Torture and the limits of democratic institutions

Abstract

What are the limits of democracy’s positive influence on human rights? In this article, we argue that contested elections and powerful courts provide leaders with different incentives with regard to hiding torture. Because government torture is generally targeted at individuals that voters find threatening, institutions that reflect public opinion – like electoral contestation – are associated with higher levels of government abuse that leave scars on the victim’s body. Other institutions – like powerful courts – protect the rights of political minorities. Leaders in countries with powerful courts prefer plausible deniability of rights violations and consequently employ higher levels of clean torture, which leaves no scars. We test our hypotheses using data from the Ill-Treatment and Torture (ITT) Data Collection Project that distinguish between Amnesty International (AI) allegations of scarring and clean torture. We employ an undercount negative binomial that accounts for AI’s (in)ability to obtain information about torture. The model assumes that some incidents of torture go unreported and allows the extent of underreporting to vary across countries/years. Estimates from the model yield considerable statistical and substantive support for our hypotheses.

Revisionist Conflict and State Repression

“…Although Wallace finds a mitigating impact of international law prompts, a noticeable percentage (nearly 40%) of his samples still support the use of torture against enemy combatants. Conrad, Hill, and Moore (2017) find that different democratic institutions may lead to differing incentives for leaders to engage in certain types of torture. Conrad, Hill, and Moore (2017) describe a model of electoral democracies in which the public becomes more likely to support the increase of the use of torture, in part because of the public pressure on governments, noting that states that allow dissent openly are also more likely to experience “challenges to state authority in the form of crime, protest and terror, producing greater demand among the voting public” (Conrad, Hill and Moore, 2017; 4) to increase punishment against such bad actors, including torture.…”

“…Conrad, Hill, and Moore (2017) find that different democratic institutions may lead to differing incentives for leaders to engage in certain types of torture. Conrad, Hill, and Moore (2017) describe a model of electoral democracies in which the public becomes more likely to support the increase of the use of torture, in part because of the public pressure on governments, noting that states that allow dissent openly are also more likely to experience "challenges to state authority in the form of crime, protest and terror, producing greater demand among the voting public" (Conrad, Hill and Moore, 2017;4) to increase punishment against such bad actors, including torture. 6 This is in contrast to autocratic states, where anti-state activity is more routinely cracked down against, and thus unlikely to see more public outcry for punishment.…”

“… 6. Conrad et al (2017) also distinguish which democratic mechanisms lead to differing levels of use of different types of torture. This project only examines the use of torture, in general, however. …”

The effect of two-round presidential elections on human rights

“…Although some human rights studies have opted to use either the Freedom House or Polity measures to identify which regimes are democratic, this is controversial as both Freedom House and Polity base their classification-in part-on how regimes respect human rights; therefore, using either measure would partially control for my outcome variable [76]. Poe and Tate ([59]: 856), argue that democracy "must be defined in terms that allow independent operationalization of the concept," and in light of this advice, I (and many others [14,27,73,[76][77][78][79][80][81][82][83][84]) have opted to use Cheibub, Gandhi, and Vreeland's [75] typology, as their DD dataset defines democracy in a way that does not incorporate state human rights practices. Per the DD dataset, a regime is considered to be a 'democracy' when the president is elected, the legislature is elected, there is more than one party competing in elections, and an alternation under identical electoral rules has taken place ([75]: 69).…”

Compliance With International Law

“…Independent judiciaries, charged with upholding constitutions and protecting minority rights, can enhance compliance with the Convention Against Torture (CAT) by making it costlier for leaders to allow/engage in torture (Conrad and Hencken Ritter 2013;Conrad 2014;Conrad et al 2015). But another 'democratic institution' -contested elections -can have the opposite impact, incentivizing leaders to abuse weakly enfranchised individuals who are viewed as threats to 'order' (Conrad et al 2015). These conflicting incentives affect government decisions at various stages: when/whether to ratify, when/whether to torture, and what type of torture to engage in.…”