This study demonstrates that the common assumption that democratic countries effectively limit human rights abuse is simply wrong, and that its widely accepted theory of what drives human rights violations accounts for only a small part of these abuses at best.

Peter Haschke is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of North Carolina at Asheville, USA.

1. The Not-So-Peaceful Domestic Democratic Peace 2. Approaches to the Study of Physical Integrity Rights Violations 3. The Domestic Democratic Peace: A First Cut 4. The Standard Repression Model: A Second Cut 5. A First Principle: Contact 6. Discriminating Among the Alternatives 7. Political and Non-Political Violations 8. Mechanisms of Non-Repressive Violations 9. Conclusion