Does might make right or fight? Coercive capacity, democracy, and human rights, 1975 to 2010

ABSTRACT

Democracy is generally beneficial for human rights whereas coercive capacity increases government repression. Using data for 161 countries between 1975 and 2010, I consider how different aspects of democracy interact with the size and scope of a country's military apparatus to shape respect for bodily-integrity rights. Does democracy ameliorate the negative effects of coercive capacity? Or, does a strong military overpower the positive impact of democracy? Multivariate analyses suggest that high levels of democracy neutralize the effect of coercive capacity on bodily-integrity violations. At the same time, high levels of coercive capacity increase human rights abuses even in the most democratic regimes, at least when different aspects of democracy—executive constraints, competitive elections, and media freedom—are evaluated in isolation. Regimes that combine respect for media freedom with constraints on executive authority or competitive elections are able to harness coercive capacity for protective purposes.

Notes

1. Despite Hendrix and Young's claim that “bureaucratic and military capacities tend to be positively correlated” (2014: 333), Cole (2016) reports that two conventional measures of military strength—expenditures and personnel—do not correlate with a factor-analytic measure of bureaucratic quality.

2. Repressive countries may nevertheless face reprisals from the international community. Economic sanctions represent one strategy by which to weaken repressive states, in part by undercutting their coercive capacities. However, research has proven these strategies ineffective: levels of repression increase in countries targeted by economic sanctions (Peksen 2009).

3. Because the factor-analytic score includes negative as well as positive values, I first add a constant so that the lowest logged value becomes 0.

4. Lee (2005) employed government expenditures as a proxy for state capacity, whereas Hendrix and Young (2014) used the bureaucracy and law-and-order measures to construct a latent measure of administrative capacity. The online appendix presents analyses based on a state capacity measure that combines nonmilitary government expenditures, military expenditures, and military personnel into a single factor score. In general, the results were similar in terms of sign and significance, but the estimated effects were smaller when compared with the coercive capacity score.

5. I also examined whether three alternative measures of democracy—competition, participation, and an index of the two—shape human rights practices (Vanhanen 2000). As shown in the online appendix, each measure is independently associated with higher bodily-integrity scores, but none significantly moderates the negative effect of coercive capacity.

6. Analyses reported in the online appendix include two additional control variables commonly used in studies of human rights: trade as a percentage of GDP and linkages to international nongovernmental organizations. Estimated coefficients on the trade and linkage measures are positive and negative, respectively, but, in no case do they achieve statistical significance.

7. These analyses hold GDP per capita and population constant at their means, civil war and international war at their modes, and year at 2000.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Wade M. Cole

Wade M. Cole is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Utah. His recent work analyzes cross-cultural variability in respect for bodily-integrity rights and civil liberties (Social Forces, 2016), the relationship between human rights and economic growth (Sociology of Development, 2016), and the effect of human rights treaties on income inequality (American Sociological Review, 2015) and women's rights (International Studies Quarterly, 2013).