Current Project
Sub-national Analysis of Repression Project (Just got Funded by NSF)
General Summary
Why do we observe different levels of respect for human rights in different regions of the same country? Furthermore, why are citizens? human rights generally uniformly protected (or abused) within the borders of some countries while within other countries these rights are generally upheld in some locations and severely restricted in others? Prior research investigating patterns of human rights protection and violation has typically treated states as centralized decision-makers and examined state respect for human rights as a single, countrywide phenomenon. This approach masks important variations in the actors perpetrating abuses, motives for the abuse, targets of the abuse, and severity of abuse. The PIs propose that cross-national human rights researchers must break their focus on the country as the unit of analysis and look at the sub-national characteristics of repressive behaviors. The PIs focus on three major factors: 1) antigovernment activity, 2) government decentralization, and 3) local government capacity. They argue that antigovernment dissent encourages government agents to respond with high levels of repression. However, this response is particularly likely when government power is highly decentralized, when the dissent takes place far from the national capital, and when the local government is largely incapable of controlling its repressive agents. The PIs collect the first dataset to document the level of repression at the subnational level for a global sample of countries. These data are likely to be used by government agencies, international organizations, non-governmental organizations, and others to engage in evidence-based policy and advocacy.
Technical Summary
While levels of state repression and the frequency, severity, and targets of human rights abuses vary spatially within states, most previous studies of these topics have only considered repression in the aggregate. This is problematic because it ignores variation in institutional structures and decision-making processes within countries. The PIs explain this subnational variation of repression within states. In particular, they focus on three major factors: antigovernment activity, government decentralization, and local state capacity. They develop a global dataset that captures violations of physical integrity rights by state agents at the level of the sub-national unit. For this project, the PIs rely on a mix of expert coding, theoretically informed measurement models, and computational techniques, which are capable of coding and then linking together the diverse information drawn from a set of primary source documents. Using this information, they generate standards-based measures for each of several specific types of physical integrity violations (arbitrary detention, torture, disappearances, and extrajudicial execution) as well as a combined indicator for these abuses for each first-order subnational administrative unit within a state. This level of analysis brings scholarship closer to the level at which most citizens encounter the government's legal, political, and bureaucratic authority.
Why do we observe different levels of respect for human rights in different regions of the same country? Furthermore, why are citizens? human rights generally uniformly protected (or abused) within the borders of some countries while within other countries these rights are generally upheld in some locations and severely restricted in others? Prior research investigating patterns of human rights protection and violation has typically treated states as centralized decision-makers and examined state respect for human rights as a single, countrywide phenomenon. This approach masks important variations in the actors perpetrating abuses, motives for the abuse, targets of the abuse, and severity of abuse. The PIs propose that cross-national human rights researchers must break their focus on the country as the unit of analysis and look at the sub-national characteristics of repressive behaviors. The PIs focus on three major factors: 1) antigovernment activity, 2) government decentralization, and 3) local government capacity. They argue that antigovernment dissent encourages government agents to respond with high levels of repression. However, this response is particularly likely when government power is highly decentralized, when the dissent takes place far from the national capital, and when the local government is largely incapable of controlling its repressive agents. The PIs collect the first dataset to document the level of repression at the subnational level for a global sample of countries. These data are likely to be used by government agencies, international organizations, non-governmental organizations, and others to engage in evidence-based policy and advocacy.
Technical Summary
While levels of state repression and the frequency, severity, and targets of human rights abuses vary spatially within states, most previous studies of these topics have only considered repression in the aggregate. This is problematic because it ignores variation in institutional structures and decision-making processes within countries. The PIs explain this subnational variation of repression within states. In particular, they focus on three major factors: antigovernment activity, government decentralization, and local state capacity. They develop a global dataset that captures violations of physical integrity rights by state agents at the level of the sub-national unit. For this project, the PIs rely on a mix of expert coding, theoretically informed measurement models, and computational techniques, which are capable of coding and then linking together the diverse information drawn from a set of primary source documents. Using this information, they generate standards-based measures for each of several specific types of physical integrity violations (arbitrary detention, torture, disappearances, and extrajudicial execution) as well as a combined indicator for these abuses for each first-order subnational administrative unit within a state. This level of analysis brings scholarship closer to the level at which most citizens encounter the government's legal, political, and bureaucratic authority.
Previous:
Conflict Data from the CAIN project:
Datablog and Wikileaks
This is one place where the new data revolution is underway. Worth a look and occasionally a little more.
