Explaining disappearances as a tool of political terror
| Published date | 01 June 2019 |
| Date | 01 June 2019 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0192512118764410 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0192512118764410
International Political Science Review
2019, Vol. 40(3) 437 –452
© The Author(s) 2018
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/0192512118764410
journals.sagepub.com/home/ips
Explaining disappearances
as a tool of political terror
Paloma Aguilar
Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Spain
Iosif Kovras
City, University of London, UK
Abstract
Despite the widespread use of disappearances as a central tool of terror in recent decades, little is known
about the emergence of the phenomenon or its underlying rationale. We argue that growing international
accountability norms, coupled with the improved quality of reporting human rights abuses, paradoxically
reshaped the repressive strategies of certain regimes and pushed them to deploy more clandestine
and extrajudicial forms of repression, predominantly disappearances. We also explore the timing of
disappearances: when a state decides to deploy a particular instrument of terror can greatly benefit our
understanding of why it was used. We show that repressive regimes tend to use disappearances in the
first period after a coup, taking advantage of the general confusion and opacity to secure strategic benefits
and protect the regime from external scrutiny and future accountability. Our findings contribute to the
growing literature on human rights and political repression by highlighting an ‘unintended consequence’ of
international accountability norms: repressive regimes turn to clandestine crimes.
Keywords
Enforced disappearances, human rights, international accountability norms, missing persons, state
repression, unintended consequences.
Introduction
By abducting, secretly executing, and hiding the remains of their victims, perpetrators of enforced
dissappearances have three main aims. First, and most obviously, they want to eliminate real or
perceived enemies. Second, they seek to spread a unique form of terror, trapping the affected
families in a state of ‘ambiguous loss’ and paralyzing the broader society (Boss, 2006). Third, by
Corresponding author:
Iosif Kovras, Department of International Politics, City, University of London, Northampton Square, London,
EC1V 0HB, UK.
Email: Iosif.Kovras@city.ac.uk
764410IPS0010.1177/0192512118764410International Political Science ReviewAguilar and Kovras
research-article2018
Article
438 International Political Science Review 40(3)
hiding the body and concealing the crime, they hope to deny its commission and avoid the conse-
quent criminal charges. According to a recent report of the UN Working Group on Enforced or
Involuntary Disappearances, 91 states face the problem of enforced disappearances (United
Nations, 2017).
In what follows, we highlight the gaps in the relevant literature and articulate our contribution.
We then explore the historical, ideational and normative causes of disappearances. We show how
the ‘justice cascade’ (Sikkink, 2011) of the late 20th century, coupled with the improved quality of
reporting human rights abuses, paradoxically reshaped the repressive strategies of certain states,
pushing them to deploy more clandestine forms of repression, such as disappearances. Next, we
shed light on the rationale behind the timing of disappearances by drawing on the comparative
experience of Greece and two of the most prominent cases in Latin America, Chile and Argentina,
as ‘crucial cases’ (Eckstein, 2000). Finally, we conclude by discussing the unforeseen impact of
post-WWII international accountability norms on shaping the repertoire of political repression. We
show how concerns over future accountability ‘pushed’ authoritarian leaders to deploy novel extra-
judicial and clandestine forms of repression, like disappearances.
Theoretical and empirical gaps in the literature on political
violence and state repression
A number of accounts engage explicitly with the problem of enforced disappearances and provide
detailed analyses of various aspects of the crime, including the enduring trauma of the relatives
(Sant Cassia, 2005), or the mobilization of the relatives, including the well-known case of the
Mothers and Grandmothers in Argentina (Arditti, 1999). Others offer a systematic analysis of the
historical, social and political conditions (Brysk, 1994; Robben, 2005). However, most are based
on ethnographic research into a single or a couple of countries, making no attempt to identify the
historical and ideational factors that enabled the crime to be diffused more widely.
Legal scholars have paid particular attention to the crime of enforced disappearances (Kyriakou,
2012; Scovazzi and Citroni, 2007). However, most legal analyses fall into two categories: either
they simply describe the evolution of the legal framework, or they assess the effectiveness of states
in prosecuting perpetrators. Commencing from a deontological standpoint, most focus on the duty
to punish, failing to explore the other side of the equation, namely how legal and normative bound-
aries affect the repertoire of violence deployed by repressive regimes. In essence, many legal
accounts, by perceiving violence as the exception to an otherwise peaceful society, fail to appreci-
ate the political rationale of repression and the strategic considerations behind the choice of a
specific tool. Consequently, little emphasis has been placed on the impact of international law on
the various repertoires of violence.
Political scientists have taken significant steps towards providing robust theoretical explana-
tions of the ‘logic of violence’, accounting for the presence or absence of selective versus indis-
criminate violence, the duration of conflict, and/or the relevance of institutions in times of conflict
(Kalyvas, 2006). However, the objective of this fertile line of research is to offer a holistic theory
of violence in civil wars. It does not focus on separate practices, in particular disappearances. To
be sure, systematic attention has been given to which conditions cause contending groups to use
specific forms of violence against civilians (Balcells and Kalyvas, 2014; Downes, 2007), but with-
out explaining the use of disappearances and politically motivated abductions as the preferred
instrument of violence.
Even more importantly, this rationalist line of thought is based on the assumption that ‘causal
structures are uniform through time’ (Sewell, 1996: 263) and pays scant heed to variations in state
repression across time. Determining why specific crimes gain prominence in specific historical
To continue reading
Request your trial