Repression of the Human Right to Personal Integrity Revisited: A Global
Cross-National Study Covering the Years 1976-1993
Steven C. Poe; C. Neal Tate; Linda Camp Keith
International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 43, No. 2. (Jun., 1999), pp. 291-313.
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Repression of the Human Right to Personal Integrity Revisited: A Global Cross-National Study Covering the Years 1976-1993 University of North Texas
Here we seek to build on our earlier research (Poe and Tate, 1994) by
re-testing similar models on a data set covering a much longer time span;
the period from 1976 to 1993. Several of our findings differ from those of
our earlier work. Here we find statistical evidence that military regimes
lead to somewhat greater human rights abuse, defined in terms of violations of personal integrity, once democracy and a host of other factors are
controlled. Further, we find that countries that have experienced British
colonial influence tend to have relatively fewer abuses of personal integrity
rights than others. Finally, our results suggest that leftist countries are
actually less repressive of these basic human rights than non-leftist countries. Consistent with the Poe and Tate (1994) study, however, we find that
past levels of repression, democracy, population size, economic development, and international and civil wars exercise statistically
, significant and
substantively important impacts on personal integrity abuse.
The past two decades have seen a growth in popular concern with and academic
interest in human rights issues. Concurrent with these trends, empirical research
on several human rights-related questions has proliferated. One line of research
has investigated the impact of human rights considerations on foreign policy
outputs such as foreign aid in the United States and around the world (e.g.,
Cingranelli and Pasquarello, 1985; Stohl and Carleton, 1985; Hofrenning, 1990;
Poe and Sirirangsi, 1994; Blanton, 1994; Sterken, 1996), and immigration policies
(e.g., Gibney and Stohl, 1988; Gibney, Dalton, and Vockell, 1992). Other studies
have investigated U.S. foreign policy outputs to estimate their impacts, if any, on
human rights abuses abroad (e.g., Regan, 1995; Keith and Poe, 1999). But perhaps
the fastest growing vein of empirical research seeks a theoretical understanding of
why human rights are violated. Since the 1970s empirical studies have addressed
the problem of explaining cross-national variations in the respect for human rights
and levels of repression, variously defined (e.g., McKinlay and Cohan, 1975, 1976;
Strouse and Claude, 1976; Ziegenhagen, 1986; Park, 1987; Boswell and Dixon,
A i ~ t l ~ o n ' n o t We
e : thank Drew Lanier and Karl Ho for their assistance with this project and Mark Gibney and Michael
Stohl for sharing their human rights data with us. This research has been supported by the Nat~onalScience Foundation
through Grant SBR-932 1741 of the Division of Social, Behavioral, and Econo~nicResearch. \\'e thank NSF for its support
and note that any opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the National
Science Foundation.
01999 International Stud~esAssociation. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 350 main Street, Maiden, IMA 02148, USA, and 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 IJF, UK 292
Re$ression Revisited
1990; Davenport, 1995, 1996a, 199613, 1997; Meyer, 1996; King, 1997). Particularly in the past decade, numerous investigations have sought to explain crossnational variations in respect for the human right to personal (or physical) integrity,
amply recognized by international law (e.g., Mitchell and McCormick, 1988; Henderson, 1991, 1993; Cingranelli, 1992; Poe and Tate, 1994; Fein, 1995; Blasi and
Cingranelli, 1996; Richards, 1997; Cingranelli and Richards, 1997). In this study
we too focus on this subset of human rights, which includes freedom from torture,
im~risonment,execution. or disaa~earanceat the hands of government
either
u
arditrarily or for political reasons.$ '
Empirical research related to this topic began with bivariate analyses performed
on cross-sectional data sets covering only one year. As research has progressed
analyses have increased in sophistication. In a relatively recent addition to this
literature iPoe and Tate. 1994) we conducted statistical analvses
, ofwhat is ~ r o b a b l v
the most comprehensive model yet built on a cross-national data set consisting of
153 countries for the period 1981-1987.3 Our findings documented that past levels
of repression, democracy, population size, economic standing, and threats in the
form of international and civil wars were statistically significant and at least moderately important determinants of repression levels. They also indicated that population growth, economic growth, British cultural influence, and military governments
were statistically unimportant in determining levels of human rights abuse in the
world's countries, despite plausible arguments and some previous findings suggesting that they should have an impact on respect for personal integrity rights.
Our goal here is to build on our original 1994 study to revalidate and replicate
its results and, if possible, to make further theoretical and empirical inroads into
the study of why human rights violations occur. We do so using an expanded data
set that spans the period 1976-1993. We begin by reexamining the hypotheses
originally tested in the 1994 article and setting up a model that is appropriate to
guide our analyses of this significantly expanded version of our data. Before
proceeding to that analysis we explore our expanded measures of personal integrity
abuse, both to give readers a better understanding of the nature of our dependent
variable and to document relatively long term patterns of personal integrity abuse
that are of considerable interest in and of themselves. Finally, we present a new
pooled cross-sectional time series analysis of the expanded data set to see if our
earlier results hold for a longer time period encompassing many more cases. This
analysis will allow us to subject the model to more stringent tests than were possible
in the earlier analysis.
I
i
A Model of Personal Integrity Abuse
We continue to follow (see Poe and Tate, 1994:855-59) a strategy outlined in
Blalock's Theory Construction (1969), compiling an inventory of hypotheses concerning national human rights behaviors. However, once we have extracted and refined
these hypotheses from the empirical and theoretical literature, we then imbed them
in a theory-driven model that we estimate using empirical data.
1 There is also a body of research that adopts a case study or time series approach to explaining repression (see, e.g.,
Pion-Berlin, 1984; Davis andTVard, 1990; Pion-Berlin and Lopez, 1991).
2 TVe will use the terms repyerczon, lii~nzan right^, alld personal integl-ity right3 interchangeably to col~notethese rights
alld governments' violations of them. Although they do not explicitly adopt the personal integrity human rights
framework, studies of negative sailctions (e.g.,Ziegenhagen, 1986; Davenport, 1995, 1996a, 1996b) are also relevant to
this work.
W u r data o n personal integrity rights covered the years 1980-1987, as the study's title suggests. But since our
statistical model required the inclusion of a lagged dependent variable, the analysis applies specifically to the seven
years 1981-1987.
