Political Repression. Linda Camp Keith
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a failure to control for the democratic/nondemocratic nature of the regime” (858). Davenport (2007b) argues that in “political systems where the agents of repression (i.e., the military) directly wield power, there is a higher likelihood that repressive behavior—especially violent activity—would be applied out of habit, familiarity, an impulse to meet specific organizational norms, and a desire to expand prestige in/control over the political system” (486). However, Davenport points out that there is a significant scholarship that disagrees with some of these assumptions: “Others have noted that the armed forces tend to shy away from their area of expertise and implementing repressive behavior. Indeed, the hesitancy of the ‘professional soldier’ to interfere in domestic politics because of organizational norms is a constant theme in older research … persisting up to the present” (491 and citations therein). Additionally, he argues that a military regime will have less need to resort to “overt manifestations of coercive power” because “such power is signaled by the presence of the military itself” (491). As we will see below, empirical studies have been rather mixed in determining the influence of military regimes.
Most recently, Davenport (2007b) has argued that different types of autocratic regimes vary in their use of repression. He challenges the general assumption that all autocratic regimes uniformly lack alternative mechanisms of sociopolitical control and thus resort to coercive power. He argues that research on autocratic regimes has demonstrated that in fact they vary significantly in the strategies they use (490 and citations therein). In particular, he distinguishes two extreme types: personalist systems and single-party systems, with some regime types such as military regimes and hybrid systems in between. He argues that in personalist systems, which are the most isolated of all, “repressive behavior emerges when autocratic leaders are isolated and have involved a smaller number of actors in the political process,” and “the likelihood of repressive behavior is increased as those inside the ruling clique attempt to protect themselves from those that do not have any institutional means to influence government policy/practice” (486). And he argues that single-party systems, which are the least insulated, are the least repressive of autocratic regimes because “authorities have involved more individuals/organizations,” and the likelihood of repression is thus lower because “those in power are able to use alternative mechanisms of control to influence the population by ‘channeling’ them through established political institutions” (486). Davenport admits that the extent to which a single-party system provides alternative mechanisms of solving grievances or promoting alternative mechanisms of control may be weak, but nonetheless, “they do provide some venue within which discussion/aspirations/activism can take place—in a sense, it may be the only ‘show in town,’ but at least there is a show” (490). As we will see below, his empirical analyses support these expectations. Vreeland (2008) also argues that the domestic political institutions of authoritarian regimes are not monolithic; he posits that an authoritarian regime that faces multiple legal political parties may have an incentive to concede to the parties’ pressure to make a small concession and commit to international human rights norms. Ginsburg (2003) makes a similar argument in regard to authoritarian regimes’ adopting constitutional constraints such as judicial review.
The repression literature has approached with some caution the expectation that leftist regimes will be more likely to repress than non-Marxist regimes, and, as we will see below, that hesitancy has been justified empirically. Nonetheless, policymakers such as former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Jeane Kirkpatrick have argued that Marxist or Marxist-Leninist regimes are the world’s most repressive regimes, and political scientists have treated the assertion to be at least a testable hypothesis (Mitchell and McCormick 1988; Poe and Tate 1994; Poe, Tate, and Keith 1999). For example, Mitchell and McCormick (1988) find that such regimes are in fact more repressive on at least one of their dimensions of repression than are non-Marxist “authoritarian” regimes (480–81, 493–95). Poe and Tate (1994) noted that “such a finding is not surprising if one takes seriously the tenets of MarxistLeninist theory about the need for a dictatorship of the proletariat” (858); however, the results of their analyses tended to support critics of U.S. foreign policy that had taken Kirkpatrick and the Department of State to task for unfairly linking all socialist regimes with repression. As we will see below, the relationship appeared only in analyses using human rights measures as reported by the Department of State, suggesting that the leftist regime measure may have been simply controlling for a Department of State bias. Subsequent analyses that have expanded the time frame beyond the 1980s have failed to support the hypothesis that leftist regimes are more repressive; in fact the analyses have suggested just the opposite (Poe, Tate, and Keith 1999; Keith 2002). As Keith (2002) notes, there are two likely explanations. First, in Marxist or Marxist-Leninist regimes control of society and personal freedoms has often been so complete that the regime might be less likely than its non-leftist counterparts to need to engage in these more severe abuses of personal integrity rights to maintain order. Second, as Duvall and Stohl (1983) and Lopez and Stohl (1992) have argued, human rights repression may have an “‘afterlife,’ which affects the behavior of people long after the observable use of coercion by state agents has ended” (Lopez and Stohl 218). Thus, past repression in leftist regimes may actually reduce the need for future repression or the need for more severe forms of repression, such as those measured by personal integrity rights abuse.
The domestic institutions perspective fits firmly within the opportunity and willingness framework. Domestic institutions can either reduce or increase the cost of the choice to employ repression. The limited nature of democratic governments makes extensive use of repression more difficult and costly to arrange, and the electoral processes associated with democracies give citizens the potential to periodically change governments and thus increase the cost of repression. Democratic norms of compromise, toleration, and facilitation along with alternative processes for conflict resolution remove repression from the menu of appropriate policy tools, except in extraordinary circumstances. On the other hand, the nature and norms of military regimes may increase the perception that state coercion of citizens belongs in the menu of appropriate government responses, and the regime may face little cost or few barriers in choosing to employ the tools of repression. However, the past and current environment may lessen the need of military and leftist regimes to engage in overt coercive state action. The mere power of the military’s presence may obviate that need, and the leftist regimes’ overwhelming control of every dimension of society may lessen its need to engage in more severe forms of repression.
Theories Related to International Norms and Socialization
Another set of theoretical approaches generally focuses on transnational or international interaction and socialization, which are believed to drive the creation of and commitment to international human rights norms, rather than rationalist calculations. These perspectives emphasize the transformative power of international normative discourse on human rights and the role of activism by transnational actors (international organizations and nongovernmental actors), who through repeated interactions with state actors socialize states to accept new norms and who also support local efforts to press for a commitment to human rights. Thus, this perspective’s emphasis is on the processes through which state actors adopt formal constraints on the state’s opportunity to repress and through which state actors eventually internalize international human rights norms or values, which over time remove many of the tools of repression from the state’s menu of appropriate policy options. Two of these approaches are particularly relevant to the study of political repression: the transnational advocacy networks perspective and the world society approach.
TRANSNATIONAL ADVOCACY NETWORKS
The transnational advocacy networks perspective (Keck and Sikkink 1998; Risse, Ropp, and Sikkink 1999) posits that international human rights norms are diffused through networks of transnational and domestic actors who “bring pressure ‘from above’ and ‘from below’ to accomplish human rights change” (Risse and Sikkink 1999, 18). Risse and Sikkink identify a process of socialization through which international norms are internalized and implemented domestically, and they identify three types of causal mechanisms that they deem to be necessary for enduring internalization of human rights norms: (1) the process of instrumental adaptation and strategic bargaining; (2) the process of moral consciousness-raising, argumentation, dialogue, and persuasion; and (3) the processes of institutionalization and habitualization