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Security Forces and Sexual Violence: A Cross-National Analysis of a Principal

Agent Argument
Christopher K. Butler, Tali Gluch and Neil J. Mitchell
Journal of Peace Research 2007 44: 669
DOI: 10.1177/0022343307082058

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 2007 Journal of Peace Research,
vol. 44, no. 6, 2007, pp. 669687
Sage Publications (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi
and Singapore) http://jpr.sagepub.com
DOI 10.1177/0022343307082058

Security Forces and Sexual Violence: A Cross-

National Analysis of a PrincipalAgent Argument*
CHRISTOPHER K. BUTLER, TALI GLUCH
Department of Political Science, University of New Mexico

N E I L J . M I TC H E L L
Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Aberdeen

This article investigates sexual violence committed by government security forces. It focuses on the issue
of delegation. It uses principalagent logic to understand sexual violence committed by these forces and
to set up a cross-national empirical analysis. The article provides an approach to measuring the amount
of agent discretion in a political system and an analysis of new cross-national data on the incidence of
rape and sexual violence committed by police and security forces. It is argued that sexual violence is a
category of human rights violation that is more likely to be attributable to the selfish motivations of
agents, and it is an act that is likely to be hidden. This article identifies the conditions under which
these acts are most likely to occur as conditions of conflict, system-wide slack bureaucratic control, and
where there are constraints on information and organization. The theoretical argument makes sense of
earlier findings in the human rights literature, such as the importance of democracy and conflict, while
directing attention to motivations, accountability, and, for the first time in systematic analyses of human
rights, to the particular issue of sexual violence. The use of cross-national data on the incidence of sexual
violence for the year 2003 provides preliminary support for the theoretical argument. After controlling
for factors likely to increase the incidence of sexual violence, such as military size and ethnic fraction-
alization, it is found that, where agents are more accountable and subject to tighter control, sexual vio-
lence is less likely. Finally, the article points to the importance of additional data collection over time,
consistent with other human rights and conflict datasets, and draws out some policy implications follow-
ing from the theoretical argument and analysis.

Introduction presence or absence of democracy. Those who

approach political violence as a choice focus
This article examines the issue of delegation
more on the strategic interactions, for
in the implementation of violence. Earlier
example the level of threat presented by
research in the conflict and human rights
the opposition, and less on the motivation
areas has tended to examine structural or
of those who carry out the violence. The
institutional factors. These factors include
purpose of this article is to show that violence,
ethnic fragmentation, economic develop-
and notably sexual violence, may be its own
ment, warfare, geographical terrain, or the
reward for agents; that agents may misuse the
power and authority attached to their public
* Thanks to the editor and the reviewers for their helpful com-
office to extract additional benefits; and that,
ments and suggestions. The data used in this article were ana-
lyzed using Stata 9.2 and can be found at http://www.prio. in order to understand the use of violence
no/jpr/datasets. Correspondence: n.mitchell@abdn.ac.uk. and repression by the state, the interaction

