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

本博士论文研究项目对民主通过国家选举保护人权的能力进行了细致而有用的分析。先前的研究表明，民主与政府对人权的尊重有可靠的联系。人权与全国选举之间的关系很重要，因为一段时间以来，美国决策者暗示民主与全国选举是一回事。然而，情况可能并非如此。例如，秘鲁自1980年以来连续选举了文官政府，但与此同时，也遭受了数万人的政治杀戮。因此，那些把选举作为民主的代表来制定外交政策的国家，可能是在伤害全世界所有可能成为侵犯人权行为受害者的人。本文有五个具体目标：1)考察国家选举与政府尊重人权之间的关系；2)研究一个代表社会最贫困阶层的有活力的、有竞争力的政党在解释政府尊重人权方面可观察到的差异方面发挥了多大的作用；3)使用一种创新的尺度技术，产生一种新的人权衡量标准，这是对人权衡量方式的重大改进；4)产生一个新的变量来衡量政党在总统制和议会制下的生存能力和竞争力；5)引入难民的存在作为政府侵犯人权实证研究的重要控制变量。定性和定量措施将被用来检查在本研究中感兴趣的关系。美国的一个案例研究被用来发展本研究的理论框架，涉及政府镇压和将受压迫群体纳入政治体系。将对这一框架进行定量检验。

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.