STEVENC. POE, C. NEALTATE,AND LINDACAMPKEITH
293
We begin with a simple but important question: Why do some states abuse the
dignity of the person? In most cases, we postulate, it is because their principal
political leaders are willing to repress, and because they have the opportunity to act
on their choice. If we assume that most political leaders are rational actors, we
conclude that they choose to commit abuses of personal integrity rights because they
see these inhumane actions as the most effective means to achieve their ends. This
does not imply that they take pleasure in repression. In most cases, they probably
believe that they have no choice but to repress, even that they are forced to imprison
or execute opponents, because it is the most efficient way to achieve their goals.4
What factors cause leaders to conclude that repression is the most effective means
of achieving their ends? The most pervasive, we believe, is the existence of threats,
real or perceived, to the leaders' goals (see Gurr, 1986). When faced with threats,
leaders will consider responding to them with repression. Threats come in a variety
of forms. Threats, which existing theory and research suggest are most important,
stem from domestic and international political conflict. Therefore, other things being
equal, we expect that repression will increase as regimes are faced with a domestic threat in
thefornz ofcivil war, or when a country is involved in international war (see Gurr, 1986).
Among the things thatwill not always be equal are a number of political conditions
that encourage or discourage the choice of repression as a response to domestic and
international threats. Political leaders with direct control of the instruments of
coercion, especially military governors, will face fewer barriers than other leaders if
they choose to act repressively. Political leaders whose ideology justifies domination
of the society and polity in the interests of an ultimate political goal will exercise
greater control and will need little justification to use repression to oppose threats.
In this century, the most prominent such ideology has been Marxism-Leninism.
Because their political leaders will have greater opportunity and willingness (Most
and Starr, 1989) to employ state terrorism as a response to threats, we expect that
repression will be a more probable response in military- and Marxist-Leninist-controlled
nations (Boswell and Dixon, 1990; Poe and Tate, 1994). Our earlier findings (Poe
and Tate, 1994:861) were not very supportive of either of these regime-type
hypotheses, but perhaps our findings will differ due to the longer time span and
larger number of cases that we analyze in this article.
Conversely, political leaders in democracies have both less opportunity and less
willingness to repress when faced with domestic or international conflict: less
opportunity because the structure and limited nature of democratic governments
make extensive use of repression more difficult to arrange; less willing because of
the variety of outlets through which conflict can be channeled for possible resolution
and also due to socialization processes that guide citizens of democratic polities
toward the belief that nonviolent means of resolving conflicts are preferred over
violence (e.g., Dixon, 1994; Kant, 1996).Thus, following in the footsteps of several
previous studies (Henderson, 1991; Poe and Tate, 1994; Davenport, 1995;
Richards, 1997), we expect .iepression to be less extensive in democracies than in other types
of governments.
It is also possible that the willingness to use repression is made either more or
less likely as a result of the political cultures that dominate societies. Rulers in open,
participant political cultures should be less willing to consider repression as a
4 \\'e do not rule out the possibility that some leaders receive psychic gratification from inflicting pain on others
through repression. Nor do we assume that the rational calculus that produces a decision to repress necessarily is based
on valid information, or even that it is produced in all instances by a sane mind. But students of decision-making have
long recognized the rationality of appearing to act irrationally, and students of totalitarianism have noted the efficacy
of even random state terror in producing a quiescent and compliant population (see, e.g., Friedrich and Brzezinski,
1956). Thus even apparently irrational repression could emerge from a broader rationality. See Most and Starr,
1989: 1 2 6 2 8 for models, adopting a rational actor framework, that might be used to comprehend repression.
RefiressionRevisited
294
response to threat than those in closed, subject cultures (Almond and Verba, 1963,
1989). This is certainly not the place to review the efficacy of political cultural
explanations of national political behavior. At their best, they connote that certain
attitudes inculcated by the culture, but not directly measured, are partially responsible for differences in the deuendent behaviors of interest. And. in the uresent
context, it is not easy to see, for example, how an analyst would separate the effects
of democratic government from those of a democratic political culture. Nevertheless, previous research has considered whether British political/colonial influence
(Mitchell and McCormick, 1988; Boswell and Dixon, 1990; Poe and Tate, 1994) has
had an impact on human rights and repression. So we will again pose the hypothesis
that countries with British colonial basts will be less abt to use rebression than countries
without such experience, other factors'held equal.
Cross-national research must always consider the possible effects of economic
conditions on dependent variables, and the literature on human rights is no
exception (McKinlay and Cohan, 1975; Strouse and Claude, 1976; Park, 1987;
Mitchell and McCormick, 1988; Boswell and Dixon, 1990; Henderson, 1991; Poe
and Tate, 1994). We expect economic conditions to have a substantial impact on
the domestic rebellion that creates the threat to which some leaders will respond
with repression. In fortunate countries with high levels of economic development
leaders will have a different view of the stakes that are threatened bv domestic
rebellion or international conflict than will leaders in less fortunate nations. In
countries with economies characterized by scarcity, regimes will be more likely to
repress domestic threats. In more fortunate countries, economic development will
have generated more goods to be valued and distributed. Thus, we expect repression
to be decreased bv economic develobnzent.
The impact of economic growth is more problematic. Some expect that economic
growth would increase repression because it increases the number of diclasse'
individuals and groups that are most prone to promote instability (Olson, 1963; Poe
and Tate, 1994). At the same time, economic growth increases the size of the "pie"
which might in some instances satisfy those who would rebel, thus decreasing
instability and therefore repression. Our earlier analysis (Poe and Tate, 1994:861)
failed to uncover any evidence supporting an important relationship in either
direction, so perhaps these two tendencies work to cancel each other out. Nevertheless, we will test this hypothesis again over the longer time span to see if our earlier
findings hold. Because we are unsure as to what to expect regarding the direction
of the relationship, we will use two-tail tests of statistical significance to test the effect
of this variable. Our hypothesis is that economic growth will affect levels ofrepression,
ceteris paribus.
Despite rather mixed empirical results (Poe and Tate, 1994; Henderson, 1993),
Henderson's work (1993) suggests that demographic conditions should be a part of
our theoretical model, too. A large or dense population may increase the occurrence
of state terrorism by increasing the number of occasions on which threats and
coercive acts can occur. If there are more ou~ortunities
for 1u e o1 ~
l eto rebel and be
1 1
repressed, we might expect that repression would take place more often, other
things being equal. Second, a large population will place stress on national resources
that rebression will be increased when
(Henderson, 1993:322-24). So we hypothesize
.pofiulations are large.
Rapid population growth may also promote resource stress (Henderson, 1993).
Stress caused by population pressures will increase domestic rebellion and perhaps
also magnify leaders' perceptions of what is at stake when they face domestic and
international threats. Thus we hypothesize that repression will be increased by population
size and growth.
