While research into why repression/human rights violation goes up or down has thrived over the past 50 years, essentially no effort has been made to examine what stops this behavior once under way – especially activity that is large-scale as well as violent. To address this topic, we put forward the idea of a repressive spell (similar to that in the study of war, civil war, and terrorism) and a new theoretical framework that conceptualizes repression as a sticky process that is unlikely to terminate unless it is disturbed in some manner. Such an orientation is important because it leads us to conclude that disturbance is more likely to happen under situations of democratization compared to any of the factors typically highlighted in the literature and relevant policy community. Investigating a new database regarding 239 large-scale repression spells from 1976 to 2006, we find that democratization is associated with spell-termination and there is little systematic pacifying influence from anything else. Additionally, we find that nonviolent movements for change principally drive democratization but that these movements have little direct impact on state repression spells in and of themselves.

虽然在过去 50 年中，关于为什么镇压/侵犯人权行为上升或下降的研究蓬勃发展，但基本上没有努力研究是什么阻止了这种行为一旦开始——尤其是大规模和暴力的活动。为了解决这个问题，我们提出了压制咒语的概念（类似于战争、内战和恐怖主义的研究）和一个新的理论框架，将压制概念化为一个粘性过程，除非它是不可能终止的以某种方式受到干扰。这种定位很重要，因为它使我们得出结论，与文献和相关政策界通常强调的任何因素相比，在民主化的情况下更可能发生骚乱。调查一个关于 1976 年至 2006 年 239 次大规模镇压咒语的新数据库，我们发现民主化与咒语终止有关，而其他任何东西几乎没有系统性的安抚影响。此外，我们发现非暴力变革运动主要推动民主化，但这些运动对国家镇压本身和本身几乎没有直接影响。