Steven C. Poe

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.

Testing Models of U.S. Foreign Policy: Foreign Aid during and after the Cold War

The end of the Cold War has provided scholars of international relations with a unique opportunity to evaluate the explanatory power of their models in a rapidly changing environment. We provide a preliminary, exploratory test of the system-level, societal-level, and state-level explanations of U. S. foreign policy behavior during and after the Cold War We seek to determine which among the foreign policy goals suggested by these approaches best explains one important aspect of U. S. foreign policy-the provision of foreign assistance The hypotheses are tested on a pooled, cross-sectional, time series of U. S. foreign aid allocation from 1977 through 1994 While we find a great deal of similarity in the relative importance of the three approaches in explaining U. S. behavior in both eras, we also show that the security-driven goals of the systemic approach have become less critical and the ideological goals of the state-centered model more important with the passing of the Cold War.

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.

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.

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.

Does Cultural Diversity Affect Countries' Respect for Human Rights?

In the post-World War II era, international human rights standards have evolved, establishing in law a set of basic rights designed to guarantee an acceptable level of personal dignity for all people. A long list of human rights is presented in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights1 and later covenants and conventions. Increasingly, the degree to which these human rights are realized is considered an important standard of a regimes performance. In this paper we will examine the relationship between cultural diversity (which we also will call ethnic heterogeneity or fractionalization)

U.S. economic aid allocation: The quest for cumulation

Since the late sixties foreign policy analysts have used quantitative methods to estimate the effects of variables hypothesized to have affected US bilateral economic aid decisions. Unfortunately, as of yet, a cumulation of knowledge on the economic assistance phenomenon has not been widely acknowledged by researchers in the field. In this study the findings of past multivariate studies of economic aid will be compiled and examined, and cumulation will be identified. Once this task is completed two prescriptions will be offered to foreign policy researchers, in the hope that progress toward understanding of foreign aid decisions will occur at a swifter pace in the future.

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.

Human rights and U.S. economic aid to Africa

Recently a study by one of the co‐authors (Poe 1992) appeared to show that human rights impacted the allocation of economic aid to Western hemispheric nations, and to a small sample of countries from around the world, during the 1980s. In this study we make an effort to resolve some of the difficulties evident in this study, and previous work on the human rights/economic aid linkage, by increasing the number of cases available for analysis, while focusing on the African region, from 1983 to 1988. Statistical analyses conducted with the GLS‐ARMA technique provide clear evidence that human rights abuse has been a moderately important determinant of U.S. bilateral economic aid allocation to Africa. Recipient need is also found to have impacted the allocation of U.S. economic aid, but such humanitarian motives are clearly weighed against more self‐serving strategic, and political concerns.