Finally, as in our earlier study (Poe and Tate, 1994:860), we employ a lagged
dependent variable in the model. This variable serves an important methodological
I
i
1
STEVENC. POE,C. NEALTATE,AND LINDACAMPKEITH
295
purpose by controlling the effects of autocorrelation. But there are also good
theoretical reasons for including" it in the model. That "
government bureaucracies
tend to make decisions incrementally, using past decisions as a baseline for the
present, is well known and widely held (Wildavsky, 1984). Further, organizations
are presumed to have inertia because they tend to resist change (e.g., Allison, 197 1;
Bendor and Hammond, 1992). For these reasons we expect that there will be a
strong tendency for governments to continue past levels of repression. We hypothesize
that a history of repression in the recent past will be a strong determinant of cu~rentrep~ession
Levels.
A summary of the variables included in a model, the measures, and a statement
regarding the findings of our 1994 study are presented in Table 1. The operationalizations listed in Table 1 are nearly identical to those used in the earlier study.
The biggest operationalization difference between the earlier and the current study
is that we now use the Polity I11 democracy index variable as one of the alternate
measures to capture that concept Uaggers and Gurr, 1995) in place of thevanhanen
democracv index used in the earlier studv Nanhanen. 1990). The Politv I11 index
was not available at the time of the original study, and its predecessor, the Polity I1
index, was not available for the most recent years covered by the original study. The
Vanhanen index used in the urevious analvsis is unavailable for manv of the vears
,
difference is that for the cur;ent study we
included in this study. ~ n o t h i r minor,
were able to obtain what we think are fairly reliable yearly estimates of population
growth; in the earlier study we were forced to use the average growth rate across the
1980-1987 period. Interested readers may wish to consult the earlier study for
somewhat more detailed theoretical justifications for each variable included in the
model.
Presented in equation form our model is as follows:
i
Personal Integrity Abuseg = a
\
+ B1 Personal Integrity
+ R2Democracyq
+ fi6Economic Growthtj + R7Leftist Governmenttj
+ RsMilitary Controlq + &British Cultural Influenceg
+ RloInternational Wartj + RI1CivilWar9 + eg
Where:
,j = country j at time t
a
R,
=
intercept for equation
=
regression coefficient for variable n
etj = error term for countryj at time t.
Our measures of personal integrity abuse are discussed in detail in the next
section. Here we shall only note that personal integrity abuse will be represented
by Amnesty International and State Department measures that have been corrected
for missing values. Parallel analyses will be conducted on these two measures of the
dependent phenomenon. This should eliminate the problem of sample bias. It will
also mean that the results yielded with these two measures will be fully comparable,
since each measure will cover an identical sample of countries.
Repression Reuisited
TABLE
1. Independent Variables Used t o Explain Personal Integrity Abuse
Valznble, and ExFected Eflect
O~e~atzo?znlzzatzo~z
Poe and TateS (1794) Fzndlngs
Lagged dependent
variable
(positive)
Five-categor). ordinal scale, gathered
primarily from either State Department
or Amnesty International reports
depending o n the model
Strong determinant of repression
statistically significant in all
analvses
Democracy
(negative)
Freedom House Political Rights 7point scale, inverted (1 =least democracy,
7=maximum democracy), and Polity
111 democlacy scale
Strong determinant of repression
statistically significant in all
analyses, regardless of measure
Population size
(positive)
Logged population
Statistically significant, moderately
important substantively
Population change
(positive)
Percent yearly population increase or
decrease
Insignificant, statistically
and substantively
Economic standing
(negative)
Per capita GNP
Moderately important, substanti\~ely
and statistically significant in all
analyses
Economic growth
(no directional
expectation)
Percent increase in per capita GNP,
measured yearly
Statistically insignificant,
substanti\~elyunimportant
Leftist government
(positive)
Dummy variable, ~vith"1" indicating
countries governed by leftist governments,
with no nun-leftist opposition
Statistically significant in analyses
using State Department measure;
statistically' insiqnificant
in a~lalyses
of variable gathered from Amnesty
Military control
(positive)
Durnmy variable, with "1" indicating
regimes with a militar) person in power as
the chief executive, or a mixed regime with
a military presence apparently controlling
a civilian leader behind the scenes
Apparently statistically insignificant,
substantively unimportant determinant, though some analyses using
different rnethfldologies resulted in
statistical significance (870, n. 30)
British cultural
influence
(negative)
Dummy variable with "1" identi5ing
countries that had been colonies of Great
Britain
Insignificant both statistically and
substantively, analyses using other
methodologies, presented in notes,
resulted in statistical significance
(870, n. SO; 871, n. SF)
International war
(positive)
Statistically significant, substantively
Adapted Singer and Small's (1994)
definition for interstate war: total of 1,000 Important
deaths. 1,000 personnel involved, or suffer
100 fatalities. Countries that were coded by
Singer and Small to be external interveners
in civil wars (see below) were considered to
be participants in international war as well
Civil war
(positive)
Adapted Singer and Srnall (1994): (1)
government involved as a combatant. (2)
An effective resistance must be present, in
the form of a group organized for violent
conflict, or one able to inflict 5% of the
fatalities it receives. 1,000 battle deaths
minimum
Statistically significant, substantively
important
STEVENC. POE, C. NEALTATE,AND LINDACAMPKEITH
297
Measuring Repression of the Right to Personal Integrity
The variable of greatest scientific and normative significance in this analysis is our
dependent variable, repression of personal integrity rights. Observers of the state
of human rights
around the world recognize
that nations clearlv differ substantiallv
u
u in the amount of respect they give to personal integrity rights. However, capturing
these clearly perceived differences in a measure of personal integrity human rights
abuse that can be feasiblv, auantified and reliablv recorded is an endeavor fraught
with many imperfections (see, e.g., Lopez and Stohl, 1992; other pieces in Jabine
and Claude's 1992 book; and Gibney and Dalton, 1997). That being said, however,
it certainly is possible to provide meaningful estimates of the extent of human rights
abuses: organizations such as Amnesty International and the U.S. State Department
do so on a regular basis. Although these rating organizations do not usually supply
their estimates in a systematically quantified form, several researchers have used the
information provided in these reports to create quantified dependent variables to
support quantitative empirical analyses of countries' human rights behavior.
As in our earlier study, (Poe and Tate, 1994).we choose to measure violations of
personal integrity rights with two "standards-based" measures that have been
frequently used by researchers who have studied personal integrity rights. These
measures have come to be known as the "Political Terror Scales" or PTS (e.g., Stohl
and Carleton, 1985; Carleton and Stohl, 1987; Duvall and Stohl, 1988; Gibney and
Stohl, 1988; Henderson, 1991, 1993; Gibney, Dalton, and Vockell, 1992; Poe, 1992;
Poe and Sirirangsi, 1994; Gibney and Dalton, 1997). To generate these particular
indices, coders apply a set of standards developed by Gastil (1980) to the information contained in the yearly reports published by Amnesty International and the
U.S. State Department (e.g., Amnesty International, 1988; U.S. State Department,
1988). The application of the criteria to information about the occurrence of
political imprisonment, execution, disappearances, and torture yields ordered
indices of personal integrity abuse or political terror that range from one to five.