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670 jour nal of P E A C E R E S E A RC H
between principal and agent is a critical
relationship.1 The article argues that agents
seeking private goods influence the choice,
level, and type of violence, and that the way
principals and agents interact is central to our
understanding of political violence, including
the perpetration of sexual violence by govern-
ment or security forces.
While the leader is formally in charge,
principalagent logic holds that the agents
superior information and selfish natures
loosen control. This logic draws attention to
the potential for conflicting goals between
principals and agents, and, although the prin-
cipal is supposed to be in control, it draws
attention to the advantages that the agent
enjoys over the principal (Arrow, 1985).
Entrusting the task to others creates an oppor-
tunity for the agents own selfish and hidden
actions it creates a moral hazard. The selfish
agent prefers shirking to working for example
(Brehm & Gates, 1997). Additionally, the prin-
cipal is likely to encounter adverse selection in
recruiting agents where individuals volunteer
for service with characteristics and tastes
potentially harmful to the principals mission,
comparable to an insurance company receiv-
ing applications from bad risks. In the rela-
tionship with the self-interested agent, the
principal is likely to be at an information dis-
advantage about the policy area and about the
extent of the agents selfish character and
actions. The size of the information disad-
vantage affects the ability of the principal to
control the agent. Economists and political
scientists have applied this logic and the
assumptions of superior information and
selfish actions on the part of agents to the
behavior of bureaucracies (Banks &
Weingast, 1992; Meier, 1993), including the
use of unnecessary force by police officers in
1
See, for example, Bawn (1995) and Huber & McCarty
(2004) for formal arguments, and Brehm & Gates (1997)
and Waterman, Rouse & Wright (2004) for empirical
analysis of the principalagent relationship. See Mitchell
(2004) for this theoretical argument applied to human
rights violations in three historical cases.
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volume 44 / number 6 / november 2007
the United States (Brehm & Gates, 1997).
With a comparative research design, this
article aims to show that the issue of delega-
tion is equally important to our understand-
ing bureaucracies that supply violence and
the choice among types of repression imposed
by government forces. What should be clear
and what gives impetus for this article is that
not all security forces are alike, nor all con-
flicts, as Wood (2004, 2006) makes clear in
her pioneering comparative work on sexual
violence. They differ in the quality of recruits
selected, in the degree of discipline and
control exercised over agents, and in the
frequency of sexual violence.
If this logic applies as it does in other
policy areas, some of these agents will misuse
their operational knowledge, their uniform,
and government resources for their own
private benefit. Specifically, what are the
likely private goods of the agents? What evi-
dence is there that the independent selfish
activity of agents is contributing importantly
to levels of repression? How do we use this
logic to combat violence? This article pro-
vides evidence of the agents impact on the
level of violence by developing an approach
to collecting and analysing cross-national
data on the incidence of sexual violence com-
mitted by government forces. There is an
accumulation of research on the use of sexual
violence by government and security forces
and on the broader issue of women and the
military and womens rights (Apodaca, 2000;
Arat, 2002; Beevor, 2002; Brownmiller, 1975;
Chang, 1997; Enloe, 1983, 2000; Goldstein,
2001; Henderson, 2004; Niarchos, 1995;
Walzer, 1977; Wood, 2004). There is an
empirical analysis of government responses
to sexual violence (see Weldon, 2002), but,
to our knowledge, there are no large-N cross-
national empirical analyses of sexual violence
committed by governments security forces.
Finally, the article points to policy implica-
tions and priorities consistent with this
theoretical approach.
 Christopher K. Butler et al.
The Agents Motive
The concepts of principal and agent identify
the key policy participants. These concepts
imply goal variance, where agents have goals
independent of those of the principal, and
they imply information asymmetry, where
agents have an information advantage over
the principal. Goal variance and information
asymmetry may lead to the delivery of a policy
in a way or in an amount different from what
is ordered by the leaders. So, what are the
selfish motivations of agents in security forces?
They may use violence to satisfy their
desire for revenge or to extract loot, or they
seek gratification in the violence itself. In the
final days of the British Mandate, British sol-
diers left four Jewish Haganah soldiers to be
killed by Arabs, seeking revenge for the
killing of some of their own (Morris, 1999:
197). Torture is reportedly common in
Indian prisons, in part because it is used to
extract payments from prisoners or their rel-
atives (Rothman & Neier, 1991). Yet, the
most agent-centered of these acts is rape and
sexual violence, a form of torture in interna-
tional human rights law. It is committed by
security and police forces in both peacetime
and during conflict. Sexual violence is the
most likely category of violent behavior to
indicate a principalagent problem, as it is
more immediately attributable to selfish
rather than strategic motivations, although
the latter are not precluded.
Identifying the motivation as agent-
centered or selfish does not mean that it is
simple. The literature suggests that the self-
ishness of the agents may have a variety of
dimensions. Brownmiller (1975: 256), for
whom all rape is an exercise in power, pro-
vides evidence from the Vietnam War and
elsewhere that suggests the ordinariness of
rape, that getting along with peers was a strong
motivation, noting the fear of ridicule if you
did not go along (Brownmiller, 1975: 102).
Browning (1998: 168) identifies similar
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S E C U R I T Y F O RC E S AND SEXUAL VIOLENCE 671
psychological pressures in his examination of
the actions of a German police battalion in
Poland. He describes a nucleus of enthusias-
tic killers. Most of the rest went along, also
fearing abuse about their manhood and
bravery if they did not participate (Browning,
1998: 66). Whether seeking sex, power, peer
ingratiation, or avoiding ridicule, the agent
perceives some personal gain and exercises the
power vested in him by the state in order to
realize this gain. The victims reluctance to
report, a reluctance that is specifically and
acutely associated with sexual violence, is a
factor that increases the chances of this type of
hidden action by agents. Because of the general
public sensitivity to the use of political violence
and human rights violations, and the disincli-
nation of leaders or principals to audit security
agencies, problems of information asymmetry
may be particularly severe in this policy area.
These private motives are robust to the
passage of time and to cultural and ideolog-
ical variance. In World War II, not just
German soldiers but also Red Army soldiers
(Beevor, 2002) and Japanese soldiers
(Chang, 1997) routinely committed sexual
violence. There are also reports of sexual vio-
lence by Allied soldiers (Silone, 1961: 189;
Walzer, 1977: 133) and, to take a recent
example, by US soldiers in the conflict in
Iraq. Five soldiers from the United States
101st Airborne Division are accused of
raping an Iraqi girl aged 14 and then killing
her, her parents, and her six-year-old sister
in March 2006. The soldiers are being
prosecuted and their actions embarrassed
the American military and complicated
relations with the Iraqi authorities (Semple,
2006). While this case caught the headlines,
a recent United Nations report (2006a: 45)
has identified violence against women as a
widespread problem: Violence against
women has been reported from conflict or
post-conflict situations in many countries or
areas including Afghanistan, Burundi,
Chad, Colombia, Cte dIvoire, Democratic
672 jour nal of P E A C E R E S E A RC H
Republic of the Congo, Liberia, Peru,
Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Chechnya/Russian
Federation, Darfur, Sudan, northern Uganda,
and the former Yugoslavia. The report con-
centrates on conflict or post-conflict condi-
tions, yet sexual violence by security forces is
not limited to combatants in the conflict.
In the Democratic Republic of the Congo,
UN peacekeepers from Pakistan, Uruguay,
Morocco, Tunisia, South Africa, and Nepal are
alleged to have committed rape, sexual
exploitation, and abuse of minors (Lynch,
2004). These activities are in addition to the
already very high levels of sexual violence per-
petrated by combatants in the civil war in that
country. In addressing the problem, the United
Nations has investigated 296 peacekeepers
(United Nations, 2006b). In Somalia in
199394, it was Belgian and Italian peacekeep-
ers (Amnesty International, 2004: 55) that were
reported to have committed sexual violence. At
the United States Air Force Academy, the
Pentagons inspector general found that, over a
ten-year period, sexual assault was reported over
150 times and that the overall root cause of
sexual assault problem at the Air Force
Academy was the failure of successive chains of
command over the past ten years to acknowl-
edge the severity of the problem (Shanker,
2004). Acknowledging the severity of the
problem is the first step to establishing control.
This admittedly selective presentation of
evidence suggests that the agents hidden
actions vary in extent and severity, but have
been a problem for security forces over time
and across cultures. The challenge is how to
begin to investigate the agents contribution
to violence more systematically. Security
forces will differ in the degree of control and
discipline, and the empirical task of this
article is to examine how variation in control,
or the degree of slack given agents, influences
the incidence of sexual violence. For this
analysis, we assume governments lose control
as opposed to employing the strategic cyni-
cism of refusing to control.
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volume 44 / number 6 / november 2007
Measuring and Modeling the
Agents Use of Sexual Violence
Data on sexual violence and rape are notori-
ously hard to collect. The perpetrator gener-
ally hides from accountability, and the victim
hides from the double harm of social humili-
ation. Unfortunately, the existing measures of
human rights violations are too aggregate to
be useful for our analysis.2 Even Hendersons
(2004) exploratory research aggregates multi-
ple dimensions (harassment, provision for
womens hygiene, virginity exams, hostage
taking, absence of female guards, threats of
rape, rape, forced prostitution) to one scale.
Our approach is to adopt the methods used
to construct the Political Terror Scale (Gibney
& Dalton, 1996; Hathaway, 2002; Lopez &
Stohl, 1992; Poe & Tate, 1994) with a spe-
cific focus on the use of sexual violence com-
mitted by security forces. The term security
forces refers to both militaries and govern-
ment-supported militia, as well as police and
prison guards.
Rape and sexual violence are defined in
international law as follows:
While rape has been defined in certain
national jurisdictions as non-consensual inter-
course, variations on the act of rape may
include acts which involve the insertion of
objects and/or the use of bodily orifices not
considered to be intrinsically sexual. The
Chamber defines rape as a physical invasion of
a sexual nature, committed on a person under
circumstances which are coercive. Sexual vio-
lence, which includes rape, is considered to be
any act of a sexual nature which is committed
on a person under circumstances which are
coercive. (International Tribunal for Rwanda,
quoted in Askin, 1999: 109)
Both Amnesty International and the US
Department of State annual country reports
provide discussion of rape and sexual violence,
which includes sexual assault and abuse, by
government agents. These are the standard
2 See McCormick & Mitchell (1997) for the argument for
disaggregating measures of human rights violations.
 Christopher K. Butler et al.
sources for human rights violations data that
have been used in earlier research, and, at least
since the end of the Cold War, they are quite
consistent (Poe, Carey & Vazquez, 2001). As
the US Department of State reports provide
more detailed and comprehensive coverage, we
relied on these reports.3 We collected data for
163 countries for 2003 and developed a five-
