Political Repression. Linda Camp Keith
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2005, Gambia: The government arrested and detained opposition leaders who had publicly criticized or who had expressed political views in disagreement with the government. (U.S. Department of State 2005)
May 2001, Liberia: Security forces detained 24 persons from a truckload of internally displaced persons fleeing fighting: it is believed that detainees were transported to the Gbatala military base; however, they have not been seen since. (U.S. Department of State 2001)
February 2007, Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire: Moustapha Tounkara and Arthur Vincent, two young mobile phone salesmen, were arrested by members of the national security forces; their bullet-riddled bodies were found the next day. (Amnesty International 2007)
October 2005, Azerbaijan: The Court of Grave Crimes sentenced seven opposition leaders to between two and a half and five years in prison on alleged charges for their role in post-election violence; their convictions were based on confessions allegedly extracted under torture. (Human Rights Watch 2005)
August and September 2005, Ecuador: The state police arrested Washington Enrique Vilela Barra and Luis Antonio Cevallos Barre; their bodies were found the following day. Military officers patrolling the northern province of Sucumbios opened fire with no warning on a vehicle, killing Servio Pena Jimenez and seriously injuring Ramon Zamora Zamora. (U.S. Department of State 2005)
2004, Indonesia: Security forces continued to commit unlawful killings of rebels, suspected rebels, and civilians in areas of separatist activity, and the government largely failed to hold soldiers and police accountable for such killings and other serious human rights abuses. (U.S. Department of State 2004)
January 2004, Democratic Republic of Congo: Authorities at a military prison placed two civilians in front of freshly dug graves and then proceeded to bludgeon them to death with hammers. (Ibid.)
February 2004, Nepal: State soldiers killed 17-year-old Subhadra Chaulagain and 18-year-old Reena Rasaili, who were reportedly attempting to flee custody; it is alleged that the girls, who were accused by the Royal Nepalese Army of being Maoists, were captured, beaten, and raped before being killed. (Ibid.)
March 2004, Haiti: Five Haitian National Police officers arrested five youths from the pro-Aristide neighborhood of La Saline in Port-au-Prince; the next day their bodies, bearing signs of torture, were found near the airport. (Ibid.)
February 2000, Russia (Chechnya): The military used indiscriminate force in areas of significant civilian populations, resulting in numerous deaths, and also engaged in extrajudicial killings. For example, Russian riot police and contract soldiers executed at least 60 civilians in Aldi and Chernorechiye, suburbs of Grozny. (U.S. Department of State 2000)
January through October 1999, Burundi: Soldiers killed more than 55 civilians in Mubone, Kabezi commune, in May soldiers killed 11 Hutu civilians, including women and children, in July soldiers killed 30 civilians in Kanyosha commune, in August soldiers shot and killed an estimated 50 civilians in Kanyosha commune and used grenades and machine guns to kill an unknown number of civilians in Ruziba, Bujumbura Rural province, and in October a soldier shot and killed six persons, including three children and two women, at the Ruyaga regroupment site in Bujumbura Rural province—the army claims the civilians were collaborating with rebels. (U.S. Department of State 1999)
The long list above presents a very few examples of countless acts of political repression occurring throughout the world every year despite a near-universal commitment among nation-states not to engage in these behaviors. Social scientists committed to the study of human rights or contentious state politics have produced a substantive and growing body of empirical research that seeks to identify the factors that motivate these actors to engage in repression, and what circumstances enhance or constrain their opportunity and their willingness to utilize coercive tools against their own citizens. In this chapter I address the “standard model” that has developed over time, expanding it to cover a much longer period and broadening the model to reflect the subsequent developments in the literature regarding our conceptualization and measurement of democracy and to make use of newly available measures of specific individual rights. Because I find that the standard model as a whole continues to perform well in explaining a broad range of acts of political repression, I use these base models as the foundation for the analyses in the following chapters that examine that effect of the judiciary and the law on state repression.
Conceptualizing and Measuring Repression
I agree with Davenport’s (2007c) broad definition of political repression, which, while drawing generally on Goldstein (1978), still accurately reflects the consensus of the current literature: “By most accounts, repression involves the actual or threatened use of physical sanctions against an individual or organization, within the territorial jurisdiction of the state, for the purpose of imposing a cost on the target as well as deterring specific activities and/or beliefs perceived to be challenging to government personnel, practices or institutions” (2). Consensus among scholars dissipates somewhat when the focus narrows to the more specific nature of repression—in particular, whether repression should be conceptualized as being composed of a single dimension, or whether it is composed of multiple, distinct dimensions related to the form of coercion (for example, violence or coercion; see Stohl and Lopez 1984; Davenport 2007a), the breadth of the target (for example, actual dissenters or potential dissenters; see Wilkinson 1976), and the required resources, capabilities, and potential costs (see Mitchell and McCormick 1988; McCormick and Mitchell 1997). Most large-N cross-national studies of political repression have tended to focus on two forms of state repression separately—either addressing the more severe forms of repression, violations of personal integrity (imprisonment, torture, killing, and disappearances) (for example, Poe and Tate 1994; Poe, Tate, and Keith 1999; Cingranelli and Richards 1999a, 1999b; Keith 2002a; Keith, Tate, and Poe 2009), or addressing the broader category of civil liberties restrictions, or “negative sanctions,” as they are sometimes referred to in the literature (censoring the press, restricting freedom to assemble peacefully, or curbing religious freedoms) (for example, Davenport 1995a, 1995b, 2007a, 2007b; Keith 2002; Howard and Carey 2004; Walker and Poe 2002). The theoretical perspectives of the models employed in these studies are largely indistinguishable. Davenport (2007b) argues that while the two forms of repression share the same goal—to influence behavior and attitudes—they attempt to achieve the goal differently: civil liberties restrictions modify behavior through constraining and channeling opportunities; whereas personal integrity repression, such as killing and disappearances, modifies behavior through eliminating actors. Thus, it may be shortsighted to perceive repression as one-dimensional. However, as Davenport notes, to date most explanatory variables have similarly influenced both categories of repression, and therefore it is highly likely “that comparable processes underlie the coercive strategies” (487).
Davenport’s (2007a) work makes a substantial contribution to the field in that he specifically explores the question of whether state-sponsored restrictions and state-sponsored violence are equivalent behaviors. While the literature clearly agrees that states’ primary objective in employing coercive methods is to maintain or achieve political order, Davenport distinguishes how states pursue this goal. He argues that when states choose to restrict their citizens’ freedoms, “their goal is less to remove individuals/groups from society than it is to mold them within it,” and thus restrictions “establish parameters within which individuals (victims as well as bystanders) modify their behavior in an attempt to avoid sanctions in the present and future” (47). He then posits that states have a different goal in employing violent tools of repression, specifically arguing that “killing citizens eliminates a part of society deemed unacceptable while compelling acquiescence or guided change in others” (47). Davenport posits that it is useful to consider combinations of strategies that regimes may employ to take advantage of different cost/benefit structures or to communicate different messages. He suggests four basic combinations that are theoretically illustrative, although he ultimately creates and tests nine categories. The four combinations include the two extremes on a continuum: on one end the government does not engage in restrictions or violence, and at the other end the government engages in significant levels of both restrictions and violence. In between, the government either engages in significant amounts of restrictions