Territorial revision and state repression

Abstract

Does involvement in territorial conflict affect domestic repression? I argue that seeking to revise territory abroad will affect domestic repression, but conditionally on regime type and conflict severity. For democracies, there may be public pressure to deliver the good of territory. Because of this, territorial revision can lead to in-group/out-group dynamics at home, making it politically beneficial to increase repression domestically against groups seen as being opposed to the conflict. Autocracies may place a different value on contested territory, as they rely on the distribution of private goods to maintain support. While in-group/out-group dynamics may also be in play for autocracies, such states also face different types of constraints than democracies. Autocracies are more likely to use their military for domestic repression, and thus are more likely to simply maintain or reduce repression because the military is now being used abroad. These propositions are tested cross-nationally by examining repression when states are revisionists in conflicts over territory spanning from 1977 to 2001. The results of ordered logit analyses of state repression show that democratic states become more likely to increase repression when they are territorial revisionists, as those conflict-years become more deadly, while autocratic states are less likely to increase repression during the same periods.

In-group defense, out-group aggression, and coordination failures in intergroup conflict

“…Real-world analogies are group-hunting carnivores facing prey aggressively defending themselves, boards of directors attempting and warding off a hostile takeover, tribal raiding and warfare, and most interstate disputes. For example, of the 2,209 documented interstate conflicts since the Congress of Vienna in 1816 (27,48), 67% were between aggressors seeking territorial or policy change in states that tried to defend the status quo (Materials and Methods). Similar to our model, these aggressor-defender conflicts typically see an aggressor success rate of around 35%: aggressor states win less than 30% of the interstate conflicts in which they are involved, and industry boards pushing for hostile takeover are successful only 40% of the time (Fig.…”

“…The Correlates of War project provides descriptive information on 2,586 interstate (militarized) conflicts since the Congress of Vienna in 1816 (27,48). We integrated distinct datasets (MIDA and MIDB; versions 4.01; both downloaded July 15, 2014, from www.correlatesofwar.org) to determine the structure of the interstate conflict as being symmetrical (0 = between two aggressor states or between two defender states) or asymmetrical (1 = between an aggressor and a defender state).…”

“…We integrated distinct datasets (MIDA and MIDB; versions 4.01; both downloaded July 15, 2014, from www.correlatesofwar.org) to determine the structure of the interstate conflict as being symmetrical (0 = between two aggressor states or between two defender states) or asymmetrical (1 = between an aggressor and a defender state). States are "revisionist" (aggressor) when they desire change in territory, policy, or government in their antagonist; nonrevisionists (defenders), in contrast, seek to preserve and maintain the status quo with regard to territory, policy, or government (27,48). Exactly two-thirds (67%) were between an aggressor and a defender state, and 33% were symmetrical (χ 2 [1,2209] = 494.45; P ≤ 0.0001).…”

the construction of human rights: accounting for systematic bias in common human rights measures

“…We replicate Wright (2014) to demonstrate the effect of applying instrumented SD scores and dropping pre-1980 data when using PTS SD . Wright (2014) argues that states are more likely to engage in domestic repression when they are seeking to revise territory abroad, but that the degree of repression is conditioned by regime type and conflict severity.…”

Political Repression and Government Effectiveness

“…Using a data set composed of one hundred sixty six countries for the years 1977 to 2001, Wright looks at changes in repression that may occur from interstate territorial conflict to acquire land (Wright, 2014) in his ordered probit regressions of state repression on a measure of the existence and intensity of interstate territorial conflict, he finds that high intensity interstate conflict of revisionist states seeking to increase their territory increases the likelihood of state repression in democracies, but not in autocratic states. In addition, his regressions also show that, for both democracies and autocracies, population size and civil conflict have a positive effect on state repression.…”