The dictator’s dilemma: Why communist regimes oppress their citizens while military regimes torture and kill

Abstract What makes some authoritarian regimes more willing to employ extrajudicial violence (torture and killings), as opposed to more conventional forms of repression (restrictions on speech and association)? A voluminous literature addresses the causes and dynamics of state repression. Whereas large-N studies explain repressive activities as proportional responses to the challenges governments face, historical work reveals instances of disproportionate repression. This literature, moreover, is inconclusive regarding the effects of communist and military regimes on violations of physical integrity rights. Another shortcoming of current work is that different types of repression are modeled separately. I distinguish between oppression (restrictions on speech), repression (the use of beatings, arrests, and trials to restrain the rights of assembly and association), and state terrorism (when governments intimidate political opponents using extrajudicial violence). I examine the relationships among them in a multivariate regression framework from 1952 to 2010. My analysis reveals that communist dictatorships repress the freedoms of expression, travel, and association, whereas military dictatorships engage in extrajudicial violence. My study contributes to the literature by providing an institutional account of why tactics of repression differ between these two political systems, and by considering the effects of temporal lags, endogeneity, and diffusion processes on state repression.