C. Neal Tate

Repression of Human Rights to Personal Integrity in the 1980s: A Global Analysis.

This crossnational study seeks to explain variations in governmental repression of human rights to personal integrity (state terrorism) in a 153-country sample during the eighties. We outline theoretical perspectives on this topic and subject them to empirical tests using a technique appropriate for our pooled cross-sectional time-series design, namely, ordinary least squares with robust standard errors and a lagged dependent variable. We find democracy and participation in civil or international war to have substantively important and statistically significant effects on repression. The effects of economic development and population size are more modest. The hypothesis linking leftist regime types to abuse of personal integrity rights receives some support. We find no reliable evidence that population growth, British cultural influence, military control, or economic growth affect levels of repression. We conclude by considering the implications of our findings for scholars and practitioners concerned with the prevention of personal integrity abuse.

Repression of the Human Right to Personal Integrity Revisited: A Global Cross-National Study Covering the Years 1976-1993

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.

Is The Law a Mere Parchment Barrier to Human Rights Abuse

The “mere parchment barriers” created by constitutional provisions may lead to decreases in the extent to which nations abuse the human right not to be imprisoned, tortured, killed, or made to disappear arbitrarily or because of your political views. A global pooled cross-national time-series analysis for a 21-year period shows that adopting selected constitutional provisions protecting individual rights and freedoms, promoting judicial independence, and guarding against states of emergency—and keeping the provisions in place for 10 years—has the potential to reduce a nations level of state terror substantially, from one in which political imprisonment affects large numbers of the politically active population and political murders are common, to one where the rule of law is secure, for example. We report significant caveats about and limitations of the research. Nevertheless, we conclude that, since it may be easier to change constitutions than to build effective democracy, to create massive amounts of new wealth, or to avoid or defuse deeply ingrained conflicts, these findings have possible policy and scientific importance.

Decision Making in the Canadian Supreme Court: Extending the Personal Attributes Model across Nations

Theory-based personal attributes models of the civil rights and liberties and economics decision making of the Canadian Supreme Court justices serving from 1949-1985 are developed from Lipset and Rokkans (1967) approach to explaining mass political behavior. The models show both behaviors to be influenced by Quebec/non-Quebec regional origins and religious affiliation, political party, being appointed by the last laissez faire Liberal Prime Minister, King, and having judicial and political experience. The models are reasonably potent, statistically. Their most important attributes capture crucial dimensions in contemporary Canadian politics, region, and party, and also have implications for the cross-national study of judicial behavior.

Authoritarianism and the functions of courts: A time series analysis of the Philippine Supreme

Focusing on the independent and powerful pre-martial law Philippine Supreme Court, we investigate the impact of the establishment and breakdown of authoritarianism on the courts performance of the functions of conflict resolution, social control, and administration. We develop hypotheses concerning and models of the impacts of the onset, consolidation, and breakdown of martial law authoritarianism under Ferdinand Marcos on that

The methodology of judicial behavior research: A review and critique

The purpose of this article is to contribute to the development of a better fit between theory and methodology in judicial behavior research by reviewing, assessing, and making recommendations for the use of the latter. The methodological practice of judicial behavior research is assessed, and recommendations and projections to the future are provided. Four components of methodology—research design, data sources and generation procedures, operationalization and measurement of concepts, and statistical methods and measures—are discussed. Judicial behavior is understood to have a primary focus on the explanation of the behavior of individual decision makers, but also includes decision making within or by groups of decision makers and by courts.

Individual and Contextual Variables in British Voting Behavior: An Exploratory Note

This note reports the results of an initial exploration into the significance of the social environments (“contexts”) in which people live in the shaping of their individual political behavior. Many scholars have argued that social scientists should pay more serious attention to contextual variables when they go about constructing social theories. But there have been few systematic efforts to demonstrate empirically the overall importance of contextual variables as predictors of individual behaviors, especially relative to the importance of personal (“individual”) predictors. Here the relative potency of two sets of predictors—one individual and one contextual—is investigated for a sample of British voters by means of a well-known multivariate search strategy, “tree analysis.” The results suggest that contextual variables have little to add to explanations of voting behavior based on individual variables—at least for these data.

Building a scientific comparative judicial politics and arousing the dragons of antiscientism

America. Indeed, because our bloom grew outside the well-cultivated plots of the industrialized democracies, we thought it might be of still greater interest to the horticultural community of sociolegal studies. Thus we urged the members of that community to try their own hands at growing this rare blossom. Where we saw a flower, however, Howard Gillman saw a weed, one at least as irritating as ragweed, and possibly as dangerous as poison ivy. To call attention to this dangerous breed and to warn against its further cultivation, he has written a critique nearly as long as the original article and intricate in its argu-