The coding categories and their criteria are:
L
LJ
~
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."
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."
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, ~ l i t hor without trial, for political views is accepted."
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."
5. "The terrors 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).
Most nations fit reasonably well into the five index categories. Examples of
countries placed in category one, for most years analyzed, include Costa Rica,Japan,
and New Zealand. In stark contrast, countries placed in category five are characterized by nearly indiscriminate disappearances, murders, or executions. Examples
of countries that were categorized as belonging in repression level five during the
period under study include Sri Lanka in 1989 and 1990, and Bosnia in 1992 and
298
Repression Revisited
1993. Countries placed in categories two through four represent gradations lying
between these two extremes. Application of this classification scheme to the information contained in both the Amnesty International and the U.S. State Department
reports provides two different, albeit related, annual measures of personaiintegrity
rights abuse for most of the world's nations.
Most of the data gathering for these measures of personal integrity rights abuse
was done by Stohl, Gibney, and their co-researchers at Purdue (e.g., Stohl and
Carleton, 1985; Gibney and Dalton, 1996). As in our earlier study (Poe and Tate,
1994), we added further data, primarily for developed countries and smaller
countries not covered in the data set originally created by the Purdue researchers.
To maximize reliability, we adopted the procedures used in the earlier research
(Poe and Tate, 1994; Gibney and Dalton, 1997).Each case was coded by two trained,
expert coders. Where there was disagreement between the two coders on a country's
annual score, a third "resolution coder" read the two sets of reports and applied the
criteria to determine the scores to be assigned to the country f& the year in question.
We stress that the "Political Terror Scale" measures of personal integrity rights
abuse are not the only ones that could be used in a cross-national analysis of this
vitally important dependent variable. Indeed, the PTS indices have their critics.
Recently McCormick and Mitchell (1997) have criticized them by arguing that they
inappropriately treat repression as a unidimensional concept. They argue instead
for the use of two 5-point ordinal scales to measure separately what thev see as two
distinct dimensions of personal integrity abuse: (1) political imprisonment and (2)
torture and killing. They contend that incorporating different levels of behavior
into a single dimension "inadequately captures the substantive difference" in the
behaviors (Mitchell and McCormick, 1988:484).
We accept McCormick and Mitchell's premise that measuring political imprisonment and torture and killings as separate kinds of personal integrity abuse would
be useful for some analytical purposes. Theoretically, however, we find that conand torture. as McCormick and Mitchell
ducting.
" seDarate analvses of im~risonment
suggest, does not take into account that those behaviors are substitutable pol-y
options, and that the choice of one may prevent or render unnecessaiy the use of
the other (see Most and Starr, 1989:97-132). Killing one's political opponents
clearly eliminates the need to imprison them. Thus statistical analyses focusing on
one or the other of McCormick and Mitchell's imprisonment and torturelkilling
indices might produce misleading or meaningless results-if one desires to explain
the propensities of governments to repress or to abuse personal integrity rights.
Further, McCormick and Mitchell's dual measures also apparently do not take into
account additional behaviors-such as disappearances-that may be substitutable
for imprisonment.
A further advantage of the Political Terror Scales over some other available
measures of human rights (Regan, 1995; McCormick and Mitchell, 1997) is that the
latter are based only on readings of the Amnesty International reports, which cover
a sample biased toward those countries that abuse human rights (see Poe and Tate,
1994:869, n. 8). This selection difficulty could bias statistical findings, since a largely
democratic and developed part of the distribution of nations would be left out of
statistical analysis, when data are gathered solely from the Amnesty International
repork5
I
5 In this and our earlier study (Poe and Fate, 1994) we deal with the selection bias problem by substituting the State
Department PTS score for Amnesty International's where the Amnesty score is missing, and, vice versa, substituting the
Amnesty Intel-national score for the State Department score on the (many fewer) occasions when the latter is missing.
T o our knowledge McCormick and Mitchell (1997) have only gathered data for nvo years, 1984 and 1987, and only foithe countries covered by Amnesty International's reports. Their statistical analyses indicate that some of the determinants of repi-ession we outlined in our previous research (Poe and Tate, 1994) appear to correlate more strongly with
STEVENC. POE, C. NEALTATE,AND LINDACAMPKEITH
299
Finally, on a practical level, we recognized when we began our work that, unlike
any other available measure, the measure of personal integrity rights used by Stohl,
Gibney, and their co-authors had already been coded for a great many years and
countries prior to the initiation of our study (Stohl and Carleton, 1985; Gibney and
Dalton, 1997). Relying on their generously shared data decreased the fairly substantial scale of our own data generation project.6
We adinit that the Political Terror Scales we use are not ideal ineasures-especially in a world where human rights violations often are perpetrated under a veil
of secrecy. Nevertheless, after looking at all the available measures of personal
integrity rights abuse (e.g., Mitchell and McCormick, 1988; Regan, 1995; Cingranelli and Richards, 1997) we conclude that they are the best currently available
for our purposes, for both theoretical and practical reasons.
Patterns of Personal Integrity Abuse, 1976-1993
The beginning and end years of our period of analysis were both dictated by research
exigencies. At the time we finished coding the expanded data set we use here, 1993
was the most recent year for which Amnesty International and the State Department
had published reports. Our beginning year, 1976, represents the: first year for which
both Amnesty and the State Department published reports that were suitable for
coding. It will not be possible to extend this kind of measurement of personal
integrity rights further back in time without resorting to a different, and much more
laborious and expensive, approach to coding the state of personal integrity rights
within nations, an approach that would involve extensive work with primary source
materials?
Sample Selectio?~P~oblems
It will be useful to begin by examining how the world's nations have been distributed
across the five categories over time. Before doing that, however, we must explain
some aspects of the data and measurement that affect how we choose to describe;
and display cross-national performance on the abuse of personal integrity rights.
The real world always interferes with the best laid plans of empirical data analysts.
Ideally, we would have data on both the Amnesty International acd the U.S. State
Department assessments of the human rights behaviors of an identical and comprehensive set of independent nations for the whole eighteen-year period we are able
to analyze. In that real ~ l o r l d however,
,
there are at least two problerns that make
this goal impossible to achieve. First, the number of independent nations has varied
tortureikilling than imprisonment (or vice versa) in the nvo years covered by the study. Still, each of the variables foul~cl
to be important in Poe and Tate, 1994, is found to be a statistically significant determinant of either the impi-isonment
or the torture/killing index in the reanalysis of McCormick and Mitchell, 1997. This is impressive given the differences
in design: their use of trvo dimensions of repression as dependent variables, their not using a lagged dependent variable
(as we had), and the necessity of their using smaller (cross-sectional)samples of countries. The latter difference in design
led to much larger standard errors in their reanal)sis, making statistical significance more difficult to achieve, a factor
that accounts for several of their divergent findings.