point ordinal scale to measure the level of rape
and sexual violence by government security
forces, ranging from 0, indicating the lowest
incidence to 4, indicating the highest inci-
dence. A 0 was assigned to countries where
there was no mention of sexual violence by
government forces. This scale represents an
ordinal scale where 0 represents the value
below 1, but not necessarily that there were no
actual cases of sexual violence. The Department
of State reports had substantially fewer zero
values than the Amnesty International reports.
As with ordinary crime data, we anticipate that
the most likely error with these data is that they
undercount the frequency of sexual violence
and rape.4 Tables AI and AII in the appendix
provide a description of the scale and the score
coded for each country.
Our argument is that the incidence of
sexual violence by government forces is driven
by out-of-control agents. It is an undeniably
challenging task to measure the degree of slack
given agents in bureaucracies. We develop
3 In order to collect the information for the Department of
State, embassies monitor NGOs, media, government
officials, jurists, armed forces sources, academics, and other
sources. Within the Department of State, the Bureau of
Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor then corroborates
information with UN representatives, NGOs, and others.
Using this source, the United States is not included in the
analysis. When we compared the Department of State
reports with the Amnesty International country reports for
2003, we found that the widest discrepancies between the
two sources were for Myanmar and Colombia.
4 As we are analyzing just 2003 data, we examined that year
in relation to other years on the Political Terror Scale (Gibney
& Dalton, 1996) to provide some context. The Department
of State PTS scores for 2003 were lower than 2002 but higher
than the historical average (19802004). The correlation
between the PTS and the measure of sexual violence was 0.63
for 2003 strong enough to increase confidence in the sexual
violence index but not so strong as to diminish its uniqueness.
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S E C U R I T Y F O RC E S AND SEXUAL VIOLENCE 673
three agency variables that are expected to
lower levels of sexual violence if the theoreti-
cal focus on principalagent logic is to be sus-
tained empirically. First, where organizations
can form to monitor human rights violations,
where information critical of government
officials compensates for information asym-
metries, and where elected officials may be
held accountable for the activity of their
agents, then we expect there to be a lower like-
lihood of sexual violence by security forces.
The formation of advocacy and interest
groups is stimulated by public policies, and
these organizations then assume the costs
of auditing and monitoring public policies.
These organizations form more or less easily
across different policy areas and political
systems, and, as Banks & Weingast (1992)
observe, the cost of policy monitoring and
auditing varies. It is plausible that the costs of
establishing even private auditing mechanisms
over agencies engaged in human rights vio-
lations will tend to be higher. Those that care
most about the use of violence may encounter
an intimidating environment and severe prob-
lems in collective action and gathering and
reporting information about repression. In
turn, repressive agencies can claim to be
working for the most vital interest of the state
and safeguarding national security and sur-
vival, which makes those who raise questions
concerning these agencies activities highly
vulnerable to counter-questions about their
loyalties.
Self-regulating mechanisms for auditing the
bureaucracies of repression are most likely to
develop where there are rights to free organiz-
ation and association and free and critical
media, which provides a further agency-based
theoretical foundation for the finding of a cor-
relation between lower human rights violations
and democracies in the quantitative analysis of
human rights violations (Beer & Mitchell,
2004; Davenport & Armstrong, 2004; Poe &
Tate, 1994; Zakaria, 2003). Repression gener-
ates at least latent interest communities and
674 jour nal of P E A C E R E S E A RC H
networks. But we know, from the example of
the mothers of the disappeared during the dirty
war in Argentina, the extraordinary courage it
takes to organize and become active (see Brysk,
1994). In democracies, these latent interest
communities, by using democratic rights and
ideas of democratic legitimacy, have a better
chance of achieving organizational form. An
example of this sort of organization would be
BTselem, a major human rights organization
that monitors the IsraeliPalestinian conflict.
In contrast, a Russian court shut down the
RussianChechen Friendship Society, a human
rights monitoring organization (Amnesty Inter-
national, 2006). As a result of the higher infor-
mation flows in democracy, the oversight and
accountability of agents increases, and we
expect that, where there is a high level of
democracy, there will be a low level of sexual
violence. This expectation conforms to the
findings of more general analyses of human
rights violations (Davenport & Armstrong,
2004; Hathaway, 2002; Henderson, 1991;
Moore, 2000; Poe & Tate, 1994; Poe, Tate &
Keith, 1999) and alternative theoretical argu-
ments linking democracy to less repression,
perhaps pointing to the effect of democratic
institutions in lowering the level of opposition
threat or in disseminating democratic values.
Consistent with these studies, we use Polity IV
regime scores for 2003 (Marshall & Jaggers,
2002) to measure the level of democracy in a
political system. We also examine a categorical
measure of democracy (Polity greater than 7)
to address the more recent claim (Davenport
& Armstrong, 2004) that only full democra-
cies have a beneficial impact on human rights
violations.
Second, higher levels of economic
development, measured by GNI per capita
(in thousands) for 2003 (World Bank, 2004),
permit better compensation of public officials
and in the absence of reliable comparative
data on wages and salaries this measure has
been used as the best available measure of
public sector wages (Montinola & Jackman,
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volume 44 / number 6 / november 2007
2002: 154). As Montinola & Jackman state
(2002: 150): If public officials are well paid,
they will value their positions more highly
and will have fewer incentives to jeopardize
those positions. We extend this argument
to officials in security forces and expect that
better pay results in better control. Not only
will those in well-paid positions value the
positions more highly, but better pay repre-
sents a means to address the problem of
adverse selection and minimize the recruit-
ment of bad risks.
As with democracy, there are other theor-
etical arguments for a relationship between
economic development and low levels of
human rights violations generally. The exist-
ence of these alternative theoretical arguments
makes the empirical test of economic develop-
ment and democracy critical to, but not deci-
sive for, a principalagent argument. If we
found no relationship between these variables
and the dependent variable, it would be
evidence against our theoretical argument.
Therefore, the variables are important to the
analysis. Yet, in this rich theoretical context,
finding a relationship does not help sort bet-
ween the various theoretical interpretations. In
order to capture more directly the amount of
discipline and control in a political system, for
our third agency variable we use the degree to
which public officials are perceived to use their
offices for private financial gain.
Financial corruption deals with the finan-
cial rewards that public officials extract from
performing or not performing their duties.
High levels of overall financial corruption
reflect a general absence of monitoring,
accountability, and control in a political
system and a high degree of agent discretion
to pursue hidden actions. It is plausible that
this high degree of agent discretion applies to
security forces as it does to other public
bureaucracies. Where there is systemic finan-
cial corruption indicating slack bureaucratic
control, members of security forces and
police forces will perceive increased opportu-
 Christopher K. Butler et al.
nities and a more favorable balance of incen-
tives to pursue hidden actions. For some of
these agents, the expectation of increased
opportunities for hidden action will translate
into an increased likelihood of committing
sexual violence. Financial corruption is
measured by the World Banks Control of
Corruption index for 2002 (Kaufmann,
Kraay & Mastruzzi, 2005) and is based on
surveys of business executives and country
analysts perceptions.5 Perceived financial
corruption provides a general indicator of the
degree of slack given to agents by principals,
and this indicator is independent of the
reported incidence of sexual violence by
security forces. We therefore expect that
political systems with higher levels of hidden
activity in the form of financial corruption
also will have a higher likelihood of sexual
violence committed by security forces.
There are several other factors that are
likely to increase the incidence of sexual vio-
lence. These factors include the size of a
countrys military forces (in millions of troops
for 2001 the most recently available; see
Singer, Bremer & Stuckey, 1972), the degree
of ethnic fractionalization (Fearon, 2003),
and the level of conflict as coded by the
Uppsala/PRIO data for 2003 (Gleditsch et
al., 2002). As the size of military forces
increases, it is plausible that the difficulties of
control increase. It is also plausible that vio-
lence, including sexual violence, is more likely
when the victim is perceived as ethni-
cally distinct from the perpetrator. Changs
(1997) account of Japanese soldiers at
5 The World Banks Control of Corruption measure is one
of six governance research indicators, available for 162
countries from 1996 to 2002. Although a similar measure
of corruption is available from Transparency International
for 2003, it is available for only 130 countries. In order to
increase the number of observations, we chose to employ
the World Banks corruption measure for 2002. The two
measures are highly correlated at 0.97. Table AII in the
appendix provides a listing of cases with their Control of
Corruption score and our coding of sexual violence. Three
countries do not have a Control of Corruption score but
were coded for their level of sexual violence: Albania (0),
Belize (1), and the Solomon Islands (2).
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S E C U R I T Y F O RC E S AND SEXUAL VIOLENCE 675
Nanking emphasizes the importance placed
by Japanese soldiers on the inferiority of the
Chinese. Therefore, as a community becomes
more fractionalized along ethnic lines, there
is a greater likelihood of sexual violence.
Finally, conflict likely increases the oppor-
tunity for hidden actions and, therefore, the
likelihood of sexual violence by agents. Under
conflict conditions, agents may be in close
contact with the civilian population and
expect to hide their actions more easily and
victims may be even more disadvantaged in
informing on the perpetrators. Civil conflict
and civil war may also increase recruitment
problems and the risk of adverse selection.
Generally, empirical studies have identified a
positive relationship between civil war, mea-
sured as at least 1,000 battle-deaths a year,
and state repression (Burkhart, 2002;
Davenport & Armstrong, 2004; Harrelson-
Stephens & Callaway, 2003; Poe & Tate,
1994; Keith, 1999, 2002; Poe, Tate & Keith,
1999). Yet, recognizing that even lower levels
of violence could prompt increased govern-
ment use of violence (Gartner & Regan, 1996;
Moore, 2000), we also examine the lower
threshold of conflict as provided by the
Uppsala/PRIO database to investigate the
relationship between conflict and rape by
government security forces.
Empirical Analysis
We begin the empirical analysis with the cor-
relation matrix in Table I and draw attention
to some important features.6 First, the
highest absolute pair-wise correlation with
the dependent variable is with the World
Bank Control of Corruption score. This neg-
ative correlation is consistent with our
argument. In political systems where there is
little control over the selfish or hidden
6 The case of Iraq was dropped from all analyses, owing to
its status as an occupied country for much of 2003. The
Department of State report describes rape as routine under
the Saddam Hussein regime, but the discussion is not
limited to the year 2003.
676 jour nal of P E A C E R E S E A RC H volume 44 / number 6 / november 2007

