Human Rights Quarterly

ABSTRACT:

What drives individuals to condone state torture? This article advances our understanding through a brief systematic literature review and an exploratory analysis of existing studies. It reviews and probes the results of prior research collectively in order to serve as a starting point for future research. It finds that, across a selection of existing survey experiments, certain sub-groups are influenced by variations in the context in which torture take place, while others hold categorical views. In democracies especially, insights into what shapes public attitudes towards state torture, and among whom, can be informative for the protection of human rights.