Collaborative Research: An Organizational Approach to State Repression

General Summary

This project seeks to improve our understanding of state repression, human rights violation and the circumstances involved with their use. For nearly 50 years, research in political science and sociology has attempted to understand why governments repress their citizens. Despite these efforts little is known about the relationship between those who order repressive acts ('principals') and the individuals committing such activities ('agents'). The research draws together different approaches in the literature to develop an encompassing theory of repressive organizations. The PIs generate new data on human rights violations, using Northern Ireland as the case of interest. The PIs test theoretical predictions regarding when and where repression can be expected as well as how it may be contained. This study has implications for understanding and ultimately preventing human rights violations within the United States and around the world.

Technical Summary

To account for variation in the use of repression across time and space, the PIs develop a theory focusing on three factors: how principals and agents interpret challenger threats; how event reporting determines the information available to principals and their agents; and how the repressive apparatus is organized. They examine highly disaggregated data on threat, reporting, organization, and repression across space, time, and organizational unit. In particular, the PIs collect new micro-level event data on the repressive activity of the United Kingdom and Northern Irish governments that took place from 1968 through 1998. This dataset uses British Army files from the Brigade, Battalion and British Cabinet levels to determine the degree of knowledge and reporting across these levels and to assess the role of principals and agents in this conflict across time (by day), space (by neighborhood) and actor (by battalion).