Peter Haschke - Human Rights in Democracies

Violations of the right to the physical integrity of the person, such as torture, cruel and unusual punishment, extra-judicial executions, disappearances, and political imprisonment have long been treated as an anomaly in democratically governed societies. In the current literature on human rights, violations of this right are by and large seen as the hallmark of autocratic and repressive regimes.

This study takes on this dominant paradigm and shows not only that the common assumption that democratic countries effectively limit human rights abuse is simply wrong, but that its widely accepted theory of what drives human rights violations accounts for only a small part of these abuses at best. Haschke shows that despite the increasing numbers of countries that are democracies, and despite growing numbers of national signatories to international treaties prohibiting human rights abuse, the number of allegations has not declined. This book also demonstrates that the bulk of this abuse, which takes the form of torture and ill-treatment, extra-judicial killings, rape, and the like, is committed against marginal members of society, seeming to reveal environments that enable agents of the state to abuse those with whom they are in contact. This violence is found in democracies and dictatorships alike.

This work will be of interest to students and scholars of international relations, human rights, and comparative politics.

Peter Haschke is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of North Carolina at Asheville.

Series Editors: Mark Gibney, UNC Asheville, USA, Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen, The Danish Institute for Human Rights, Denmark and Bonny Ibhawoh, McMaster University, Canada

For more information about this series please visit: www.routledge.com/series/RSIHR

The Routledge Human Rights series publishes high quality and cross-disciplinary scholarship on topics of key importance in human rights today. In a world where human rights are both celebrated and contested, this series is committed to create stronger links between disciplines and explore new methodological and theoretical approaches in human rights research. Aimed towards both scholars and human rights professionals, the series strives to provide both critical analysis and policy-oriented research in an accessible form. The series welcomes work on specific human rights issues as well as on cross-cutting themes and institutional perspectives.

1Human Rights and the Dark Side of Globalisation

Transnational Law Enforcement and Migration Control

Edited by Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen and Jens Vedsted-Hansen

2A Genealogy of the Torture Taboo

Jamal Barnes

3Sovereignty, State Failure and Human Rights

Petty Despots and Exemplary Villains

Neil Englehart

4Understanding Statelessness

Edited by Tendayi Bloom, Katherine Tonkiss and Phillip Cole

5Human Rights in Democracies

Peter Haschke

Peter Haschke

First published 2018
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2018 Peter Haschke

The right of Peter Haschke to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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ISBN: 978-1-138-06527-7 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-01929-4 (ebk)

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The civil and human rights movements and reforms that swept across much of the developed world in the late 1960s and early 1970s, culminating in the near universal adoption of a host of binding civil and human rights conventions and treaties throughout the late 20th century, convinced many that the abuse of states coercive power, genocide, and repression were well on their way to democratic resolution. Yet, despite the development of internationally recognized human rights norms, the adoption and ratification of legally binding human rights treaties by the vast majority of United Nation membership, and despite the monitoring of states legal obligations by international organizations, state agencies, and non-governmental organizations, human rights continue to be violated worldwide with impunity. This book seeks to improve our understanding of why a specific subset of human rights namely, the human right to the physical integrity of the person is violated.

Why was Rafael da Silva Couto killed? Why are every year hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children like him raped in police stations; disappeared or arbitrarily detained; burned, electrocuted, and beaten in prisons; hacked to death or executed in the streets; brutalized and maimed in their homes or at work all at the hands of their own governments?

Political scientists have proposed a parsimonious answer: the most basic human right to the physical integrity of the person is violated when it is in the states interest. Challenges and opposition to the regime and to the political status quo demand a coercive and repressive response. Violations are prevented where the coercive power of the state is constrained, where leaders are held accountable, and where threats to national security and power are non-existent. Where leaders perceive threats to their tenure, to the regime, or the status quo, the coercive apparatus of the state is set into motion to eliminate these threats. Political challengers are imprisoned, critics of the regime harassed, intimidated, or worse killed. Protest is violently suppressed and rebels, insurgents, and other enemies of the state disappeared and/or tortured in prisons.

Threats to national security and leaders are believed to be a primary factor explaining violations of physical integrity rights. A similarly critical factor is the capacity of the state or of executives to order or sanction these coercive responses to threats. Where leaders are constrained and where repressive responses to threats are costly or difficult to implement, violations are less likely. The most heralded argument in this vein is Davenports (2007