A Closer Look at Democracy and Human Rights
Bruce Bueno de Mesquita
Feryal Cherif
George Downs
Alastair Smith
Welcome to the data site for “Thinking Inside the Box.”
We have posted an abstract of our research and links for obtaining the data and do-file used in this project.
Abstract
Research
on human rights consistently points to the importance of democracy in reducing
the severity and incidence of personal integrity abuses. The prescriptive implications of this
finding for policymakers interested in state-building have been somewhat
limited, however, by a reliance on multidimensional measures of democracy.
Consequently, a policymaker emerges from this literature confident that
“democracy matters” but unclear about which set(s) of reforms is likely to
yield a greater human rights payoff. Using data from the Polity IV Project, we
examine what aspects of democracy are most consequential in improving a state’s
human rights record. Analysis of
democracy’s dimensions elicits three findings. First, political participation at the level of multiparty
competition appears more significant than other dimensions in reducing human
rights abuses. Second,
improvements in a state’s level of democracy short of full democracy do not
promote greater respect for integrity rights. Only those states with the
highest levels of democracy, not simply those conventionally defined as
democratic, are correlated with better human rights practices. Third,
accountability appears to be the critical feature that makes full-fledged
democracies respect human rights; limited accountability generally retards
improvement in human rights.
Data
Our
data is compiled from numerous existing projects, but primarily is drawn from The
Logic of Political Survival, Polity
IV, Penn World Tables and World Development Indicators. We generously thank
Steven Poe and Mark Gibney for making their most recent data on personal
integrity abuses available to us and also thank Steven Poe, C. Neal Tate and
Linda Camp Keith (1999) for providing us with their earlier data.
All
of our data and related materials (e.g. do-file) are in Stata 8.2 format. The
links below contain the data and do-file, which provides commands for the
regression results that are presented in the article as well as other tests
that were run for robustness (see footnote 9, International Studies Quarterly
(2005) 49, 439-457). In the
do-file, all variables beginning with F or L denote the standard abbreviations
for led and lagged variables, respectively.
[Data Link]
[Do-File Link]
Variables
The
following provides a (partial but near inclusive) list of variables generated
in the do-file and classified by type. For more information on the coding of
the Polity variables, please visit the Polity IV website at, http://www.cidcm.umd.edu/inscr/polity/index.htm
Human Rights
AI:
A five-point scale that assesses a state’s abuse of personal integrity rights,
with five representing the most egregious abuse. It is coded from the annual reports published by Amnesty
International (Poe and Gibney; Poe, Tate Keith 1999). State practices are coded according to the following rules:
- “Countries
. . . under secure rule of law, people are not imprisoned for their views,
and torture is rare or exceptional . . . political murders are extremely
rare.”
- “There
is a limited amount of imprisonment for nonviolent political
activity. However, few
persons are affected, torture and beatings are exceptional . . . political
murder is rare.
- “There
is extensive political imprisonment, or a recent history of such
imprisonment. Execution or
other political murders may be common. Unlimited detention, with or without trial, for
political views is accepted.”
- “The
practices of (Level 3) are expanded to larger numbers. Murders, disappearances are a
common part of life . . . In spite of its generality, on this level terror
affects primarily those who interest themselves in politics or ideas.”
- “The
terrors of (Level 4) have been expanded to the whole population . . . The
leaders of these societies place no limits on the means or thoroughness
with which they pursue person or ideological goals.”
Polity
PARCOMP:
Competitiveness of participation; a five-point scale
PARREG:
Regulation of participation; a four-point scale
XCONST:
Executive constraints; a seven-point scale
XRCOMP:
Competitiveness of executive recruitment; a three-point scale.
XROPEN:
Openness of executive recruitment; a four-point scale
COM1-COM3:
A measure that dichotomizes each level of XRCOMP.
CON1-CON6:
A measure that dichotomizes each level of XCONST.
OPEN1-OPEN4:
A measure that dichotomizes each level of XROPEN.
PAR1-PAR5:
A measure that dichotomizes each level of PARCOMP.
PREG:
A measure that dichotomizes each level of PARREG.
PARCOMP2:
A normalized measure of PARCOMP.
PARREG2:
A normalized measure of PARREG.
XCONST2:
A normalized measure of XCONST.
XRCOMP2:
A normalized measure of XRCOMP.
XROPEN2:
A normalized measure of XROPEN.
COM:
A measures that dichotomizes the highest degree of competitiveness of executive
recruitment.
CON:
A measures that dichotomizes the highest degree of executive constraints.
PAR:
A measures that dichotomizes the highest degree of competitiveness of participation.
PREG:
A measures that dichotomizes the highest degree of the regulation of
participation.
ROPEN:
A measures that dichotomizes the highest degree of openness of executive
recruitment.
DEMAUT:
A 21-point normalized measure of the difference between DEMOC and AUTOC.
DEM80:
A country is coded as 1 if its DEMAUT score is .8 or above; 0 otherwise.
Other
CIVILWAR:
A country is coded 1 if there is a civil war; 0 otherwise.
INCOMERES:
Predicted residuals of all individual and dichotomous Polity measures on real
GDP per capita.
IS_WAR:
A country is coded 1 if there is an interstate war; 0 otherwise.
LPOP:
Population (lagged).
Data Citations
Bueno
De Mesquita, Bruce, Alastair Smith, James Morrow and Randolph Siverson. 2003.
The
Logic of Political Survival.
Cambridge: MIT Press.
Heston, Alan, Robert
Summers and Bettina Aten. 2002. Penn
World Table Version 6.1. Center
for International Comparisons at the University of Pennsylvania (CICUP).
Jones,
Daniel M., Stuart A. Bremer and J. David Singer 1996. "Militarized
Interstate Disputes, 1816-1992: Rationale, Coding Rules, and Empirical
Patterns." Conflict Management and Peace Science 15(2): 163:213.
Marshall,
Monty and Keith Jaggers. 2000. Polity IV: Political Regime Characteristics and
Transitions, 1800-1999. College Park: University of Maryland, Center for
International Development and Conflict Management (CIDCM), Integrate Network
for Societal Conflict Research Program.
Poe,
Steven C. and C. Neal Tate and Linda Camp Keith. 1999. "Repression of the
Human Right to Personal Integrity Revisited: A Global Crossnational Study
Covering the Years 1976-1993," International Studies Quarterly, 43:
291-315.
Sarkees,
Meredith Reid. 2000. "Correlates of War War Datasets: An Update to
1997." Conflict Management and Peace Science. 18(1): 123-144.
Singer,
J. David, and Melvin Small. 1972. The Wages of War, 1816-1965: A Statistical
Handbook. New York: John Wiley.
Singer,
J. David, Stuart Bremer, and John Stuckey. 1972. "Capability Distribution,
Uncertainty, and Major Power War, 1820-1965." in Bruce Russett, ed. Peace, War and Numbers.
Beverly Hills: Sage.
Small,
Melvin, and J. David Singer. 1982. Resort to Arms: International and Civil
Wars, 1816-1980. Beverly Hills,
Calif.: Sage Publications.
World
Bank. 2001. World Development Indicators 2001.
Washington, DC: World Bank.
CD-ROM.