Ill Treatment and Torture (ITT)
Existing research has studied the incidence of torture using either the CIRI (Cingranelli and Richards 2004) three point ordinal scale or the Hathaway (2002) five point ordinal scale. Both scales measure the rough number of alleged or reported cases of torture in a given country in a given year. Yet scholars, activists, and policy makers are interested in more than an ordinal indicator of the number of victims. More specifically, people are interested in four questions: How many victims?; Which government agencies torture?; What types of torture are used?; and What is the state response? This project codes data on four concepts using Amnesty International (AI) documents: Incidence, Perpetrators, Motive, and Judicial Response. Unlike other data on torture and ill-treatment, which use the country-year as the unit of analysis, we use the individual allegation as our unit of observation, which greatly increases the research questions we are able to pursue.
Pro-Government Militias
From Project: This dataset contains information about organised armed groups that are identified by documentary, media, and other open sources to be pro-government but are not part of the state's regular security forces. Consistency across sources is checked, but no further claims are made about the accuracy of this information.
The information covers the period from 1981 to 2007 across all countries, and is not limited to ongoing conflicts. The main unit of observation is the pro-government militia. The dataset is part of a wider project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). The associated research will focus on the ways in which governments use these informal groups or militias, their origins and termination. The dataset will allow researchers to more accurately study how these groups affect the outbreak, duration and nature of conflicts and the likelihood of a successful peace agreement following conflict.
The Great Firewall of China
Click on the site, punch in a topic/name and see if it is censored in China.
The Human Rights Data Analysis Group
Principal Investigator: Patrick Ball
Benetech Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG) designs and builds information management solutions and conducts statistical analysis on
behalf of human rights projects. With our partners, we make scientifically-defensible arguments based in rigorous evidence.
Here, data can be found for numerous countries at the level of the violation.
Conflict Data from the CAIN project:
- A Database of Deaths resulting from the Conflict in Northern Ireland, from July 1969 to December 2001. This database is based on information supplied by Malcolm Sutton.
- Post-Mortem a database of deaths compiled by Michael McKeown.
- A Database of Physical Memorials in public spaces related to the conflict in Northern Ireland
- Biographies of People Prominent During 'the Troubles'
- Photographs of Northern Ireland and of the conflict
For example: Eamon Melaugh collection of photographs of the conflict 1968 to 1974 - Results of Elections and Referenda held in Northern Ireland between 1968 and 2011.
- Government Reports, and Acts of Parliament, about Northern Ireland
- PRONI Records on CAIN
Public Records from the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI), Belfast - NAI Records on CAIN
Public Records from The National Archives of Ireland (NAI), Dublin - PRO Records
Public Records from the Public Records Office (PRO) at Kew, London - An introduction to the theoretical explanations of the conflict
- The CAIN Project has produced a guide to the main Web sites providing information on the Northern Ireland conflict or politics.
Datablog and Wikileaks
This is one place where the new data revolution is underway. Worth a look and occasionally a little more.
Ill Treatment and Torture (ITT)
Existing research has studied the incidence of torture using either the CIRI (Cingranelli and Richards 2004) three point ordinal scale or the Hathaway (2002) five point ordinal scale. Both scales measure the rough number of alleged or reported cases of torture in a given country in a given year. Yet scholars, activists, and policy makers are interested in more than an ordinal indicator of the number of victims. More specifically, people are interested in four questions: How many victims?; Which government agencies torture?; What types of torture are used?; and What is the state response? This project codes data on four concepts using Amnesty International (AI) documents: Incidence, Perpetrators, Motive, and Judicial Response. Unlike other data on torture and ill-treatment, which use the country-year as the unit of analysis, we use the individual allegation as our unit of observation, which greatly increases the research questions we are able to pursue.
Pro-Government Militias
From Project: This dataset contains information about organised armed groups that are identified by documentary, media, and other open sources to be pro-government but are not part of the state's regular security forces. Consistency across sources is checked, but no further claims are made about the accuracy of this information.
The information covers the period from 1981 to 2007 across all countries, and is not limited to ongoing conflicts. The main unit of observation is the pro-government militia. The dataset is part of a wider project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). The associated research will focus on the ways in which governments use these informal groups or militias, their origins and termination. The dataset will allow researchers to more accurately study how these groups affect the outbreak, duration and nature of conflicts and the likelihood of a successful peace agreement following conflict.
The Great Firewall of China
Click on the site, punch in a topic/name and see if it is censored in China.
The Human Rights Data Analysis Group
Principal Investigator: Patrick Ball
Benetech Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG) designs and builds information management solutions and conducts statistical analysis on
behalf of human rights projects. With our partners, we make scientifically-defensible arguments based in rigorous evidence.
Here, data can be found for numerous countries at the level of the violation.
