polity III Data." Journal of Peace Research 32:472.

King, John C. 1997. "Ameliorating Effects of Democracy on Political Repression as Seen in 51 Countries Across 35 Years." In Comparative Human Rights: Theory, Explanatory Variables, and Persisting Paradoxes, ed. Christian Davenport. Michigan Press. Forthcoming.

Kirkpatrick, Jeane. 1979. "Dictatorship and Double Standards." Commentary 68:34-45.

Kitschelt, Herbert. 1992. "Political Regime Change: Structure and Process-Driven Explanations?" American Political Science Review 86:1028-1034.

Lawson, Stephanie. 1993. "Conceptual Issues in the Comparative Study of Regime Change and Democratization." Comparative Politics, 25:183-205.

Lichbach, Mark I. 1981. "Regime Change. A Test of Structuralist and Functionalist Explanations." Comparative Political Studies 14:49-73.

93

Maoz, Zeev, andNasrin Abdolali. 1989. "Regime Types and International Conflict: 1815-1976." Journal of Conflict Resolution 33:3-35.

Markus, Gregory B., and Betty A. Nesvold. 1972. "Governmental Coerciveness and Political Instability. An Exploratory Study of Cross-National Patterns." Comparative Political Studies 5:231-243.

McCormick, James M., and Neil Mitchell. 1988. "Is U.S. Aid really linked to Human Rights in Latin America?" American Journal of Political Science 32:231-239.

McCormick, James and Neil J. Mitchell. 1997. "Human Rights Violations, Umbrella Concepts, and Empirical Analysis." World Politics 49:510-525.

Mitchell, Neil J., and James M. McCormick. 1988. "Economic and Political Explanations of Human Rights Violations." World Politics 40:476-498.

Ostrom, Charles W. 1990. Time Series Analysis: Regression Techniques. 2nd ed. Sage University Press Papers on Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences, no.9. Beverly Hills. Sage.

Park, Han S. 1987. "Correlates of Human Rights: Global Tendencies." Human Rights Quarterly 9:405-413.

Poe, Steven C. 1992. "Human Rights and Economic Assistance under Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter." American Journal of Political Science 36:147-167.

Poe, Steven C. 1997a. "The Calculus of Human Suffering: Threats to Regimes' Rule and the Abuse of Human Rights". University of North Texas. Typescript.

Poe, Steven C. 1997b. "The Decision to Repress: An Integrative Theoretical Approach to the Research on Human Rights and Repression." University of North Texas. Typescript.

Poe, Steven C., and James Meernik. 1995. "U.S. Military Aid during the Eighties: A Two-Stage Model." Journal of Peace Research 32:399-412.

Poe, Steven C., and Rangsima Siriangsi. 1994. "Human Rights and U.S. Economic Aid during the Reagan Years." Social Science Quarterly 75:495-507.

Poe, Steven C. and C. Neil Tate. 1994. "Repression of Human Rights to Personal Integrity in the 1980s: A Global Analysis." American Political Science Review 88: 853-872.

94

Poe, Steven C., C. Neil Tate, and Linda Camp Keith. 1997. "Repression of the Human Right to Personal Integrity Revisited: A Global Crossnational Study, 1976-1993." Paper presented at the Meeting of the International Studies Association, Toronto, Canada.

Poe, Steven C., et al. 1997a. "Domestic Threats to Regimes' Rule and their Abuse of Human Rights across Time." Paper presented at the Comparative Human Rights and Repression Conference, University of Colorado Boulder Comparative Politics Center, Colorado, USA.

Poe, Steven C., et al. 1997b. "The Calculus of Human Suffering: Threats to Regimes' Rule and the Abuse of Human Rights." Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Law and Society Association, St. Louis, Missouri, USA.

Poe, Steven C., Tanya Vazquez, and Sabine Zanger. 1998. "How are these Pictures different? An Empirical Comparison of the U. S. State Department and Amnesty International Human Rights Reports, 1976-1995." Paper presented at the Meeting of the International Studies Association, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.

Ray, James Lee. 1995. "Global Trends, State-Specific Factors, and Regime Transition, 1825-1993." Journal of Peace Research 32:49-63.

Regan, Patrick M. 1995. "U.S. Economic Aid and Political Repression: An Empirical Evaluation of U.S. Foreign Policy." Political Research Quarterly 48:613-628.

Rummel, Rudolph J. 1985. "Libertarian Propositions on Violence within and between Nations: A Test against Published Results." Journal of Conflict Resolution 29:419-455.

Sayrs, Lois W. 1989. Pooled Time Series Analysis. Sage University Series Papers on Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences, no.70. Beverly Hills: Sage.

Schmitter, Phillipe C., and Terry L. Karl. 1996. "What Democracy is ... and is not." In The Global Resurgence of Democracy, ed. Larry Diamond and Marc F. Plattner. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press.

Schoultz, Lars. 1981. Human Rights and U.S. Policy Toward Latin America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Shue, Henry. 1996. Basic Rights: Subsistence, Affluence, and U.S. Foreign Policy. 2nd ed. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

95

Siverson, Randolph, and Harvey Starr. 1994. "Regime Change and the Restructuring of Alliances." American Journal of Political Science 38:145-161.

Sloan, John, and Kent L. Tedin. 1987. "The Consequences of Regime Type for Public-Policy Outputs." Comparative Political Studies 20:98-124.

Small, Melvin, and J. David Singer. 1982. Resort to Arms: International and Civil Wars, 1816-1980. Beverly Hills: Sage.

Stimson, James A. 1985. "Regression in Space and Time: A Statistical Essay." American Journal of Political Science 29:914-947.

Stohl, Michael, and David Carleton. 1985. "The Foreign Policy of Human Rights: Rhetoric and Reality from Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan." Human Rights Quarterly 7:205-229.

Stohl, Michael, David Carleton, and Steven Johnson. 1984. "Human Rights and U.S. Foreign Assistance from Nixon to Carter." Journal of Peace Research 21:215-226.

Taylor, Charles Lewis, and David Jodice. 1983. World Handbook of Political and Social Indicators III. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Tully, James. 1993. An Approach to Political Philosophy: Locke in Contexts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Ward, Michael D. 1978. "The Political Economy of Distribution: Equalities versus Inequality." Eldevier, NY: Elsevier North-Holland.