State Repression and the Domestic Democratic Peace

Download or read book State Repression and the Domestic Democratic Peace written by Christian Davenport and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-06-04 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Does democracy reduce state repression as human rights activism, funding, and policy suggest? What are the limitations of this argument? Investigating 137 countries from 1976 to 1996, State Repression and the Domestic Democratic Peace seeks to shed light on these questions. Specifically, it finds that electoral participation and competition generally reduces personal integrity violations like torture and mass killing; other aspects of democracy do not wield consistent influences. This negative influence can be overwhelmed by conflict, however, and thus there are important qualifications for the peace proposition.