actions of public officials in financial

1.000
0.743
Polity
score
matters, we also find those public officials
employed in security forces more likely to
GNI per commit sexual violence. Second, the other

1.000
0.395
0.501
capita
agency variables GNI per capita and
democracy are also related to the sexual
violence measure as expected. Third, it is
Corruption
Control of

important to note that there is a high corre-

(2002)

0.435
1.000
0.856

0.537
lation between Control of Corruption and
GNI per capita, and both of these variables
are quite highly correlated with the level of
Civil war

democracy (whether measured by the Polity

1.000
0.069
0.070
0.036
0.022
index or the categorical variable for Polity
greater than 7). We cannot disentangle the
causality issue with the single-year cross-
1.000
0.035
0.099
0.105
0.004
0.006
conflict
Civil

national data that we analyze here. However,

we will demonstrate that each of these three
variables reduces the level of sexual violence,
fractional-

consistent with the hypothesis that greater

0.121
1.000

0.143
0.353
0.379
0.190
0.295
ization
Ethnic

control over agents leads to better behavior

by those agents.
The factors that are hypothesized to
Geographic

worsen the prevalence of sexual violence are

0.176
1.000
0.001

0.118
0.002
0.012
0.034
0.023
size

the size of a countrys military forces, the

degree of ethnic fractionalization, and the
level of civil violence. The size of a countrys
military is highly correlated with its total
Population

