Individuals and institutions throughout the world have been searching for the key to understand, as well as pacify, state repression, but they have been hindered because of some conceptual and empirical limitations. The Death and Life of State Repression provides the first systematic evaluation of why repressive behavior starts, escalates, stops, and recurs. It turns out that while the answers vary a bit across cases, democratization is the most important factor in reducing repression and pacifying repressive regimes.