G Cingranelli and Richards (1997) have recently succeeded in generating from the Amnesty and U.S. State
Department reports a promising measure that takes into account torture, killing, imprisonment, and executions using
scaling procedures that solve the potential difficulties inherent in putting several different behaviors on a single scale.
Horvever, as yet those data are only available at three-year intervals, and for a much smallel- (75-counti-y)sample of
countries. Early I-esearch completed using this measure does not support the argument made by Mitchell and
McCormick (1998) that repression of personal integrity rights must be treated as a multidimensional phenomenon.
7There are cognate approaches to the measurement ofvarious aspects of human rights abuse that rely on the coding
of events data fi-om news and other seconcla~ysources. Events data have pi-obletns that make them less than suitable for
use in our analyses. But they do have the advantage of being codable foi- less recent and longer periods of tiine. Foiuseful examples of analyses relying on such data, see the work of Davenport (e.g., 1995, 1996a, 1996b) and Ziegenhagen
(1986).
300
Repression Revisited
across time. Most obviously and most recently, what had been, for analytical
purposes, the politically unified states of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia have
exploded into multiple national units. At other times during 1976-1993 what had
been two separate countries have merged into one (e.g., West and East Germany
into present-day Germany, North and SouthVietnam into today's Vietnam). Finally,
a few new countries-mostly, but not all (e.g., Namibia), of the microstate variety-have become independent during our period of analysis. As a consequence,
when we compare levels of repression among independent countries across time we
must be careful that we do not compare samples that are not identical-or at least
recognize and exercise appropriate caution when we feel we should compare
nonidentical samples. To do otherwise is to risk drawing conclusions that may be at
least partially the product of sample selection problems, rather than the real-world
actions of governments.
A second sample selection problem arises because of the different reporting
strategies employed by Amnesty International and the State Department over time.
Today both Amnesty and the State Department prepare assessments of the human
rights practices of almost all the world's nations, although the latter is somewhat
more comprehensive in its coverage than the former. This has not always been the
case. In their early days the State Department's reports concerned themselves only
with U.S. aid recipients because they were generated to assist the department in
complying with congressional statutory strictures prohibiting aid to nations that
abused human rights. That pattern soon changed, however, and by 1980 the State
Department's reports had become more comprehensive.
Amnesty International's reports have always had the purpose of highlighting the
worst abuses of human rights. Accordingly, they have tended to concentrate on
countries that had significant amounts of personal integrity abuse. Throughout our
analytical period, but particularly in the earlier years, Amnesty's reports frequently
simply did not discuss the state of human rights in some states. The organization's
official position was that omission from its annual report should not be taken to
imply that an omitted nation had no serious problems of human rights abuse.8 But
in fact, it seems very clear that, at least in most cases, that is exactly what omission
from the Amnesty International annual report meant. (We document this assertion
later in this article.) As a result, except when the Amnesty repmrts are as comprehensive as the State Department reports, one can expect the sample of states rated
annually by Amnesty to be biased in the direction of greater human rights abuse,
as compared to the sample of states rated by the State Department. Furthermore,
since Amnesty International's reports are less comprehensive as one goes back in
time, one can expect the same bias in the direction of greater repression to
characterize the Amnesty ratings in earlier, as compared to later, years.
Sample Selection Solutzo?zs
We adopt several strategies to deal with the effects of these sample selection biases
on our efforts to describe patterns of personal integrity abuse across nations and
time. First, to describe the data, we analyze them just as they were coded from
Amnesty International and State Department reports, without correcting for any
type of sample selection bias. This gives us a base picture in which known likely
biases are presented, but it also represents, for each year, all the countries coded by
Amnesty, the State Department, or both. Second, in order to deal with sample
selection bias, we analyze a data set in which we use a substitution strategy, (1)
They also ival-n that the reports should not be used foi- measurement. In fact, howe\,ei-, inany of the scholars
discussed above have used the I-eports for that purpose, and the results of those efforts have yielded a better
understanding of why repression occui-s.
STEVEN
C. POE, C. NEALTATE,
AND LINDACAMPKEITH
30 1
replacing missing Amnesty International-based personal integrity scores with corresponding State Department scores, where they are available, and (2) in many fewer
cases, replacing missing State Department personal integrity scores with Amnesty
International scores, where they are available. Finally, we also provide descriptive
analyses for a balanced sample of country-years, ones that include in the data set
onlv the 105 countries for which a score is available for all eighteen vears.
These
,
analyses provide us with results for the largest possible set of nations that existed
for the full eighteen-year period and for which there is available data on at least one
of our kev, indicators. Thus e xI~ a n d e dto more than twice as manvvears but restricted
to a smaller number of nations for which full dependent variable data are available,
this is the kind of balanced data set used for the years 1980-1987 in our earlier
analysis (Poe and Tate, 1994).
/
U
i i
Patterns over Time
Figures 1 and 2 display the distribution of the raw or "uncorrected" Amnesty
International and State Department measures of personal integrity abuse, annually,
for each year from 1976 to 1993. They clearly display several patterns. First, they
depict the growth in the number of countries being reported ori by either or both
of these groups. They also show 1 1 0 ~ the
7
selectivity in the reporting of the two groups
would give one a quite different picture of the state of human rights worldwide, if
one assumed their reports were comprehensively accurate. Especially in the earlier
years of our period, but even through 1993, Amnesty's picture of the world is less
rosy than that of the State Department. The number of countries for which its
reports lead to a category one coding is consistently smaller than that of the State
Department. At the other end of the scale, the number of countries that are coded
five based on the Amnesty reports is often larger, though rarely much larger, than
the number so coded from the State Department reports. These differences may
result-especially in the first half of the period-from a more accurate assessment
of the repression practices of U.S. allies on the part o f h n e s t y . But they also result
1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993
Year
FIG. 1. Amnesty International Scores, 19'76-1993
302
Repression Revisited
1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993
Year
FIG.2. State Department Scores, 1976-1993
from underreporting by Amnesty on countries that do not have as serious personal
integrity repression problems.
Figures 3 and 4 report the "corrected" scores for the Amnesty and State Department measures, that is, those for which available scores based on one set of reports
are substituted for missing scores in the other. Naturally, these graphs look more
similar than the two based on the uncorrected reports. Nevertheless, the basic
difference between the pictures of the world painted by the two reporting agencies
persists, though it is much more pronounced in the 1970s and 1980s than it is in;
the 1990s.
