Seeker Blog

Prof. R.J. Rummel’s invaluable Democratic Peace website published this analysis 13 July. Rummel’s site is the go-to place for serious analysis and references on democracy and terrorism:

From Marshall’s data, I’ll include as violence any that is indicated in his data as “international.” This is a hard test, since it includes violence short of war. From Freedom House, I will use their Free (F) rating of a country for a year as defining a liberal democracy in terms of civil liberties and political rights.

First, how many liberal democracies are there versus the total number of countries. For five years spans after 1972 and ending with 2003 (year, number of liberal democracies, total number of countries):

• 1972, 43, 148
• 1975, 39, 158
• 1980, 50, 162
• 1985, 55, 166
• 1990, 64, 165
• 1995, 75, 191
• 2000, 85, 192
• 2003, 87, 192

Now, for the classification of violence between types of regimes (F = free, PF = partly free, NF = not free, where F-F = between free countries, etc.)

• F-F = 0
• F-PF = 6
• F-NF = 11
• PF-PF = 5
• PF-NF= 4
• NF-NF= 20

So, between which countries is there the least violence ? Between liberal democracies. Which countries are the most violent towards each other? Nondemocracies. All as precisely predicted by the democratic peace.

Please see also Rummel’s abstract of "DOES DEMOCRACY CAUSE PEACE?" , and his Willful Blindness.