Repression of the human right to personal integrity revisited: A global cross-national study covering the years 1976-1993

Here we seek to build on our earlier research (Poe and Tate, 1994) by re-te sting similar models on a data set covering a much longer time span; the pe riod from 1976 to 1993. Several of our findings differ from those of our ea rlier work. Here we find statistical evidence that military regimes lead to somewhat greater human rights abuse, defined in terms of violations of per sonal integrity, once democracy and a host of other factors are controlled. Further, rye find that countries that have experienced British colonial in fluence tend to have relatively fewer abuses of personal integrity rights t han others. Finally, our results suggest that leftist countries are actuall y less repressive of these basic human right, than non-leftist countries. C onsistent with the Poe and Tate (1994) study, however, we find that past le vels of repression, democracy, population size, economic development, and i nternational and civil wars exercise statistically significant and substant ively important impacts on personal integrity abuse.