Several hundred Falun Gong adherents reportedly have died in detention [in China] due to torture, abuse, and neglect since the crackdown on Falun Gong began in 1999. For example, Falun Gong groups alleged that more than 50 persons died in custody in June through August, many from torture in detention camps. (U.S. Department of State 2003)
On February 24, Sucre state police in Cumana [Venezuela] used tear gas canisters and pellet guns against students at the University Institute of Technology who were protesting peacefully noncompletion of the cafeteria. One student, Angel Castillo Munoz, died as a result of being hit in the head by rubber bullets and falling unconscious into an area flooded by tear gas. Police reportedly continued to fire, despite students’ attempts to surrender, resulting in a delay of medical care to the injured. (U.S. Department of State 1999)
Why Do States Repress Their Own Citizens?
While most of the current empirical work on political repression has approached states’ behavior from the perspective of international relations theory (primarily a “soft” rational-choice perspective), I seek to expand the theoretical underpinnings of a broader set of subfields in political science, including public law and comparative politics. As I noted in Chapter 1, I do not aim to offer an overarching grand theory that synthesizes the theoretical concerns of these subfields; however, I argue that these theories express commonalities that I incorporate under Most and Starr’s (1989) organizing concepts of opportunity and willingness. I believe these concepts are useful here for structuring the somewhat disparate approaches through which these diverse fields attempt to understand political repression or human rights abuse. Most and Starr conceptualize opportunity as “a shorthand term for the possibilities that are available within any environment” that as such “represents the total set of environmental constraints and possibilities,” and they conceptualize willingness as “a shorthand term for the choice (and the process of choice) that is related to the selection of some behavioral option from a range of alternatives” and the subsequent employment of “available capabilities to further some policy over others” (23). These two overarching concepts are derived from the Sprouts’ “ecological triad,” which is composed of an entity (with its policy/choice processes), its context or environment, and the relationship or interaction between the entity/agent and the environment (1956, 1965, 1968, and 1969). Most and Starr argue that state decisionmakers are surrounded by factors that structure the nature of their decisions that form a complex set of incentive structures. They conceptualize the interaction between agent/entity and structure/environment with the metaphor of a menu that provides “a number of behavioral choice/possibilities” (28), and they argue that “factors based in both the agent (values, preferences, resources, etc.) and the structure (prices, size of portion, reputation for certain dishes, etc.) will make certain choices more or less likely” (Friedman and Starr 2007, 6). This framework fits the underlying soft rationalism of the political repression literature. Most human rights scholars assume that political leaders are rational actors in that they choose from a menu of policy options and employ the tools of repression because they see those tools to be the most effective means to stay in power. I assume throughout this book that the most pervasive factor that increases leaders’ willingness to repress is a threat to the leaders’ rule, whether real or perceived, and that the more serious the threat, the more willing state leaders are to employ repression to deter or impose a cost on actions or views that challenge the regime or its policies. I argue, however, that state actors carefully weigh the costs and benefits of engaging in repressive action, and also consider a menu of alternative mechanisms of control, as well as assessing the odds of achieving their goals with these tools. In the sections that follow I address the general theoretical expectations in more detail, and in the subsequent chapters I will explore these theories more fully and derive testable hypotheses. In the second half of this chapter I examine the body of empirical work on political repression and place this work within that literature.
Key Theoretical Perspectives on Repression of Human Rights
Rational Actor Theories
As noted above, much of the human rights literature takes a soft, rational actor approach. Even though the earliest empirical studies largely focused on the domestic environment, over time human rights studies have drawn increasingly upon the dominant theory in international relations, especially as the compliance literature has grown. As the rational approach has been applied to states’ human rights behavior, the literature has gradually broadened beyond the approach’s assumption of a unitary state actor, and has expanded its focus to domestic institutions and actors, as we will see below. The rational actor approaches fall easily within Most and Starr’s framework in that these approaches would generally perceive a regime’s opportunity and willingness to use the tools of repression to be either facilitated or constrained by both the domestic and international environment.
(NEO)REALISM AND RATIONAL FUNCTIONALISM
Both realists and rational functionalists perceive states as unitary rational actors that primarily behave on the basis of self-interest; thus they would argue that decisions by the state on whether to adhere to international human rights norms or to engage in repression would largely be a function of the state’s calculation of the benefits and costs of engaging the various choices. As these are international relations approaches, their perspective on state repression and human rights behavior more generally focuses on the role of the international human rights regime and international organizations, and more specifically on state decisions to join human rights treaties, and the subsequent decision of whether or to what extent to comply with the legal obligation. Realists in international relations (Morgenthau 1948; Hoffmann 1956; Waltz 1979; Gilpin 1987) emphasize the dominance of power and the norm of sovereignty in a weak and decentralized international legal system, which they argue diminishes the likelihood that legal authority will constrain the behavior of states. They posit that any observed compliance with international norms or treaties simply reflects a convergence of interests that will dissipate once the state’s material interests conflict with its normative commitments (Hoffmann 1956; Waltz 1979; Mearsheimer 1994). Thus, realists ultimately remain skeptical about the development of international law beyond serving the interests of the most powerful states, which they argue typically do not have sufficient self-interest to impose sanctions for violations of international human rights law (Krasner 1993; Donnelly 1998). Both realists and rational functionalists note that the formal mechanisms for monitoring and enforcing human rights commitments are deliberately weak, thus allowing states to engage in cheap talk with little or no direct costs. In addition, these treaties lack the potential effects of market forces, reciprocal benefits, or potential retaliation from other state parties that typically motivate compliance with international financial agreements (Neumayer 2005). At the same time regimes may face domestic circumstances that make compliance with international norms too costly, even for well-intentioned states, particularly in the face of perceived or real internal threats to the regime.
Rational functionalists also perceive state behavior as being interest-driven and recognize the dominant value of state sovereignty; however, they argue that international agreements provide a means through which states can cooperate to solve problems that they cannot achieve unilaterally, and therefore states are willing to sacrifice some measure of sovereignty for this benefit (Bilder 1989). While the mutual benefits of interstate cooperation through trade and monetary agreements readily come to mind, it is much more difficult to identify the mutual benefit of agreements that regulate activities such as human rights that are purely internal to the state rather than interactions among states (Moravcsik 2000). However, it is possible that states may acquire indirect benefits, such as bilateral or multilateral aid, through participation in the international human rights regime. In addition, they may avoid reputational costs, particularly identification as a “pariah state,” for failure to participate in the regime. While rational functionalism has tended to focus on the question of formal commitment to human rights treaties, the theory is increasingly applied to the question of compliance with international norms or treaties,