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The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
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Democracy and Crime: A Multilevel Analysis of Homicide Trends in Forty-Four Countries, 1950-2000

Gary Lafree

National Center for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) at the University of Maryland, Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Democracy Collaborative

Andromachi Tseloni

Despite simultaneous increases in democratization and violent crime rates in many countries during the second half of the twentieth century, the authors could find no prior studies that have directly examined possible connections between these two processes. The civilization perspective predicts that violent crime rates will decline along with the civilizing effects of democratization, the conflict perspective predicts that violent crime rates will increase along with the brutalizing effects of the market economies that so far have universally accompanied democratization, and the modernization perspective predicts that violent crime rates will initially increase with the transition to democracy but then decline as democracies mature. Our analysis of data from forty-four countries from 1950 to 2000 shows the most support for a modernization perspective: violent crime rates are highest for transitional democracies. However, as predicted by the conflict perspective, we also find that during the second half of the twentieth century homicide rates gradually increased for full democracies.

Key Words: democracy • violent crime • modernization • conflict • transitional democracies • homicide • civilization perspective

The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 605, No. 1, 25-49 (2006)
DOI: 10.1177/0002716206287169
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