A/HRC/28/59 41. Using democratic governance as a proxy indicator for a low likelihood of gross human rights violations can nevertheless be justified. Empirical studies have found a close and consistent correlation between democratic governance and respect for human rights, including physical integrity rights, using different data sets.32 In other words, widespread and systematic gross human rights violations are rather seldom found in countries that show certain fundamental features of democratic governance. The close link between human rights and democratic governance is not only well tested by empirical research, but has also been stressed in resolutions of the General Assembly (55/96), the Commission on Human Rights (2000/47 and 2002/46) and the Human Rights Council (19/36). 42. Of course there some caveats: authoritarian or non-democratic regimes are not tantamount to systematic and gross violators of human rights. There is, however, robust empirical evidence that such violations have been more prominently committed by authoritarian regimes. Vice versa, gross violations of human rights may happen as well under democratic governance. The empirical research has only established that democratic regimes and their agents have a significantly lower predisposition to engage in gross violations of human rights, in particular against people living within their own territory. 43. It should be acknowledged that distinctions between democratic and autocratic regimes are not always very clear. Democratic governance can be organized in many different ways and the diverse nature of democracies reflects the rich social and cultural traditions of the world. The General Assembly has recognized that there is not one universal model of democracy, but that all democracies share common features (see resolution 55/96). 44. One such common feature is described in article 21, paragraph 3, of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states that “the will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.” Similar provisions are included in article 25 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. For his research, the Independent Expert has relied on those human rights provisions to distinguish between autocratic and democratic types of governance, reflecting also the current state of the art in political science, which stresses the importance of periodic, free and competitive elections as a key feature of democratic governance.33 45. The Independent Expert would also like to acknowledge that there may be a time lag between the allocation of funding and its potential impact on gross violations of human rights. According to the explanations provided in the previous section, a regime may either invest funds to buy loyalty or strengthen the repressive apparatus. The life of the regime may thus be prolonged without necessarily seeing an immediate human rights impact in the form of more or less gross human rights violations. However, as long as an autocratic 32 33 14 See, for example, Christian Davenport, “The promise of democratic pacification: an empirical assessment”, International Studies Quarterly, vol. 48, No. 3 (September 2004); Christian Davenport and David A. Armstrong, “Democracy and the violation of human rights: a statistical analysis from 1976 to 1996”, American Journal of Political Science, vol. 48, No. 3 (July 2004); Steven C. Poe, and C. Neal Tate, Repression of human rights to personal integrity in the 1980s: a global analysis”, American Political Science Review, vol. 88, No. 4 (December 1994); and Steven C. Poe, C. Neal Tate and Linda Camp Keith “Repression of the human right to personal integrity revisited: a global crossnational study covering the years 1976–1993”, International Studies Quarterly, vol. 43, No. 2 (June 1999). For the data presented further below, the Independent Expert has relied on the classification made by Barbara Geddes, Joseph Wright and Erica Frantz in “Autocratic breakdown and regimes transitions: a new data set”, Perspectives on Politics, vol. 12, No. 2 (June 2014).