A License to
Kill
Donner 1990; Stanley 1996) and those living amidst periods of international and/or domestic
crisis, such observations would not come as a surprise because it is clear within this work and
these contexts that authorities do not always wait for dissident behavior to occur and they do not
always apply repression proportionate to the challenge they are confronted with. On the
contrary, it is frequently the case that political leaders identify threats before dissent takes place
in an attempt to head off possible challenges (e.g., the US campaign against communists during
the Red Scare from the 1930s through the 1960s) or they identify threats after some dissent has
taken place on the grounds that additional conflict is forthcoming (e.g., the current campaign
against terrorism in the US and abroad). In short, governments “license” repressive action,
giving themselves the opportunity to pursue challengers and apply coercion without the normal
costs that accompany such behavior (e.g., being removed from office).
These alternative conceptions of threat and state action represent very different
perspectives on political repressive action. In the first (the behavioral), this activity serves as a
reactive mechanism of “law and order.” Here, conflict occurs and authority’s respond.
Adopting the second perspective (the political), repression serves as a proactive mechanism of
control. In this case, repressive behavior does not respond to actual dissent but to potential
dissent identified by political leaders. While both rely upon the Hobbesian notion that states
should and will protect their citizens as well as themselves when they are threatened, the latter
provides more opportunities for repressive action because it does not rely on dissident behavior
to justify state activity, merely the perception of challenge as provided by those in power. To
date, quantitative research has focused exclusively upon the first possibility; correspondingly, the
second has received no attention at all.
Within this paper, I begin with a discussion of the basic theoretical model and research
design that underlies work on state repression/human rights violations. Second, I review and
4
Convention