0.035
1.000
0.430
0.010

0.430
0.059
0.066
0.039
0.036

population (0.83) and moderately correlated

with its geographic size (0.50). A countrys
population and geographic size are more
distant proxies for the number of govern-
personnel
Military

0.504

0.116
1.000
0.832

0.174

0.253
0.079
0.065
0.147
0.029
(2001)

ment agents whose behavior is being exam-

ined than is the size of its military. The
degree of ethnic fractionalization may be a
violence

0.431
0.230
0.259

0.214
0.225
0.221
0.196

0.373
0.409
0.253

factor making sexual violence worse to the

Sexual
Correlation Matrix of Variables

index

extent that government agents are more

likely to abuse individuals from other ethnic
groups. If this is the case, then a greater
Control of Corruption (2002)
Military personnel in millions

GNI per capita in thousands

degree of ethnic fractionalization creates

Population in thousands

more opportunities for such behavior.

Ethnic fractionalization
Geographic size in km2

Finally, we examine how the level of civil

violence affects the prevalence of sexual vio-
High democracy

lence. Given an armed rebellion between the

Civil conflict

Polity score

government and some rebel group (or

Civil war
(2001)
Table I.

groups), current levels of violence surround-

ing this rebellion can loosen the constraints

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 Christopher K. Butler et al. S E C U R I T Y F O RC E S AND SEXUAL VIOLENCE 677

Table II. Combined Effects Reducing Sexual government places on agents. Countering
Violence civil violence also increases the demand for
Model 1 recruits, resulting in the mobilization of
poorer quality agents. Either of these effects
Military personnel (2001) 0.70 0.056 of civil violence thus increases the likelihood
(0.36) of uncontrolled violence, including sexual
Ethnic fractionalization 0.24 0.582
violence. We examine civil conflict (having
(0.44)
Civil conflict 0.85 0.012 25 to 999 battle-dead in the current year)
(0.34) and civil war (having more than 999 battle-
Civil war 1.33 0.055 dead in the current year) as separate dichoto-
(0.70) mous variables. Thus, the base category is
CGDhigh 1.83 0.000 the absence of either of these categories of
(0.48) violence.
CGDlow 0.72 0.015
The factors that are hypothesized to lower
(0.30)
Cut point 1 0.25
the prevalence of sexual violence are Control of
Cut point 2 0.67 Corruption, GNI per capita, and democracy.
Cut point 3 1.31 We argue that high levels of all three agency
Cut point 4 2.87 variables place high constraints on government
Number of observations 145 agents, while low levels of all three variables
LR 2 (6) 58.31 imply few constraints on government agents.
Prob. > 2 0.000 To this end, we constructed two dummy vari-
Pseudo R2 0.17 ables to capture these populations. CGDhigh
Log likelihood 146.85 represents those cases (N = 31) that are in the
Value entries are coefficients and p-values with standard highest 33rd percentile on Control of
errors in parentheses. Corruption ( 0.2142), GNI per capita (
Figure 1. Demonstrating Combined Effects

100

90
Probability of outcome categories (%)

80

70

60

50

40

30

20

10

0
Lowest third on Base Highest third on
agency variables agency variables

Low level of sexual violence High level of sexual violence

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678 jour nal of P E A C E R E S E A RC H volume 44 / number 6 / november 2007

3.508), and the Polity index ( 8). CGDlow
represents those cases (N = 16) that are in the
lowest 33rd percentile on Transparency (
0.7300), GNI per capita ( 0.656), and the
Polity index ( 1). The remaining 98 cases in
the estimation have some other combination
of the three variables that makes it difficult to
say whether they are clearly at the high end or
clearly at the low end.
Table II presents the ordinal probit
estimation results using these two dummy
variables. The results show that being at one
extreme on all three agency variables clearly
produces an anticipated extreme effect in the
level of sexual violence. Of the other factors,
consistent with expectations, civil conflict is
positively and significantly related to the level
of sexual violence. The number of military
personnel is just insignificant, as is the civil
war variable. Ethnic fractionalization is not
significantly related to the level of sexual vio-
lence. Figure 1 presents some marginal effects
regarding this estimation, setting military size
and ethnic fractionalization at their means
and the conflict variables to their modal cate-
gory of zero. This figure shows more starkly
that being at the low end of Control of
Corruption, GNI per capita, and the Polity
index makes it much more likely that a
country will have a high level of sexual vio-
lence (categories 2, 3, or 4), while being at the
high end of these three agency variables makes
it almost certain that a country will have a low
level of sexual violence (categories 0 or 1).
Model 2 of Table III presents ordinal probit
estimation results for only the factors hypoth-

Table III. Independent Effects Reducing Sexual Violence

Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 5 Model 6

Military personnel (2001) 0.85 0.017 0.74 0.041 0.74 0.043 0.65 0.083 0.83 0.023
(0.36) (0.36) (0.37) (0.37) (0.37)
Ethnic fractionalization 1.01 0.011 0.42 0.325 0.36 0.411 0.67 0.113 0.70 0.099
(0.40) (0.43) (0.43) (0.42) (0.42)
Civil conflict 0.86 0.009 0.83 0.014 0.90 0.012 0.96 0.007 0.85 0.015
(0.33) (0.34) (0.36) (0.35) (0.35)
Civil war 1.27 0.065 1.32 0.062 1.53 0.043 1.57 0.083 1.51 0.089
(0.69) (0.71) (0.76) (0.90) (0.89)
Control of Corruption 0.73 0.000
(0.14)
GNI per capita 0.09 0.000
0.02
Polity score 0.07 0.000
(0.02)
High democracy 0.58 0.008
(0.22)
Cut point 1 0.82 0.68 0.11 0.43 0.45
Cut point 2 1.17 1.10 0.53 0.84 0.83
Cut point 3 1.74 1.74 1.15 1.49 1.44
Cut point 4 3.22 3.40 3.11 3.36 3.22
Number of observations 145 144 139 140 140
LR 2 (.) 26.44 56.89 47.96 41.22 30.35
Prob > 2 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000
Pseudo R2 0.08 0.16 0.14 0.12 0.09
Log likelihood 162.79 146.98 143.22 145.93 151.37

