Repression of the Human Right to Personal Integrity Revisited: A Global Cross-National Study Covering the Years 1976-1993

Abstract

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.The past two decades have seen a growth in popular concern with and academic interest in human rights issues. Concurrent with these trends, empirical research on several human rights-related questions has proliferated. One line of research has investigated the impact of human rights considerations on foreign policy outputs such as foreign aid in the United States and around the world (e.g.,

The Economic Effects of Human Rights

“…Poe, Tate and Keith (1999) conclude that military regimes are connected with higher levels of human rights abuses whereas former British colonies are connected with lower levels. Involvement in war (both international and civil) is connected with higher degrees of human rights abuse whereas a high level of democracy as well as of economic development is connected with a lower level of abuse.…”

“…there are quite a number of studies trying to identify the variables that explain variation in the level to which human rights are violated by various governments (Poe, Tate and Keith 1999 is such a study and contains many references to earlier studies). Poe, Tate and Keith (1999) conclude that military regimes are connected with higher levels of human rights abuses whereas former British colonies are connected with lower levels.…”

“…Remember that Poe et al (1994Poe et al ( , 1999 found the wealth of a country to be an important determinant for the degree to which governments respected human rights. It has been hypothesized in section two that causality might be reversed: respecting human rights might lead to higher wealth.…”

Is The Law a Mere Parchment Barrier to Human Rights Abuse?

“…In earlier years, AI often did not rate countries with few human rights problems; SD did not rate the United States or some of its close allies. To compensate for the missing data, we followed Poe and Tate (1994) and Poe, Tate, and Keith (1999) by substituting an SD score for a missing AI score, and an AI score for a missing SD score. Had we not made these substitutions, the coverage of the AI and SD data sets would have been so different as to make their comparison problematic.…”

“…If we restrict ourselves to the real world ranges they exhibit, it does not seem plausible to assume that any country could change from being the poorest to the richest, or from being the least populous to the most populous nation in a single year. Consequently, we assume that a substantial change in GNP per capita is $20,000 dollars, and a substantial change in population is a similarly large change of 10,000,000 people (see Poe and Tate 1994;Poe, Tate, and Keith 1999).…”