Because they contain so much categorical information, Figures 1 through 4 do
not allow one to see clearly any trends in the overall level of personal integrity rights
abuse over time. That problem is corrected in Figure 5, which displays the mean
ratings on the Amnesty International and State Department measures for the
1976-1993 period, for the raw scores, and for the "corrected" scores, selection bias
once again addressed by substitution. The most interesting feature of Figure 5 is
the converging pattern it shows for the Amnesty and State Department personal
integrity abuse measures. The Amnesty measures begin the series showing a higher
level of repression worldwide than the State Department measure. But over time,
the Amnesty picture grows brighter, depicting a decline in mean levels of abuse,
while the State Department picture grows darker, portraying the opposite. At the
end of the series, the means for the four series-those for the uncorrected as well
as the corrected measures-are virtually identical!
So in the end, these two assessments of human rights performance seem to have
converged. This finding is consistent with the argument made elsewhere that some
of the expected biases of the U.S. State Department's reports (i.e., anti-socialist,
pro-U.S. ally) have subsided, as those reports have become more routinized in the
post-Cold War period (Innes, 1992; Poe, Vazquez, and Zanger, 1998).9 However,
V n the Foe, Vazquez, and Zanger 1998 paper, we present statistical evidence of such biases. However, the biases
are not so great as to call into question the utility of the State Department's reports. A model designed to explain
differences in the assessments of Amnesty International and the State Department could account forjust 5 percent of
the variance in these differences with variables designed to test hypotheses regarding State Department biases. The
STEVENC. POE, C. NEALTATE,AND LINDACAMPKEITH
303
1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993
Year
FIG.3. Amnesty International Scores (Colrected), 1976-1993
we are left without any feeling for what the "true" trend in the data is. One final
analysis we conducted was to look at the trends across time for countries for which
data were available across the entire period of study, to see if the addition and loss
of cases during the 1976-1993 period affected our findings concerning the trend.
This analysis, which focused on a balanced data set of 105 countries, showed no
upward or downward trend in the corrected Amnesty index, but did show an upward
trend in the mean State Department index. Again, the means of the ~ w oindices
converged to where in 1993 they were nearly identical, consistent with the argument
that the State Department values gradually came to approach those of Amnesty, as
the reports of the State Department became more reliable. The strongest conclusion
we can draw from this analysis of trends is that we find no clear movefient, upward
or downward, in worldwide human rights performance during the eighteen years
covered by our study.
The Data Sets and Methodological Issues
In order to proceed with statistical tests of the model outlined above, we use the
methodology adopted in our earlier study (Poe and Tate, 1994), Ordinary Least
Squares (OLS)regression with Panel Robust Standard Errors (Beck and Katz, 1995).
That method, coupled with use of a lagged dependent variable, serves to control
the problems posed by heteroskedasticity and autocorrelation, common to pooled
cross-sectional time series data sets (Stimson, 1985; Beck and Katz, 1994, 1995).
The software we used then to execute that methodology required a "balanced" data
set, that is, one in which data are present for all years for any countiy to be included
in the analysis. Achieving a balanced data set with cross-national time series data
always requires some difficult and to some extent arbitrary decisions about how to
handle changes in the population and number of included nations. For the
amount of val-iance explained by the model decl-eased substantially aftel- the Cold M'al- subsided. In this and 0111- othelwol-k we use the State Department and Amnesty International scales in pal-allel analyses PI-ecisely because of the
allegations of bias.
304
Repression Revisited
1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993
Year
FIG.4. State Department Scores (Corrected), 1976-1993
1980-1987 analysis, however, achieving a balanced design was not especially difficult: the population of nations for which dependent variable data could be coded
did not change much; and independent variable data were in fact available for
almost all included nation-states for all years.
The period 1976-1 993 is one in which the population of the world's independent
countries changed substantially, especially toward the end of the period. Achieving
a balanced data set for the current analysis is thus a much more difficult task. We
have already demonstrated that the number of states for which we could code human
rights data was substantially smaller in the late 1970s than it was in the late 1980s'
and 1990s: the largest number of countries for which we can achieve a balanced
design is only 105,69 percent of that (153) for our earlier study. Fortunately, current
software (Stata release 5) provides us with the means to compute thgnecessary Panel
Robust Standard Errors to control the effects of heteroskedasticity for an unbalanced pool of countries (StataCorp, 1997:619).This unbalanced sample of eighteen
years of the personal integrity rights behavior of the world's nations includes 2,471
country-years when we use the Freedom House Political Rights scores to measure
democracy and 2,144 country-years when we use the Polity I11 measure. In combination with the Panel Robust Standard Errors, we again use a lagged dependent
variable, as we did in our earlier research (Poe and Tate, 1994-following Beck and
Katz, 1994), to implement the necessary control for the effects of autocorrelation
and to account for incrementalism in governmental decision-making.
Data Analysis
In Table 2 we present the results gained in our efforts to cross-validate the models
of our earlier study (Poe and Tate, 1994). The columns of Table 2 present the four
empirically estimated models we calculated for our nearly global, unbalanced data
sets for the period 1977-1993. Columns one and two are for models in which the
dependent variable, personal integrity rights abuse, was coded primarily from the
Amnesty International reports. Columns three and four show the findings when the
dependent variable was operationalized mainly with the U.S. State Department
reports. Columns one and three give the estimates generated when the Freedom
STEVENC. POE, C. NEAL TATE,AND LINDACAMPKEITH
305
House political rights scores are used to operationalize democracy. Columns tcvo
and four contain the results yielded when the Polity I11 democracy score was
substituted into the model, in place of the Freedom House measure.
The positive findings of our earlier (1994) study are strongly confirmed by the
analyses summarized in Table 2. The independent variables that our 1994 models
showed as clearly influencing repression-democracy, international war, civil war,
population size, economic development, and past levels of repression-all have
statistically significant effects and substantively important effects in this study. The
range of coefficients for past levels of repression (.644-.665) is in the same neighborhood as in our previous study. However, the contemporaneous effects of international war (represented by coefficients ranging from ,135 to ,155) are somewhat
smaller here and the effects of civil war (.499-.587) are a bit larger.
The Freedom
"
House democracy variable performs about the same as it did in the earlier study,
exhibiting a coefficient of around -.06 in each model in which it appears. (The Polity
I11 democracy measure we use here was not employed in the earlier study.) Finally,
the impacts of population size (.049-,066) and economic development (-,013 to
-.018) also fall in about the same range as in our earlier study.
