9321741 POE Assessing the frequency of occurrence of repression or state terrorism within the world's sovereign states is an important, difficult, and controversial task. Yet, despite increased worldwide interest in human rights and the regular publication of profiles of national human rights situations, we still require more systematic knowledge as to why regimes resort to repression. This investigation seeks to develop a theory explaining why regimes use state terrorism against citizens, to develop the data necessary to test that theory, and to analyze the applicability of that theory to the repression record of the world's nations during the last two decades. The theory will include the factors previous research has linked to the use of state terrorism, but it will also include new possible causes of repression not yet analyzed using empirical data. The investigators will test the applicability of the theory for (1) the entire global sample, (2) different regions and time frames, in order to judge whether the determinants of repression vary across time, or differ depending on the region of the world one examines. This should allow the researchers to develop better "causal" models of repression that take into account both the direct and indirect effects of the factors they find to be important in their earlier analyses. When these analyses are completed, the investigators plan to work toward a global human rights monitoring system based on a broad base of empirical information and designed to help them foresee positive and negative national trends in repression. ***
