Although previous research on the correlates of political repression has found a negative linear relationship between democracy and repression, we maintain that the relationship is more complex. We focuse instead on the role of threats as a key precipitant to political repression and contend that scholars should attend to non-linearities in analyses of political repression as well as Fein's (1995) argument that states with intermediate levels of democracy (i.e. semidemocracies) are more likely to repress. We hypothesize that there is an inverted U relationship between regime type and political repression. In this article we examine the inverted U thesis for 91 less developed countries over the period 1979-92. The findings support the thesis and indicate that (1) the level of threat is positively and significantly associated with political repression; (2) threat has a greater impact than regime type on the likelihood of political repression; and (3) controlling for the level of threat, states with intermediate levels of democracies—semidemocracies—have the highest level of political repression.
An earlier version of this paper was presented to the American Political Science Association, September 1999, Atlanta GA. The authors thank David Cingranelli, John King, David Richards, and Edward McMahon for their helpful comments.
Click here for the complete paper in PDF format.
Address all correspondence to : Patrick Regan , Center on Democratic Performance (CDP), Department of Political Science, Binghamton University, SUNY, Binghamton, NY 13902-6000, USA. Tel: (607) 777-2167; Fax: (607) 777-2675; E-mail: pregan@binghamton.edu .