Sabine C. Carey

How are These Pictures Different? A Quantitative Comparison of the US State Department and Amnesty International Human Rights Reports, 1976-1995

* Steven C. Poe is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of North Texas, and Director of that University’s Peace Studies Program. His research on human rights has been published in a wide variety of Political Science and International Relations journals. ** Sabine C. Carey is a doctoral candidate at the Government Department at the University of Essex, UK. She has previously published on human rights violations and democratization and her current research is on the relationship between protest and repression. *** Tanya C. Vasquez is a Special Assistant in the House Democratic Leader’s Office and has worked on political campaigns in Texas, Kansas, and California. She was a Ronald E. McNair Scholar at the University of North Texas.

The Dynamic Relationship Between Protest and Repression

This study contributes to our understanding of the dynamic relationship between protest and repression. It employs vector autoregressions to analyze daily data from six Latin American and three African countries from the late 1970s to the early 1990s. The results suggest that there is a reciprocal relationship between protest and repression and that protest is consistent over time. Democracies were found to be most likely to accommodate the opposition and, at the same time, were least likely to display continuous repressive behavior. However, if faced with popular dissent, democracies were just as likely to respond with negative sanctions as other regime types, whereas negative sanctions were particularly unsuccessful to solicit dissident cooperation in democracies.

States, the security sector, and the monopoly of violence A new database on pro-government militias

This article introduces the global Pro-Government Militias Database (PGMD). Despite the devastating record of some pro-government groups, there has been little research on why these forces form, under what conditions they are most likely to act, and how they affect the risk of internal conflict, repression, and state fragility. From events in the former Yugoslavia, Iraq, Sudan, or Syria and the countries of the Arab Spring we know that pro-government militias operate in a variety of contexts. They are often linked with extreme violence and disregard for the laws of war. Yet research, notably quantitative research, lags behind events. In this article we give an overview of the PGMD, a new global dataset that identifies pro-government militias from 1981 to 2007. The information on pro-government militias (PGMs) is presented in a relational data structure, which allows researchers to browse and download different versions of the dataset and access over 3,500 sources that informed the coding. The database shows the wide proliferation and diffusion of these groups. We identify 332 PGMs and specify how they are linked to government, for example via the governing political party, individual leaders, or the military. The dataset captures the type of affiliation of the groups to the government by distinguishing between informal and semi-official militias. It identifies, among others, membership characteristics and the types of groups they target. These data are likely to be relevant to research on state strength and state failure, the dynamics of conflict, including security sector reform, demobilization and reintegration, as well as work on human rights and the interactions between different state and non-state actors. To illustrate uses of the data, we include the PGM data in a standard model of armed conflict and find that such groups increase the risk of civil war.

The Use of Repression as a Response to Domestic Dissent

This study contributes to our understanding of government repression in response to internal threats using a quantitative approach. In contrast to previous research, it focuses on the outbreak of state terror and on how different types of domestic dissent influence the risk of such severe state-sponsored violence. The empirical analysis distinguishes between demonstrations, strikes, riots, guerrilla attacks and revolutions, which vary in the level of violence and in the level of organisation that is behind the dissent, and analyses how those forms of threat affect the probability of repression onset. The empirical model controls for a potentially non-linear relationship between level of democracy and repression and investigates how dissent influences state terror in different political regimes. The analysis employs a logit model to test the link between dissent and repression in 149 countries between 1977 and 2002. The findings suggest that only guerrilla warfare increases the probability of repression onset. Democratic political regimes not only decrease the risk of state terror per se, but also dampen the effect of large-scale violent dissent on the risk of repression. The results also show that the longer a country manages to avoid repression, the less likely it is to suffer from repression again.

Assessing Risk and Opportunity in Conflict Studies A Human Rights Analysis

Over the past two decades, substantial progress has been made toward a theoretical understanding of why physical integrity abuses are committed. Unfortunately, these theoretical developments have been devoid of much practical application. In this article, the authors explore the feasibility of risk assessment in the study of these human rights. Borrowing an approach by Gurr and Moore, they construct a risk assessment vehicle that uses existing models and data to develop expectations about future increases and decreases in human rights abuses. Their results indicate that we can isolate a set of cases that are at a higher risk of experiencing increased human rights abuse in the following year, as well as those that are ripe for better protection of human rights. The authors expect these risk and opportunity assessments to be of interest to students of conflict and peace studies, as well as to human rights activists and policy makers.

