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Human Rights

Due to the instability of anocratic regimes, human rights violations are significantly higher within anocracies than democratic regimes. According to Maplecroft’s 2014 Human Rights Risk Atlas, eight of the top ten worst human rights violating countries are anocracies. In addition, the report categorized every current anocracy as “at risk” or at “extreme risk” of human rights offenses.

The high correlation between anocratic regimes and human rights abuses denotes the nonlinear progression in a country’s transition from an autocracy to a democracy. Generally, human rights violations substantially decrease when a certain threshold of full democracy is reached. However, human rights abuses tend to remain the same, or even increase, as countries move from an autocratic to an anocratic regime.

During the revolutions of the Arab Spring, Libya, Egypt, Yemen, all made relative progress towards more democratic regimes. With many of the authoritarian practices of their governments remaining, the states currently fall under the category of anocracies. They are also listed as some of the most extreme human rights violating countries in the world. These violations include, but are not limited to, torture, police brutality, slavery, discrimination, unfair trials, and restricted freedom of expression. Research has shown that political protests, such as those that occurred during the Arab Spring, generally lead to an increase in human right violations as the existing government tries to retain power and influence over governmental opposition. Therefore, transitioning governments tend to have high levels of human rights abuses.

In their annual Freedom in the World report, Freedom House scored state’s violations of civil liberties on a seven-point scale, with a score of seven representing the highest percentage of violations.Freedom House defined civil liberty violations as the infringement of freedom of expression, associational and organizational rights, rule of law, and individual rights. While most consolidated democracies received scores of one, almost all anocracies were scored between four and six, due to the high percentage of civil liberties violations within most anocratic regimes.

Violence

Statistics show that anocracies are ten times more likely to experience intrastate conflict than democracies, and twice as likely as autocracies. One explanation for the increase in violence and conflict within anocracies is a theory known as More Murder in the Middle (MMM). The theory argues that the unstable characteristics of anocratic regimes, which include the presence of divided elites, inequality, and violent challengers who threaten the legitimacy of the current social order, cause governing elite to resort to political repression or state terror at a much higher rate than democratic or authoritarian regimes. This leads to high levels of what are termed "life-integrity violations" which include state-sponsored genocide, extrajudicial executions, and torture.

State life-integrity violations can be categorized as acts of state-terror.Acts of terrorism by both governmental and outside groups are generally higher in transitioning, anocratic, governments than in either democratic or authoritarian regimes.Harvard Public Policy Professor Alberto Abadie argues that the tight control of authoritarian regime is likely to discourage terrorist activities within the state. However, without the stability of a clear authoritarian rule or a consolidated democracy, anocracies are more open and susceptible to terrorist attacks. He notes that in Iraq, and previously in Spain and Russia, transitions from an authoritarian regime to a democracy were accompanied by temporary increases in terrorism. According to the Political terror scale (PTS ), a data set which ranks state sponsored violence on a five-point scale, almost every anocracy is ranked as having a score between three and five. On the scale, a score of three indicates a state where "there is extensive political imprisonment, or a recent history of such imprisonment. Execution or other political murders and brutality may be common. Unlimited detention, with or without a trial, for political views is accepted." States are ranked as a four when,"civil and political rights violations have expanded to large numbers of the population. Murders, disappearances,and torture are a common part of life. In spite of its generality, on this level terror affects those who interest themselves in politics or ideas." Scores of five are given to states where, "terror has expanded to the whole population. The leaders of these societies place no limits on the means or thoroughness with which they pursue personal or ideological goals."While only eleven states were given scores of five in the 2012 Political Terror Scale report, four of those states, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Eritrea, Somalia, and Sudan, were classified by the Polity data series as anocracies.