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 Christopher K. Butler et al.
esized to increase the level of sexual violence.
The results show that the size of the military,
the degree of ethnic fractionalization, and the
presence of civil conflict are indeed positive
predictors of the level of sexual violence when
not including agency variables. The presence
of a civil war just fails to achieve statistical
significance, but this is hardly surprising as
there are only three instances of this in our
cross-national data for 2003.
Models 3 through 6 show the results of
ordinal probit estimations examining one
agency variable at a time. Each of these
three agency variables acts as predicted, sig-
nificantly reducing the level of sexual vio-
lence after controlling for the positive
predictors from Model 2. The one addi-
tional consistent effect across these models
(and Model 1) is that ethnic fractionaliza-
tion remains insignificant.
The high pairwise correlations among the
three agency variables become apparent when
two or more are included in a given estimation.
Table AIII in the appendix examines all com-
binations of our agency variables that include
the Control of Corruption score. Control of
Corruption fails to achieve statistical signifi-
cance in just one of the five models tested and
performs better than economic development.
GNI per capita is not significant in any of the
models for which it is included. This may well
be indicative of a larger problem of high cor-
relations among the independent variables
in the human rights literature. While level
of economic development is invariably
included in models of human rights violations,
a number of studies report no statistically sig-
nificant relationship between economic
development and human rights violations.7
Similarly, while the Polity index measure is
consistently negative and significant, the High
7 In Burkhart (2002), GNP per capita is significant in 8 of
the 18 models tested. In Hathaway (2002), GNP per capita
is significant in 1 of the 8 models tested. In Richards, Gelleny
& Sacko (2001), it is not significant in the model tested.
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S E C U R I T Y F O RC E S AND SEXUAL VIOLENCE 679
Democracy categorical variable does not reach
significance.
Overall, the results of these analyses are
supportive of the theoretical argument and
the importance of including the contri-
butions of agents in explanations of the
frequency of sexual violence by government
security forces. A combination of electoral
accountability for those in charge of agents,
compensation levels for agents, and the
monitoring and transparency of agents
actions is likely to provide leverage in address-
ing the problems of slack within public
bureaucracies and notably within security
forces.
Discussion
Earlier research in the comparative analysis
of human rights violations identifies the eco-
nomic and political conditions associated
with violations and the strategic motives that
might lie behind such violations (Burkhart,
2002; Cingranelli & Richards, 1999;
Gartner & Regan, 1996; Harrelson-Stephens
& Callaway, 2003; Poe & Tate, 1994). But
there has not been attention to those who
carry out the violence. It has been assumed
that violence has only strategic purposes (for
a notable exception, see Kalyvas, 2006). The
evidence presented in this article suggests
that this assumption should itself be more
rigorously investigated, and its likely over-
simplification acknowledged, as we think
about ways to combat sexual violence.
Alternative measures of the control and disci-
pline of security forces and more extended
data on sexual violence will add confidence
to these findings.
While we note their preliminary nature, the
findings suggest that women are vulnerable
during armed conflicts and wartime, but also
more vulnerable in countries where there is a
low level of control over public officials. Security
forces are not all alike and differ in levels of disci-
pline and esprit de corps. To measure variation in
680 jour nal of P E A C E R E S E A RC H
the overall tightness of discipline of public
officials across political systems, we used a cor-
ruption measure, democracy, and level of eco-
nomic development. Higher corruption levels
likely raise expectations of opportunities for
hidden action among public officials, including
members of security forces. There is some
normative ambivalence toward financial cor-
ruption in the social science literature, and some
have argued that it may correct for or grease
bureaucratic interference with growth and effi-
ciency, and that there may be some tolerable
level of corruption (see Acemoglu & Verdier,
2000; Bardhan, 1997: 1322). The finding that
the level of financial corruption in a political
system is robustly associated with the extensive-
ness of sexual violence committed by policemen
and soldiers and the logic underlying this rela-
tionship suggest the prioritization of agencies for
increased monitoring and propitious recruit-
ment. The usefulness of this knowledge lies in
shifting attention away from economic or cul-
tural conditions that are not policy sensitive
within a meaningful time frame.
Even warfare is not an equal hell, at least
for women (Wood, 2004, 2006). A few con-
flicts, IsraelPalestine for example, or the
English Civil War (Mitchell, 2004), have a
low frequency of sexual violence. Some con-
flicts, on the other hand, have very high levels
of sexual violence, the Russian Civil War, for
example. We would note, in particular, that
ethnic fractionalization is plausibly connected
to high levels of sexual violence in some par-
ticular conflicts. In Burma/Myanmar, the
army is reported to use rape as a weapon of
war against particular ethnic groups:
In May 2002, the SHRF and Shan Womens
Action Network (SWAN) alleged that the
Burmese Army used rape as a systematic
weapon of war against the ethnic populations
in Shan State. The report described 173 inci-
dents of rape or sexual violence against 625
women and girls committed by soldiers from
52 military battalions between 1992 and
2001. (Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights,
and Labor, 2004: Burma)
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volume 44 / number 6 / november 2007
Yet, when we examine ethnic fractionaliza-
tion as a general factor in explaining levels of
sexual violence, it is not significant when
agency variables are included in the analysis.
The policy implication is that ethnically
divided societies are not irretrievably locked
into violent patterns of behavior. Focusing
on agents and the control issue shifts atten-
tion from ethnic, cultural, or even conflict
conditions to thinking about incentives and
enforceable codes of conduct that are
shaping agents decisions, and suggests that
the capacity for violence the definitional
resource of government requires leadership
and management like any other resource.
Principalagent logic usually implies two
types of intervention to limit the hidden
actions of agents. First, the government must
reduce the amount of goal variance. The
general analysis of bureaucracies suggests
that adequate compensation for officials is an
important tool in combating goal variance
and the problem of corruption (we note that
our analysis did not measure actual compen-
sation rates for security forces cross-nation-
ally, but used GNI per capita as a proxy).
Formal and empirical analyses of corruption
recognize the importance of agent compen-
sation. Financial compensation is a direct
response to bribery, the most general form of
corruption, and is part of the response to the
bureaucracy of repressions proclivity for
hidden violence. Better compensation
increases the value of the position, lowers the
incentive to extract payments from families
and victims with the threat of violence, and
improves recruitment.
The second type of intervention is to redress
the information asymmetry through moni-
toring. The particular difficulty with govern-
ment use of violence is that in this area agents
are particularly hard to monitor. In hard-to-
monitor policy areas, formal models of out-of-
control bureaucracies and corruption suggest,
again, that paying higher wages is the best choice
(Acemoglu & Verdier, 2000: 195). But, in the
 Christopher K. Butler et al.
use of violence, non-monetary rewards are at
stake. In other words, there is no substitute
for monitoring and accountability in this policy
area. While the expectation is that under
democracy, in addition to internal government
systems of auditing and monitoring, other
organizations and the media monitor public
policy delivery, including the delivery of repres-
sion. The increasing engagement of the interna-
tional system, through NGO activity and
through international law, is a positive develop-
ment in overcoming the inadequacies of
domestic monitoring and accountability and
information asymmetries that increase the
opportunities for hidden action (Keck &
Sikkink, 1998). In our analysis, we used a
measure of democracy as a measure for infor-
mation flow and accountability. Yet, we would
also note that an indicator of external moni-
toring, specifically whether the government
granted or restricted access to the International
Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to
monitor prison conditions, is consistent with
the analysis the worst offenders were more
likely to deny access. Of the worst offenders
(scores 2, 3, or 4), some 39% also denied access
to the Red Cross. This percentage falls to 17%
for the better performers (scores of 0 and 1), and
the difference is large enough to achieve statisti-
cal significance (2(1) = 9.14, p = 0.003).8
Finally, while again noting the impor-
tance of additional empirical data, to the
extent that we can attribute a substantial
amount of sexual violence to principalagent
problems, then a third and softer instru-
ment (see Arrow, 1985: 50) follows from this
theoretical argument. This instrument is to
8 The State Department country reports note whether there
are restrictions on the ICRCs access to prisoners. If we include
the access measure in the multivariate analysis in Model 1, the
access measure is not significant, and the results for the vari-
ables of theoretical interest are similar to those presented. The
access variable does achieve significance in some of the other
models where we examine the agency variables individually.
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S E C U R I T Y F O RC E S AND SEXUAL VIOLENCE 681
attend to the selection and value commit-
ments of agents. Only some of the agents
seek violent gratification, and encouraging,
recruiting, and training for the appropriate
norms among the members of the security
forces can isolate and contain these individ-
uals and increase the likelihood of self-moni-
toring among agents. Returning to the Iraq
rape case, the main defendant illustrates the
importance of selection. Recruitment pres-
sure increases the risks of adverse selection
and the odds of agents engaging in hidden
actions.
Greens case has helped to spur a closer look at
the Armys standards for recruitment and
training. Green enlisted and passed basic train-
ing at a time when the Army was under terrific
pressure to bring in new soldiers and had
relaxed its entry requirements. In 2005, about
the time Green was accepted, the Army raised
the limit on the so-called Category 4 recruits
it would allow, the designation for soldiers
with the lowest scores on its aptitude test.
(Greens score is not known.) The Army has
also been handing out more waivers includ-
ing case-by-case exceptions for criminal
offenses which increased by 3 percent last
year. (Childress & Hirsh, 2006)
The argument presented in this article points
to the costs of adverse selection and compro-
mising recruitment procedures. Discussing
these dimensions of the control problem in
the neutral language developed to under-
stand issues that insurance companies face is
analytically helpful, yet it must not inure us
to the devastating consequences that the
choice and control of agents have for indi-
vidual lives.
682 jour nal of P E A C E R E S E A RC H volume 44 / number 6 / november 2007

