Christian Davenport

Multi-Dimensional Threat Perception and State Repression: An Inquiry into Why States Apply Negative Sanctions

Theory: Regimes respond to domestic threats with political repression. The precise nature of the domestic threat itself, however, is subject to discussion. Hypothesis: State repression is a function of either a unidimensional conception of domestic threats (i.e., where there is one attribute of political conflict considered by the regime) or one that is multidimensional in character (i.e., where there are several attributes considered), conditioned by certain political-economic characteristics: democracy, economic development, coercive capacity, dependency and lagged repression. Methods: A pooled cross-sectional time series analysis of 53 countries from 1948 to 1982. Results: Three different aspects of political conflict (conflict frequency, strategic variety, and deviance from cultural norm) are statistically significant in their relationship to repression, supporting the multidimensional conception of domestic threats. Additionally, the degree to which the government is democratic significantly alters the pattern of relationships between political conflict and repressive behavior.

Human Rights and the Democratic Proposition

Autocratization is expected to worsen human rights conditions; democratization is frequently heralded as a means for improving them. Unfortunately, neither relationship has been subjected to empirical investigation. The causal linkage between regime change and state repression is examined in the current study with a pooled cross-sectional time-series analysis of 137 countries from 1950 to 1982 (N=4,521). Four aspects of change are considered: (1) direction, (2) magnitude, (3) “smoothness” of the transition, and (4) duration of time at particular regime types. The results support the anticipated escalatory effect of autocratization for the magnitude variable, revealing influences that persist for 4 years. Additionally, there is support for the pacifying effect of democratization with regard to magnitude for the same 4-year time period. Direction, smoothness, and duration are found to be unimportant, but regime change does matter.

Sometimes you just have to leave: Domestic threats and forced migration, 1964-1989

In this study we explore why persons flee their homes to become refugees and internally displaced persons. We contend that individuals will tend to flee when the integrity of their person is threatened. Further, we argue that they will flee toward countries where they expect conditions to be better. We conduct statistical analyses using fixed effects least squares, on a pooled cross-sectional time-series data set, consisting of data from 129 countries for the years 1964-1989. Our findings support the conclusion that threats to personal integrity are of primary importance in leading people to abandon their homes. Measures of state threats to personal integrity, dissident threats to personal integrity, and joint state-dissident threats each have statistically significant and substantively important effects on migrant production. We also find that countries making moves toward democracy tend to have greater number of forced migrants, once other factors are considered. We conclude the analysis by identifying several lucrative areas for further investigation.

Assessing the Validity of the Postmaterialism Index

Ingleharts postmaterialism thesis describes an individual-level process of value change. Little attention has been devoted to validating the responses to his postmaterialist-materialist index. The aggregate-level distributions may appear to reflect a postmaterialist-materialist dimension, even if at the individual level responses on the questions making up the index are random. The logic of the survey questions used for the index defines a baseline against which the actual distribution of responses can be compared. Using such a standard, we find that individual responses are not constrained by an underlying value dimension, in the sense that the observed patterns of responses increasingly do not differ from what one would expect by chance. Furthermore, as one would expect for a random variable, index scores are virtually unexplainable as a dependent variable, and they cannot be used to predict support for various political and social issues, said to flow from attitudes measured by the index.

Views to a Kill

To investigate the implications of source selection, three different sources regarding Guatemalan state terror are compared: newspapers, human rights documents, and interviews with eyewitnesses. Results show that each source pays attention to diverse types and aspects of repression in line with the objectives of the observer, the characteristics of the repressive events, and the overall political context within which events take place. Who is consulted influences what is observed/recorded. Suggestions are presented for under- standing sociopolitical behavior through diverse data sources, especially behavior related to contentious activity and/or occurring within contexts that are not easily penetrable.

Protesting While Black? The Differential Policing of American Activism, 1960 to 1990

How does the race of protesters affect how police respond to protest events? Drawing on the protest policing literature and on theories of race and ethnic relations, we explore the idea that police view African American protesters as especially threatening and that this threat leads to a greater probability of policing. We examine more than 15,000 protest events that took place in the United States between 1960 and 1990 and find that in many years, African American protest events are more likely than white protest events to draw police presence and that once at events, police are more likely to take action at African American protest events. Additional analyses complicate these findings by showing that they vary over time. In many years, for example, African American protest events are no more likely than white protest events to be policed. While there is support for a “Protesting While Black” phenomenon, it is not invariant across the entire period of inquiry.

The State of State Repression Research Since the 1990s

Researchers have been exploring government repressive behavior for decades, but the greatest improvements have come in the last two. For example, greater theoretical specification has allowed us to determine a great deal about what repression is and why it occurs, while greater methodological sophistication has allowed us to test these theories rigorously. Despite or rather because of these advancements, however, we know comparatively little about what impact repression has on other social, economic, and political phenomena. This article reviews our general knowledge of the topic and attempts to improve our understanding of how repressive action influences behavioral challenges to governments.

The epidemiology of lethal violence in Darfur: using micro-data to explore complex patterns of ongoing armed conflict

This article describes and analyzes patterns of lethal violence in Darfur, Sudan, during 2008-09, drawing upon a uniquely detailed dataset generated by the United Nations-African Union hybrid operation in Darfur (UNAMID), combined with data generated through aggregation of reports from open-source venues. These data enable detailed analysis of patterns of perpetrator/victim and belligerent groups over time, and show how violence changed over the four years following the height of armed conflict in 2003-05. During the reference period, violent incidents were sporadic and diverse and included: battles between the major combatants; battles among subgroups of combatant coalitions that were ostensibly allied; inter-tribal conflict; incidents of one-sided violence against civilians by different parties; and incidents of banditry. The conflict as a whole defies easy categorization. The exercise illustrates the limits of existing frameworks for categorizing armed violence and underlines the importance of rigorous microlevel data collection and improved models for understanding the dynamics of collective violence. By analogy with the use of the epidemiological data for infectious diseases to help design emergency health interventions, we argue for improved use of data on lethal violence in the design and implementation of peacekeeping, humanitarian and conflict resolution interventions.

The Coercive Weight of the Past: Temporal Dependence and the Conflict-Repression Nexus in the Northern Ireland “Troubles”

After 40 years, we still know very little about how state repression influences political dissent. In fact, to date, every possible relationship, including no influence, has been found. We argue that part of the problem concerns the current practice of treating every repressive event as if it were substantively equivalent, differentiated only by scope (large/small) or type (violent/nonviolent). We advance existing work by arguing that the influence of repression is contingent on when it occurs within the temporal sequences of political conflict. Using new events data on the “Troubles” in Northern Ireland from 1968 to 1974, results show that when dissent has been decreasing in the recent past, repressive action inspires an increase in dissident action. When dissent has been increasing, however, repression has the opposite effect, decreasing challenging activity. These results provide important insights into resolving a recurrent puzzle within the conflict-repression nexus as well as understanding the interaction between government and dissident behavior.

The Arab Spring, Winter, and Back Again? (Re)Introducing the Dissent-Repression Nexus with a Twist

The Arab Spring is broadly understood as follows: after accepting long-standing autocracies, which engaged in various degrees of repressive governance, in 2011 people in many countries throughout t...