BackgroundThe United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UN-CRPD) aims at stimulating profound changes and social development in many areas of the society. We wanted to examine the impact of the convention on mental health care research up to now by a systematic review.MethodsWe searched relevant electronic databases for empirical studies from the area of mental health which focused directly on the content of the UN-CRPD.ResultsOne thousand six hundred ten articles were screened, 36 of which fulfilled the inclusion criteria and came from 22 different countries. 25 studies (69 %) are related to persons with intellectual disabilities, only 11 to other mental disorders. Study designs were quantitative and qualitative as well. Issues were realisation of the UN-CRPD, implementation and financing, development of instruments, and attitudes towards the UN-CRPD.ConclusionsIn contrast to possible wide-reaching consequences for the organisation of mental health care, theoretical debates prevail as of yet and empirical research is still scarce. Research on the UN-CRPD is more advanced for intellectual disabilities and provides good suggestions for relevant research aspects in major mental disorders.

This study investigates how deployment of pro-government militias (PGMs) as counterinsurgents affects the risk of conflict recurrence. Militiamen derive material and non-material benefits from fighting in armed conflicts. Since these will likely have diminished after the conflict’s termination, militiamen develop a strong incentive to spoil post-conflict peace. Members of pro-government militias are particularly disadvantaged in post-conflict contexts compared to their role in the government’s counterinsurgency campaign. First, PGMs are usually not present in peace negotiations between rebels and governments. This reduces their commitment to peace agreements. Second, disarmament and reintegration programs tend to exclude PGMs, which lowers their expected and real benefits from peace. Third, PGMs might lose their advantage of pursuing personal interests while being protected by the government, as they become less essential during peacetimes. To empirically test whether conflicts with PGMs as counterinsurgents are more likely to break out again, we identify PGM counterinsurgent activities in conflict episodes between 1981 and 2007. We code whether the same PGM was active in a subsequent conflict between the same actors. Controlling for conflict types, which is associated with both the likelihood of deploying PGMs and the risk of conflict recurrence, we investigate our claims with propensity score matching, statistical simulation, and logistic regression models. The results support our expectation that conflicts in which pro-government militias were used as counterinsurgents are more likely to recur. Our study contributes to an improved understanding of the long-term consequences of employing PGMs as counterinsurgents and highlights the importance of considering non-state actors when crafting peace and evaluating the risk of renewed violence.

How does domestic surveillance affect the frequency of political imprisonments in autocratic states? In contrast to conventional wisdom, I argue that surveillance reduces the frequency of political imprisonments in power-maximizing autocracies. Surveillance decreases uncertainty about the correct targets of repression, allowing for more selective detentions and shifts to silent instruments of repression. To investigate these claims, I draw on a unique county-level dataset of political imprisonment in the German Democratic Republic between 1984 and 1988. I proxy the number of monitored individuals with newly collected county-level data on surveillance operations. I use ordinary least squares (OLS) regression, random effects, and instrumental variable models to investigate the impact of surveillance on political imprisonment. I find that higher shares of spies per monitored individual were associated with a reduction of political imprisonment. Further, increasing levels of spy infiltration were linked to a systematic shift to silent instruments of repression.

Who is a political prisoner? The classification of inmates as political prisoners has important real-world implications such as deciding over accession to international organizations or triggering international advocacy. However, the concept is ambiguously used in academic studies referring to both theoretically and empirically distinct groups of individuals. Building on a systematic review of the academic literature, I identify that definitions of political prisoners differ primarily with regard to (1) the source of politicization, (2) the timing of politicization, (3) the question of nonviolence, (4) the inclusion of identity prisoners, and (5) the criteria for biased state actions. In order to establish political prisoners as analytically consistent concept, I suggest to reserve it for victims of politically biased trials while remaining agnostic toward prisoners’ political motivations. I introduce explicit criteria grounded in international law to identify politically biased trials in practice. The new conceptualization allows to disentangle political imprisonments from other types of illegitimate and non-illegitimate imprisonments. A disaggregation of the concept further highlights that only a subset of political prisoners is entitled to demands for unconditional releases. Taken together, this article sheds light to the underlying meanings of different actors’ claims about political imprisonments and contributes to the systematic study of this type of human rights abuse.

The Chinese regime is well known for the large-scale detention of dissidents and ethnic minorities. However, little is known about the fates of Chinese political prisoners. This study investigates determinants of the duration of political imprisonment in China. I argue that the duration of political imprisonment is shaped by (a) the perceived threat of individuals’ actions, and (b) their ethnic and religious identities. Drawing on the Chinese political prisoner database, I investigate predictors of the duration of political imprisonment with survival models. Since preceding actions shape detention times, I hand-code each prisoner's criminalized actions that led to incarceration. The evidence suggests that the Chinese regime conditions the duration of political imprisonment on prisoners’ demands and their collective action potential. The findings further demonstrate that ethnic Uyghurs and Tibetans are imprisoned significantly longer than non-minority political prisoners. Additional analyses demonstrate that ethnic Uyghurs are also significantly more likely to die in prison.

How does political imprisonment influence anti-regime protest? We argue that political imprisonment facilitates rather than stifles protest. Political imprisonment is a salient indicator of arbitrary rule creating ‘embodied grievances’. It enables the formation of dissident networks within prisons, and serves as a legitimating credential for former inmates to lead resistance. These mechanisms imply that political imprisonment is a self-defeating strategy, making it easier for the opposition to overcome their collective action problem. We test our argument with subnational data from the German Democratic Republic between 1984 and 1989. To account for endogenous latent dissent, we use originally collected archival data on local surveillance operations. Exploiting daily variation in the timing of protests in 1989, we analyze the long-term impact of political imprisonment on mobilization. Results from survival analyses lend support to our hypothesized relationship. Combined with semi-structured interviews to probe our mechanisms, our findings suggest that political imprisonment increases the likelihood of protest mobilization.

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