Appendix
Table AI. Measuring Sexual Violence by Security Forces
Level Description
0 No mention of rape, sexual assault or sexual abuse by security forces.
1 Isolated reports of rape, sexual assault or sexual abuse by security forces.
2 There were reports, there continued to be reports or some reports of rape, sexual assault or
sexual abuse by security forces, which occurred sometimes, or remained a problem.
3 There were numerous reports of rape, sexual assault or sexual abuse by security forces, which
were routine, common, widespread, systematic, reported repeatedly, or rape, sexual
assault, and the threat of rape against detainees and their family members was used as a tool
of torture to extract information, to intimidate and to punish.
4 Rape, sexual assault or sexual abuse by security forces was used as a tool of war or a systematic
weapon of war.
Source: US Department of State Country Reports.
The term security forces refers to both militaries and government-supported militia, police, and prison guards.

Inter-coder reliability: Two coders ranked each country. There were seven cases of disagreement resulting from
their different interpretation of the language used in the reports that were ultimately resolved. Where the
coders disagreed, it was by one scale point, and mostly between values of 2 and 3.

Table AII. Corruption and Sexual Violence Score by Country

Control of Sexual Control of Sexual

Country Corruption violence Country Corruption violence

Afghanistan 1.35 3 Chile 1.55 0

Algeria 0.70 0 China 0.41 2
Angola 1.12 3 Colombia 0.47 1
Argentina 0.77 0 Comoros 0.73 0
Armenia 0.72 0 Congo, DRC 1.42 4
Australia 1.91 0 Congo, Republic of the 0.94 2
Austria 1.85 0 Costa Rica 0.88 0
Azerbaijan 1.07 3 Cote dIvoire 0.86 3
Bahrain 0.95 0 Croatia 0.23 0
Bangladesh 1.12 2 Cuba 0.13 2
Belarus 0.78 0 Cyprus 0.89 0
Belgium 1.57 0 Czech Republic 0.38 0
Benin 0.61 0 Denmark 2.26 0
Bhutan 0.91 0 Djibouti 0.73 1
Bolivia 0.82 3 Dominica 0.52 0
Bosnia and Herzegovina 0.60 0 Dominican Republic 0.39 2
Botswana 0.76 1 East Timor Leste 0.53 1
Brazil 0.05 3 Ecuador 1.02 0
Brunei 0.32 0 Egypt 0.29 3
Bulgaria 0.17 1 El Salvador 0.54 0
Burkina Faso 0.04 0 Equatorial Guinea 1.89 2
Burundi 1.02 3 Eritrea 0.04 2
Cambodia 0.90 0 Estonia 0.66 0
Cameroon 1.10 0 Ethiopia 0.35 2
Canada 2.03 1 Fiji 0.12 0
Central African Republic 1.02 3 Finland 2.39 0
Chad 1.02 2 France 1.45 0
(continued)

