Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Organizing Oppression: Government, Politics and the Violation of Human Rights

政治学博士论文研究：组织压迫：政府、政治与侵犯人权

• 批准号: 1123055
• 负责人: Christian Davenport
• 金额: $ 1.18万
• 依托单位: University of Notre Dame
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2011
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2011-09-01 至 2012-11-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1123055&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Political; Science

In spite of an emerging consensus around the significance of human rights, political repression remains an ever-present reality. Over the past few decades, a scientific research program has developed to explain why states abuse their citizens' human rights. But despite the explanatory power of this model, its utility for predicting future abuses remains limited. As a result, policy interventions are essentially reactive, with policy makers responding to observed violations of human rights rather than taking steps to proactively prevent human rights abuses anticipated in the future.Developling a model that is better able to forecast future violations of human rights requires delving deeper into the organizations responsible for human rights violations and directly investigating the decision-making processes that ultimately produce political repression. To do so, this project investigates the internal workings of the Guatemalan security apparatus and the violation of human rights that took place during the country's civil war. The study provides both theoretical and methodological improvements over the leading studies in repression research. The theory identifies how repressive bureaucracies, such as the police, military, or special forces, generate and update expectations of the potential success or failure of repressive actions.These theoretical claims are evaluated using unique data on the inner workings of the Guatemalan security apparatus. The Guatemalan National Police Archive, upon which this research is based, is a trove of more than eight million uncensored records collected and composed by the police during the civil war. The Archive's collection contains unprecedented detail on both potential and actual targets of political repression leading to violations of human rights.With regards to broader impacts, this study will generate practical knowledge that can be applied to limit conflict and prevent political violence.

尽管人们对人权的重要性正在形成共识，但政治镇压仍然是一个始终存在的现实。 在过去的几十年里，一项科学研究计划已经发展起来，以解释为什么国家侵犯其公民的人权。 但是，尽管该模型具有解释力，但其预测未来滥用行为的效用仍然有限。 因此，政策干预本质上是被动的，政策制定者对观察到的侵犯人权行为做出反应，而不是采取措施主动防止未来预期的侵犯人权行为。开发一个能够更好地预测未来侵犯人权行为的模型需要更深入地研究对侵犯人权行为负责的组织，并直接调查最终产生政治镇压的决策过程。 为此，该项目调查危地马拉安全机构的内部运作以及该国内战期间发生的侵犯人权行为。 该研究比镇压研究中的领先研究提供了理论和方法上的改进。 该理论确定了警察、军队或特种部队等镇压官僚机构如何产生和更新对镇压行动的潜在成功或失败的预期。这些理论主张是使用危地马拉安全机构内部运作的独特数据进行评估的。 本研究所依据的危地马拉国家警察档案馆是警方在内战期间收集和撰写的超过 800 万条未经审查的记录的宝库。 该档案馆的收藏包含关于导致侵犯人权的政治镇压的潜在和实际目标的前所未有的详细信息。就更广泛的影响而言，这项研究将产生可用于限制冲突和防止政治暴力的实用知识。