An Initial Exploration of the Relationship Between Political Repression and Family Violence

Many countries were controlled by politically repressive regimes at some point in the 20th century, resulting in millions of innocent citizens dying at the hands of their own government. In addition to the harm done by the government to its people, living in a violent, repressive society causes drastic changes in individuals\u27 relationships with their family, friends, and acquaintances. This report focuses on husbands\u27 violence against their wives. Brief backgrounds and relevant conceptualizations are provided for political repression and family violence, and several prominent theories in the study of family violence are used to analyze how violent political repression could affect the prevalence of domestic violence. This study does not utilize political repression data from a particular country, but rather analyzes the fundamental aspects of political repression in order to provide an introduction to the relationship between violent political repression and family violence, and to serve as a guide for future research. All of the relevant theories reviewed for this paper indicated that violent political repression increases the level of domestic violence in society