Better the Devil You Know? Autocracy, State Failure, and Human Rights

This paper tests an essential Hobbesian claim on order and the state of nature by asking: are human rights systematically worse under a stable autocrat or in a failed autocracy? With the rising incidence of autocratic failure, it is important to know exactly how detrimental failures are to human rights. This paper uses currently available data to compare physical integrity rights under periods of autocratic failure to the same rights under autocratic stability, concluding that physical integrity rights are systematically far worse in failed autocracies. The absence of central authority appears to be the root cause behind this difference, though the proximate cause seems to lie firmly with warring factions that develop in light of that absence