State Repression and the Dictatorial Peace.

Existing literature on human rights violations/state repression ignores the diversity among authoritarian governments. At present, diverse groups of political systems (e.g., personalist, military and single-party regimes as well as hybrid combinations) are collapsed together, leaving their unique approaches to maintaining political order unexamined. This limitation is extremely important for those parts of the world where political democracy and economic development appear to be quite elusive (e.g., in Africa). Within this study, I explore an alternative path to coercive pacification: what is referred to as the ?dictatorial peace?. Examining 137 countries from 1976 to 1996, I find that single-party regimes are generally less repressive than other forms of authoritarian governments. Across regions, however, there is some variation; some relationships are consistent across regions, while others vary. These results are important for they suggest that there are alternative routes to peace but, at the same time, they reveal that these alternative paths must be uniquely tailored to geo-political context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]