U.S. non-invasion troops deployed abroad often try to promote greater respect for human rights in the host country. The host country, having an incentive to retain the troop presence, may choose to comply with these requests. We argue that this effect will not be at play in states with high security salience for the United States (for which the U.S. may not be able to credibly threaten to remove the troops). In these cases, U.S. deployments will provide the leader with security from both internal and external threats that is independent of the local population’s support for the leader. Host state leaders thus become less reliant on (and potentially less responsive to) their local populations, which in turn may lead to increased human rights violations. In this paper, we use data on both US troop deployments abroad and on human rights violations to test these arguments from 1982 to 2005. Please, click here to download the paper.

Sam R. Bell is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Kansas State University. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from Binghamton University in May 2009. He received his B.A. from the State University of New York at Albany. Sam’s research focuses on the role that information flows and governmental transparency play in both domestic and interstate conflict processes. His work has appeared in Political Research Quarterly and he has forthcoming work in the Journal of Politics. He is currently working on research examining the political and economic determinants and consequences of governmental transparency.

Lunch will be provided at the seminar.