A Tyrannical Peace
A Tyrannical Peace
Since the attacks of 9/11, the Bush administration has vowed to "end tyranny in our world." In a recent session of the International Politics Seminar, guest speaker Christian Davenport (University of Maryland) questioned Bush's strategy, asking, "Are all tyrannies alike in their repressiveness and thus equally worthy of monitoring, discussion, intervention, and modification?"
According to Davenport, certain forms of autocracy are more coercive than others, and the tendency to collapse all forms of autocracy into a single category leaves "unique approaches to political order unexamined." His recent study examined 137 countries from 1976 to 1996 and found that single-party regimes are the least repressive among autocracies. His findings also indicate that the coercive quality of certain types of autocracies differs depending on the indicators and periods considered. For instance, he shows that military governments are the least repressive among autocracies when it comes to civil liberties but are the most repressive when it comes to violent activities such as torture and mass killing. From these observations, he posits a theory of "tyrannical peace," based on upholding some autocracies, as an alternative to democracy in countering state repression.
His assessment is based on three indicators of state coercion: civil liberties restrictions, personal integrity violations, and lethality. Davenport defines personal integrity violations as activities involving "state or state-affiliated actors engaging in activities which target the integrity of the person (i.e., which directly threaten human life) such as torture and mass killing" while lethality represents a combination of both civil liberty and personal integrity violations.
His talk sparked a lively discussion among participants of the International Politics seminar, who raised questions about the different categories of coercion used by Davenport, pointing out that forms of repression are not always visible and measurable. Others were curious to know how he would code difficult cases, such as Warsaw Pact countries, and how he would account for the transformation of a regime over time. One of the workshop organizers, Erik Gartzke, asked whether it might be the case that single-party autocracies enjoy relative peace, not because they are less repressive but because all of their enemies are dead.
Some of these issues have yet to be worked out, but it is clear that Davenport's study has broad implications for public policy, academic research, and social activism. One must tread carefully when crafting policy responses to autocratic governments, according to Davenport, and disaggregating regime type is a first step to gaining a better understanding of the circumstances under which basic human rights come under peril and of how to best respond. His results suggest that if the goal is to curb the most egregious abuses of state power, these policies should focus on hybrids that combine military, personalist, and single-party governments. One of the ultimate messages of the study is that not all solutions to the problem of state repression are possible in all situations and that if the goal is to achieve peace and minimize state violence, human rights may be better protected by promoting and supporting certain autocracies for a time.
"Indeed, in many respects, this may be one of the most important problems that we can address," Davenport concluded. "We must confront the costs and benefits of freedom and life delayed versus freedom and life denied."
The Columbia University International Politics Seminars (CUIPS) provides an essential forum for faculty and graduate students to meet and discuss cutting-edge research in international relations. The seminar is organized by Tanisha Fazal, Page Fortna, Erik Gartzke, Pablo Pinto, and Tonya Putnam.
