The Decision to Repress: An Integrative Theoretical Approach to the Research on Human Rights and Repression

Scholars have recently given considerable attention to finding why repression and human rights abuses occur. Drawing hypotheses from a wide variety of theories, they have succeeded in achieving an additive cumulation (Zinnes 1976) of empirical findings on why variations in these abuses occur. In this paper I improve theory development on these phenomena by integrating the numerous and at first seemingly disparate hypotheses and findings the repression into a single decisionmaking model. Then, to further illustrate the utility of the model, I will use it to find clues as to why some of the contradictory and negative empirical findings in this fast developing subfield have arisen. Finally, I will use it to gain insights into how we might gain a better understanding of the decisionmaking process that sometimes leads regimes to repress.