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 Christopher K. Butler et al. S E C U R I T Y F O RC E S AND SEXUAL VIOLENCE 683

Table AII. (continued)

Control of Sexual Control of Sexual
Country Corruption violence Country Corruption violence

Gabon 0.55 2 Myanmar (Burma) 1.37 4

Gambia 0.83 0 Namibia 0.21 0
Georgia 1.03 3 Nepal 0.30 1
Germany 1.82 0 Netherlands 2.15 0
Ghana 0.40 0 New Zealand 2.28 0
Greece 0.58 0 Nicaragua 0.44 1
Guatemala 0.71 0 Niger 1.10 0
Guinea 0.58 2 Nigeria 1.35 1
Guinea-Bissau 0.61 0 Norway 2.00 0
Guyana 0.50 0 Oman 1.03 0
Haiti 1.70 1 Pakistan 0.73 3
Honduras 0.78 0 Panama 0.24 1
Hungary 0.60 0 Papua New Guinea 0.90 1
Iceland 2.19 0 Paraguay 1.22 1
India 0.25 3 Peru 0.20 3
Indonesia 1.16 3 Philippines 0.52 2
Iran 0.38 0 Poland 0.39 0
Ireland 1.67 0 Portugal 1.33 0
Israel 1.08 0 Qatar 0.92 0
Italy 0.80 0 Romania 0.34 0
Jamaica 0.46 1 Russia 0.90 3
Japan 1.20 0 Rwanda 0.58 3
Jordan 0.00 0 Saudi Arabia 0.57 1
Kazakhstan 1.05 0 Senegal 0.17 0
Kenya 1.05 2 Serbia-Montenegro 0.80 0
Korea, North 1.18 2 Sierra Leone 0.82 2
Korea, South 0.33 0 Singapore 2.30 0
Kuwait 1.06 1 Slovakia 0.28 0
Kyrgyzstan 0.84 2 Slovenia 0.89 0
Laos 1.25 0 Somalia 1.19 2
Latvia 0.09 0 South Africa 0.36 2
Lebanon 0.34 0 Spain 1.46 0
Lesotho 0.28 0 Sri Lanka 0.14 2
Liberia 0.98 3 Sudan 1.09 3
Libya 0.82 0 Swaziland 0.26 1
Lithuania 0.25 0 Sweden 2.25 0
Macedonia 0.73 0 Switzerland 2.17 0
Madagascar 0.14 2 Syria 0.29 3
Malawi 0.91 0 Taiwan 0.81 0
Malaysia 0.38 0 Tajikistin 1.07 3
Mali 0.32 0 Tanzania 1.00 2
Mauritania 0.23 0 Thailand 0.15 0
Mauritius 0.53 0 Togo 0.68 0
Mexico 0.19 1 Trinidad and Tobago 0.04 0
Moldova 0.89 0 Tunisia 0.35 3
Mongolia 0.14 0 Turkey 0.38 3
Morocco 0.04 2 Turkmenistan 1.21 3
Mozambique 1.01 1 Uganda 0.92 2
(continued)

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684 jour nal of P E A C E R E S E A RC H volume 44 / number 6 / november 2007

Table AII. (continued)

Control of Sexual Control of Sexual

Country Corruption violence Country Corruption violence

Ukraine 0.96 0 Venezuela 0.94 0

United Arab Emirates 1.19 0 Vietnam 0.68 0
United Kingdom 1.97 0 Yemen 0.69 2
Uruguay 0.79 0 Zambia 0.97 1
Uzbekistan 1.03 2 Zimbabwe 1.17 3

Table AIII. Combined Effects Reducing Sexual Violence

Model A1 Model A2 Model A3 Model A4 Model A5

Military personnel (2001) 0.59 0.117 0.76 0.043 0.73 0.047 0.61 0.107 0.76 0.041
(0.38) (0.37) (0.37) (0.38) (0.37)
Ethnic fractionalization 0.33 0.462 0.36 0.422 0.27 0.544 0.29 0.507 0.34 0.438
(0.46) (0.45) (0.41) (0.44) (0.44)
Civil conflict 0.91 0.016 0.81 0.031 0.93 0.010 0.92 0.010 0.83 0.020
(0.38) (0.37) (0.36) (0.36) (0.36)
Civil war 1.56 0.092 1.40 0.123 1.59 0.041 1.61 0.082 1.47 0.109
(0.93) (0.91) (0.78) (0.93) (0.91)
Control of Corruption 0.42 0.081 0.50 0.036 0.54 0.022 0.60 0.000 0.67 0.000
(0.24) (0.24) (0.24) (0.15) (0.15)
GNI per capita 0.02 0.509 0.02 0.479 0.02 0.476
(0.03) (0.03) (0.03)
Polity score 0.05 0.003 0.05 0.004
(0.02) (0.02)
High democracy 0.11 0.669 0.12 0.617
(0.25) (0.25)
Cut point 1 0.26 0.42 0.45 0.42 0.57
Cut point 2 0.73 0.86 0.88 0.87 1.00
Cut point 3 1.42 1.51 1.52 1.58 1.67
Cut point 4 3.41 3.42 3.59 3.59 3.60
Number of observations 134 134 138 139 139
LR 2(.) 57.24 48.72 53.17 59.40 51.45
Prob > 2 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000
Pseudo R2 0.18 0.15 0.16 0.18 0.16
Log likelihood 133.15 137.42 140.03 136.26 140.24

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CHRISTOPHER K. BUTLER, b. 1972, PhD in
Political Science (Michigan State University,
2000); Associate Professor, Department of Political
Science, University of New Mexico (2001 );
current research interests: bargaining and conflict,
fusing prospect theory and game theory.
TALI GLUCH, b. 1972, PhD student,
Department of Political Science, University of
New Mexico; current research interests: human
rights and conflict.
NEIL J. MITCHELL, b. 1953, PhD in
Political Science (Indiana University, 1983);
Professor, Department of Politics and
International Relations, University of Aberdeen
(2005 ); current research interests: human
rights and conflict, business and politics. Most
recent book: Agents of Atrocity: Leaders, Follo-
wers and Violation of Human Rights in Civil
Wars (Palgrave, 2004).