DEMOCRACY, POWER, GENOCIDE, AND MASS MURDER

From 1900 to 1987, state, quasi-state, and stateless groups have kille d in democide (genocide, massacres, extrajudicial executions, and the like) nearly 170,000,000 people. Case studies and quantitative analysi s show that ethnic, racial, and religious diversity, economic developm ent, levels of education, and cultural differences do not account for this killing. Rather, democide is best explained by the degree to whic h a regime is empowered along a democratic to totalitarian dimension a nd, second, the extent to which it is characteristically involved in w ar or rebellion. Combining these results with those that show that dem ocracies do not make war on each other, the more democratic two nation s are the less foreign violence between them, and that the more democr atic a regime the less internal violence, strongly suggests that democ racy is a general method of nonviolence.