Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: First Do No Harm; Elections, Political Parties and Human Rights

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This Doctoral Dissertation research project provides a refined and useful analysis of democracy's ability to protect human rights via national elections. Previous research demonstrates that democracy is reliably associated with government respect for human rights. the relationship between human rights and the presence of national elections is important, as for some time, US policy-makers have implied that democracy and national elections are the same thing. This may not be the case, however. For instance, Peru has had successively elected civilian governments since 1980, but at the same time, has suffered tens of thousands of political killings. Thus, it may be that the states which formulate foreign policy using elections as a proxy for democracy do a disservice to all those who are potential victims of human rights abuse around the world. The dissertation has five specific goals: 1) to examine the relationship between the presence of national elections and government respect for human rights; 2) to examine to what extent the role a viable, competitive political party representing the poorest sector of society plays in accounting for observable difference in government respect for human rights; 3) using an innovative scaling technique , to produce a new measure of human rights that is a significant improvement on the way human rights have been measured; 4) to produce a new variable measuring the viability and competitiveness of political parties for both presidential and parliamentary systems; and, 5) to introduce the presence of refugees as an important control variable for empirical studies of government abuse of human rights. Qualitative as well as quantitative measures will be used to examine the relationships of interest in this study. A case study of the United States is used to develop the theoretical framework of this study in respect to government repression and the incorporation of repressed groups into the political system. Quantitative tests will be applied to this framework.