State Repression and Human Rights I

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

This panel brings together a group of scholars working at the frontier of repression scholarship and pushing forward on two important aspects of repression studies: Theoretical understanding of repression strategies and empirical tests on original repression data. In doing so, the four projects provide dynamic and fine-grained insights into the scholarship of repression and conflict processes.

The first project draws the connection between media and dissent repression by theorizing how the existence of a dominant media outlet facilitates repression and authoritarian ruling. Similarly, the second project develops a novel theory to generate an assessment of the effectiveness of preventive repression by taking into account the limits to effective surveillance and the limits to effective dissuasion due to states’ economic and political costs. The third project challenges the traditional understanding of prisoners’ dilemma by empirically showing that flows of information from challengers to the government (i.e. defection) is a function of social ties and repressive pressure. The final project examines the tradeoffs between judicial constraints and repressive substitutability by showing that court rulings that increase police accountability for the use of electronic control devices (ECDs) are simultaneously associated with decreases in ECD use and increases in police shootings.

Together, the four projects present new theoretical explanations for how state repression is employed and mechanisms that facilitate the application. Empirically, they offer new theoretical frameworks, original data, and measurement strategies to analyze and predict the threats of human right violations.

Sub Unit

• DIVISION 21: Conflict Processes

Individual Presentations

• State Repression and Social Media - David A. Siegel, Duke University

• Surveillance and Dissuasion as Methods of Preventive Repression - Tiberiu C. Dragu, New York University

• Who Rats? An Empirical Study of Defection During Political Arrests - Christopher M. Sullivan, Louisiana State University; Christian Davenport, University of Michigan; Howard Liu, Duke University

• Courts & Cops: Why Fourth Amendment Rulings Limiting TASERs Increase Shootings - Courtenay R. Conrad, University of California, Merced

Chair

• Tiberiu C. Dragu New York University

Discussants

• David A. Siegel Duke University

• Charles David Crabtree Dartmouth College