Political terror scale
Political Terror Scale is a yearly measure of state inflicted political terror. It was developed in the early 1980s by researchers at Purdue University and is currently managed by Mark Gibney of the University of North Carolina at Asheville.
The Political Terror Scale is a yearly measure of terror inflicted upon a population. "Terror" is defined as state terror, or violations of physical and personal integrity rights carried out by the state or its agents. Examples of political terror include extrajudicial killings, torture, disappearances, and political imprisonment.
Originally, only 59 countries were coded for within the database between 1976 and 1983. In 1984, Mark Gibney took over as manager of the database and expanded the list of countries coded to 180 and the range of years to the most recent years available (currently 2012).
The Political Terror Scale uses three sources to code each country: The State Department's Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, the Annual Report from Amnesty International and most recently the World Report from Human Rights Watch.
The database can be viewed and downloaded from its website.
The Political Terror Scale is a five-point fixed scale.
The scale is based on the assessment of violence along three dimensions:scope, intensity, and range. Scope is the type of violence carried out by the state, Intensity refers to the frequency at which the state employs a given type of violence, and Range is the portion of the population targeted for abuse (can also be thought of as the selectivity of violence).
The principle researchers consist of professors from several universities.
Coding is also supplemented by undergraduate and graduate students from several universities. Research assistants for the 2012-2013 year are: Daniel Arnon, Gray Barrett, Minori Hinds, and Kelsey Tavares of the University of North Carolina at Asheville, Alexander Liffiton and Rachel Olson of Arizona State University, Max Scott of the London School of Economics, and Shea Streeter, a recent graduate of the University of Notre Dame.
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