Institutionalized Abuse: State Incentivization and Oppressive Human Rights

What conditions state violence against marginalized social groups? Past accounts of oppressionhave focused on structural inequalities, discretion of state agents, and lacking accountability for abusers. In this dissertation, I outline oppressive violence as a concept and its relationship to repression. Exploring multiple dimensions of governance and citizen demands, I argue that state principals can be - and are - incentivized into oppressive violence to secure their own positions. Examining the motivations and tempering of oppressive violence at the domestic and international levels, I find that oppressive violence is conditioned by homogeneity of power, government accountability to citizens, and nationalism. I explore the implications of these findings, including the important of measuring who is targeted for abuse, and the unique ways identity intersects with political violence.