The results we present here do diverge in some important ways,from the findings
of our previous study, however. One difference from our 1994 study is that military
control is shown to have a clear, statistically significant effect at the .05 level in each
of the four sets of analyses, with the Beck and Katz procedure. Some supplementary
analyses, undertaken in our earlier work, had appeared to show a statistically
significant effect for that variable, and for British cultural influence, but we had
opted to present the more cautious results obtained with the Beck and Katz
technique (Poe and Tate, 1994:870, n. 30; 871, n. 36). The coefficients consistently
indicate that the effect of the presence of a military regime is to produce an
immediate increase of about .07 or .08 in the repression indices, other factors held
equal, an effect which is only a bit larger than tgat indicated in our previous study.
Statistical significance is achieved here mainlv, because of the smaller standard
errors, which presumably result from the larger number of cases available for
analysis.
0
1
I
3.0
i
2.8,-
1 -
2.6k-_,
2.44
x x
,------__
- _ - - - - - - -_.-_---._
-. .-.*-/- \ <i
-..- .,
,--.---/
-
/
----<*---
Raw A.I. Score
---
/
Corrected A.I. Score
.Y
! --.-.....,
I
,
I
7
-
7-7
77
-
7
Raw S.D. Score
Corrected S D Score
7-7-7-
1976 1978 1980 1982 1984 1986 ' 1988 1990 1992 1977 1979 1981 1983 1985 1987 1989 1991 1993 Year
FIG.5. Trends in Repression of Personal Integrity Rights by Year: Raw and Corrected Amnesty and State Department Measures (all available cases) Re$ressio7z Reviszted
306
TABLI:
2. Explaining Global Personal Integr~tyRights Abuse, 1976-1993
Independent Varzables
Constant
Anmesty Inteinatzonal n/lodels
Freedom House
Polzty I I I
Dernocracjl
Dernocracjl
,071
,045
(. 105)
( 136)
State Departnzent Models
Freedom House
Pollty I I I
Den~ocmcy
Den~ocracjl
.197+
,120
( 103)
(.126)
Rights abuse,,
Democracy
Population size
Population change
Economic standing
% economic change
Leftist government
Militaly control
British cultural influence
International wal
Civil war
Main entries are unstandardized OLS coefficients. The lagged dependent variable controls the effects
of autocorrelation. Panel robust standard errors were used to control heteroscedasticity ('\Vhite, 1980;
Beck et al., 1993; StataCorp, 1997; Beck and Katz, 1998) and are shown in parentheses. All results in
this table were obtained with Stata, release 5 (StataCorp, 1997). R-squares were yielded with the
regression command.
"11 < .05; ""p < .01; ' p < .10 (one-tailed tests); < .05 (hvo-tailed test); b p < .01 (two-tailed test)
- -
Second, also in contrast to our previous analyses, British cultural influence
exhibits a statistically significant effect, ranging from about -.06 to -.09, in each of
the four models. In our 1994 study the effect of British cultural influence was not
statistically significant. Here again, the coefficients reported are a bit larger than
those in the earlier study, and the standard errors a bit smaller.
A third, very interesting result pertains to the hypothesis that leftist governments
would be more repressive, which had been supported in our earlier analyses using
the State Department Political Terror Scale, though not in the models that used the
Amnesty International version of the PTS scale. In stark contrast to the results of
STEVENC. POE,C. NEALTATE,AND LINDAC A R ~KEITH
P
307
our 1994 study, here our findings in each of the four analyses indicate that leftist
countries are actually less repressive once other factors are controlled, regardless of
which repression or democracy measure is used. In fact, the findings yielded in the
two analyses of the Amnesty International personal integrity rights index would
have been statistically significant at the .O1 level had we used a two-tail test.lO The
coefficient in the analyses of the State Department measure is also negative, and it
reaches statistical significance when used in conjunction with the Freedom House
democracy measure. While the different findings yielded by the two human rights
measures now suggest that leftist governments may be associated with less, rather
than more, personal integrity abuse, the smaller coefficients yielded with the State
Department scale are still consistent with the argument that the State Department
reports might have been biased against leftist countries.
A fourth difference is that, in contrast to the earlier findings, here we find some
evidence that economic growth exercises a negative impact on repression. We use
two-tailed statistical tests because we were unable to hypothesize a specific direction
for the relationship. The negative relationship is statistically significant at the .O1
level in the analyses using the U.S. State Department measure of human rights.
Nevertheless, its coefficients are rather small, indicating that even a very rapid
economic growth rate of 10 percent per annum would decrease the repression index
by only about .04. The coefficients for economic growth in the models using the
Amnesty International operationalization of personal integrity rights are also
negative, but not as strong; they do not reach statistical significance at any conventional level.
A final, minor, difference is that one of the analyses indicates a statistically
significant positive relationship between population change and human rights
abuse. However, with the exception of that analysis-conducted with the Amnesty
International human rights variable and the Polity I11 democracy indicator-the
findings with this variable are statistically insignificant. The one statistically significant coefficient is about the same size as some of those yielded in our previous
research, which were all statistically insignificant. It indicates that the addition of a
1 percent annual increase in population is associated with a contemporaneous
increase of only about .O1 in the repression scale, ceteris paribus. Overall, then, we
interpret our results as tending to run against the hypothesis that population change
affects repression levels in an important way.
A Conzfiarison of the Dynamic Efects
Because a lagged dependent variable was included on the right-hand side of our
model, we expect other independent variables to exercise lagged effects on repression, through that variable, that will manifest themselves over several years.
In Figure 6 we depict the over-time effects of substantial changes in variables that
were found to be statistically significant on repression of personal integrity rights
(at the .05 level), from year 1, when a hypothetical effect first exhibited itself, to year
10. For simplicity, we focus on the analyses we conducted with the Amnesty
International repression variable and the Polity I11 democracy variable, presented
in the second column of our results table, Table 2. For most variables we assume
the maximum possible variation. However, for economic standing we portray the
10 We realize that we had posed this as a directional hypothesis in the prose, consistent with our expectations going
into the study, and that therefore a one-tailed significance test is most appropriate. If a one-tailed test were used, this
finding, of course, would not be considered statistically significant. However, in this case the unexpected finding is
strong enough that we would risk overlooking an important relationship if it were dismissed as being statistically
insignificantjust because our expectations were off target. Indeed, we ~vouldprobably be accused of ideolog~calbias for
doing so. Therefore, we choose to discuss the results of hvo-tailed statistical significance tests with I-egardto this variable,
in spite of our original expectations of a directional relationship.
Repression Revisited
308
1
3
2
4
6
5
7
8
10
9
Year
--
- -
-
-o- Civil War
+Population (log)
-X-
Military
Control
- - -
-
-
-+-
-
- -
-
Democracy-P3
t--GNP pc (1000s)
+British
Influence
- - - -
--
--
-
-
-
--
+International War
-
NOT Leftist Regime
-
--
--
-
-
-
FIG.6. Increase in Repression of Personal Integrity Rights Due to Maximum / Large* Changes in
Independent Variables, 1976-1993 Model, Using Amnesty International and Polity I11 Measures (*lo
million population increase; $20,000 income decrease)
impact of a $20,000 decrease in per capita Gross National Product, for population
level we assume an addition of 10 million more people, and for population change,
we assume a growth rate of 5 percent. For the purposes of presentation we have
assumed a change in each variable that would increase repression levels.
