Political Repression. Linda Camp Keith

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

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

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

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

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

      THE DOMESTIC SOCIOECONOMIC ENVIRONMENT

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

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

      Colonial Experience: Over time the inclusion of a control for British colonial experience has become standard in explanatory models of state repression (for example, Davenport and Armstrong 2004; Keith 1999, 2002a; Poe and Tate 1994; Poe, Tate, and Keith 1999; Howard and Carey 2004). Interestingly, though, the results have been somewhat inconsistent. For example, the variable was not statistically significant in Poe and Tate’s early work, which examined repression in the 1980s, but the variable was statistically significant in all four of their models in their 1999 study (Poe, Tate, and Keith), which expanded the data back to 1976 and forward to 1993. However, Keith (2002a) and Keith, Tate, and Poe (2009), which extended the СКАЧАТЬ