With this article we hope to add something new to explanations for vio
lence within polities. We examine the consequences of time in power fo
r political violence. We are interested in the length of time a leader
is in power and the time when political violence occurs. We start wit
h a simple hypothesis: the longer a leader is in power, the less likel
y it is that there will be occurrences of large-scale political violen
ce. We are not aware of any theories of violence that have taken accou
nt of leadership duration. We do not argue below that leadership durat
ion and the timing of violence explain all variation in violent politi
cal outcomes. Rather, it is our assertion that theories of violence ha
ve ignored an important factor: the length of time that a leader has b
een in power. Throughout the analyses presented in this article we hav
e found a relationship between the number of years a leader has been i
n power and the probability and volume of political violence that the
nation that they are governing is likely to experience. As the length
of a leader's time in power increases, the probability of political vi
olence declines. This relationship has been demonstrated to be signifi
cant in both statistical and substantive terms in a number of differen
t statistical settings that make a variety of assumptions about the qu
ality of the data we are working with and the underlying relationships
we are investigating.