The Impact of Pro-Government Militias on Human Rights Violations

New data show that between 1982 and 2007, in over 60 countries governments were linked to and cooperated with informal armed groups within their own borders. Given the prevalence of these linkages, we ask how such links between governments and informal armed groups influence the risk of repression. We draw on principal-agent arguments to explore how issues of monitoring and control help understanding of the impact of militias on human rights violations. We argue that such informal agents increase accountability problems for the governments, which is likely to worsen human rights conditions for two reasons. First, it is more difficult for governments to control and to train these militias, and they may have private interests in the use of violence. Second, informal armed groups allow governments to shift responsibility and use repression for strategic benefits while evading accountability. Using a global dataset from 1982 to 2007, we show that pro-government militias increase the risk of repression and that the presence of militias also affects the type of violations that we observe.

Governments, Informal Links to Militias, and Accountability

From Syria to Sudan, governments have informal ties with militias that use violence against opposition groups and civilians. Building on research that suggests these groups offer governments logistical benefits in civil wars as well as political benefits in the form of reduced liability for violence, we provide the first systematic global analysis of the scale and patterns of these informal linkages. We find over 200 informal state–militia relationships across the globe, within but also outside of civil wars. We illustrate how informal delegation of violence to these groups can help some governments avoid accountability for violence and repression. Our empirical analysis finds that weak democracies as well as recipients of financial aid from democracies are particularly likely to form informal ties with militias. This relationship is strengthened as the monitoring costs of democratic donors increase. Out-of-sample predictions illustrate the usefulness of our approach that views informal ties to militias as deliberate government strategy to avoid accountability.

Rebellion in Africa: Disaggregating the Effect of Political Regimes

This article analyzes how the selection process for the executive affects the risk of rebellion and insurgencies in sub-Saharan Africa between 1971 and 1995. Four executive recruitment processes are distinguished that are characteristic for the African context: (1) a process without elections; (2) single-candidate elections; (3) single-party, multiple-candidate elections; and (4) multiparty executive elections. The results suggest that single-candidate elections and multiparty elections substantially reduce the risk of insurgencies compared with systems without any kind of executive elections. They further show that during times of political instability, the risk of large-scale violent dissent increases substantially. The article supports findings of the civil war literature that higher levels of income are associated with a lower risk of intrastate violence, while oil-exporting countries are at a higher risk of rebellion. In short, this article further strengthens the need to use more specific measures of elements of political regimes that also take into account regional particularities, in order to paint a more informative picture of how political structures influence the risk of internal violence.

To Kill or to Protect Security Forces, Domestic Institutions, and Genocide

Contemporary studies of genocide have found military capabilities to be inconsistent predictors of state-sponsored killings. We suggest that these empirical inconsistencies stem from the fact that government strength can serve two opposing purposes. Some level of armed capabilities is necessary for a state to remain viable and to provide internal and external security. Yet armed government personnel can be deployed to repress and destroy segments of the public. We identify conditions under which an executive is more likely to use security forces for private-interest killing rather than public protection. We hypothesize that unconstrained leaders are more likely to use their putative security forces to initiate genocide and remain in power. An analysis of state failures that lead to genocide robustly supports the idea that the effect of increased security forces on the risk of genocide is conditional on institutional executive constraints.

Small Group Teaching: Perceptions and Problems1

Seminars and tutorials are a standard part of delivering teaching in politics departments. However, the range of methods used in such small groups is wide and varied as are the perceptions of the purpose of small group teaching (SGT). On the basis of interviews with students and lecturers, we highlight important differences between what lecturers hope to achieve and what students expect to learn in these sessions. We aim to provide a better understanding of the cause of common problems in SGT and to explore how teaching staff might address these shortcomings to maximise the success of small group teaching.