In that figure we see that by the tenth year the effects of all the variables have
become asymptotic. An ongoing civil war has an effect on the repression scale that
levels out around 1.4, other factors in the model held equal. The impact of a loss of
$20,000 in per capita GNP would be just over 1.0, ceteris paribus. Thus a country
that started a period under the rule of law, with no political prisoners, would be
expected to begin to take political prisoners and perhaps engage in torture and
political executions in situations where there is a sudden, continuing, decrease in
level of economic development, or an ongoing civil war.
The effect of a complete loss of democracy, or an increase of 10 million in
population, would be about .70, at the tenth lag, large enough to be considered very
important, substantively. The finding with regard to democracy, though strong, is
far from overwhelming, suggesting what we already know: the presence of democratic institutions does not guarantee full respect of personal integrity rights and
the absence of democracy does not necessarily mean these human rights are
destined to be violated.
One of the other variables exercising an important but more moderate impact is
international war. The continuing over-time effect of international war is .44, about
half of the magnitude of the effect of that variable when we tested a comparable
model in our previous study. The effect of a change from a leftist to a non-leftist
regime (if that form of government were to be maintained throughout the entire
period) would be .41. Finally, the effects of British influence and military control,
and an increase of 10 million in population, are shown to be rather small in
comparison to the other variables whose effects are graphed, with effects of around
.20 to .30 at time 10.
In Table 3 we present the effects at lag 10 for the variables found to be statistically
significant at the .05 level in each of the four sets of analyses presented in Table 2.
In addition to the assumptions made above, here we choose to examine the effects
of an annual percentage decrease of 10 percent in economic development, as
indicated by change in per capita GNP. For presentation purposes we order the
variables according to the sum of the size of their impacts, in the four sets of analyses,
at lag 10. Of course, comparisons of the importance of coefficients are not straightforward because of the different metrics and the different assumptions we made
regarding the size of effects. Still, this table should allow us to make some rough
comparisons. The picture that emerges indicates that civil war, democracy, population size, international war, and economic standing are among the strongest
determinants of repression. We also note an interesting difference in the results
yielded by the democracy variables across the various sets of analyses. The effects
yielded with the Freedom gouse scales are somewhat larger than those yielded with
the Polity I11 democracy measure, depicted in Figure 6. Perhaps this is evidence
that the Freedom House measure is contaminated somewhat by the consideration
of some repressive practices in their democracy measure, as was suspected by Poe
and Tate (1994).
Other variables exhibited more moderate, but still potentially important effects
on repression across time. The variables found to have statistically significant and
substantively important effects on repression in our previous study are among those
with the largest effects here. In addition, the lack of a leftist government has an
effect on a par with that of international war in analyses focusing on the Amnesty
reports. Moderately important, but consistent effects were achieved with the military
control and British cultural influence variables. These variables each have over-time
effects that hover around .20, once democracy and other relevant factors are
considered. By contrast, the variables measuring population changes and economic
changes performed least consistently, and even when large changes are assumed,
they have impacts of .30 or lower.
Repression Revisited
310
TABLE
3 . The Effects of Sizable Changes in Various Determinants of Repression at Time 10
Independent
Variables
Civil war
Economic standing
($20,000 decrease)
Democracy
(maximum change)
Population size
(10 million increase)
International war
Lack of leftist government
Militaiy control
Lack of British cultural
influence
Population change
(10% increase)
% economic change
(10% decrease)
Amnesty Internatzonal Models
Polzty III
Freedom House
Democracy
Democracy
1.43
1.41
.87
1.04
State Department models
Freedom House
Polzty III
De~nocracy
Democracy
1.63
1.62
.75
.94
"Statistically insignificant at the .05 level with the appropriate test.
Summary and Conclusions
Most of the positive findings reported by Poe and Tate (1994) hold up well under
further empirical scrutiny, but here we also found the effects of a number ofvariables
that our earlier study had concluded were unimportant. Here a larger data set,
covering many more years of repressive behavior, was analyzed. Consistent with that
earlier study, we found that past levels of repression, democracy, population size,
economic development, and international and civil wars are statistically and substantively significant determinants of personal integrity abuse. Comparisons indicated that civil war exercised the largest impact, while economic development,
democracy, population size, and economic and international wars also had at least
fairly strong, consistent, and statistically significant effects.
There were, however, some findings contrary to those of earlier studies. The
statistical evidence we uncovered supports the notion that military control leads to
somewhat greater human rights abuse, once democracy and a host of other factors
are controlled. Similarly, the hypothesis that British colonial influence leads to less
abuse of personal integrity rights, ceteris paribus, also found support, as did the
argument that leftist countries are actually less repressive of basic human rights,
once other factors are controlled. Though these factors are, for the most part, less
important in determining levels of repression than those identified by Poe and Tate,
the effects are nevertheless large enough to indicate they are an important part of
the story of why repression occurs, in many cases.
Where do we go from here?
Having finished this inquiry, it seems appropriate for us to offer some thoughts on
where we think empirical research on human rights should head from here. We
have observed many studies end by stating that much work remains to be done and
we are afraid that this study, too, should end on this unresolved chord. Hopefully,
though, we can go somewhat beyond this customary statement to provide some good
ideas regarding directions that future work might take,
Two ideas regarding future research have arisen in our minds as a result of this
study and other research we have recently conducted. The strength of the findings
STEVENC. POE, C. NEALTATE,AND LINDACAMPKEITH
311
with regard to civil war, in this study and in our previous research, indicates the
centrality of domestic threats to an explanation of human rights abuse. Decisionmakers in all likelihood choose repression at least in part in reaction to perceived
threats. If this is the case, we might expect that there is a whole range of domestic
threats, less serious than civil war, that should be accounted for in our explanations
of human rights abuse.ll Future researchers might endeavor to explore the impact
of various levels of domestic threat on personal integrity abuses.
Future theoretical work might also focus on integrating the seemingly disparate
explanations of human rights abuse, offered here, into a common conceptual
framework. In our theory sketch we loosely adopted an expected utility approach
to justify theoretically some of our hypotheses. This, or other variants of the
decision-making approach, might well allow us to integrate the many findings
yielded by empirical research to date, and thus provide a more coherent theoretical
picture, or "integrative cumulation" (Zinnes, 1976), of findings on why regimes
choose to abuse human rights.
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