Comparing Conditions for State-Sponsored Violence between Authoritarian and Democratic Societies

• In Event: State Power, Globalization, and Homicide: Cross-National Perspectives on Violence and Social Change

Abstract

This study is a partial test of John Braithwaite’s theory of crime and freedom that examines the political and economic conditions that foster state-sponsored violence. Although it is well established that authoritarian regimes are more likely to employ state-sponsored violence than democratic regimes, there is very little cross-national research explaining (a) the degree of variation across authoritarian regimes and (b) the existence of state-sponsored violence in democracies. This study utilizes Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) to identify the macro-level conditions conducive to state-sponsored violence in both types of societies.

Using data from a number of sources, including the World Health Organization, CIRIGHTS, Global Assassination Monitor, Varieties of Democracy, and the United Nations, and historical documents, we identified six authoritarian and six democratic countries that varied in the existence and severity of three types of state violence: extrajudicial killings, torture, and police violence against civilians. We then created measures of “tempering power” based on the theory of crime and freedom, including inequality, strength of civil society, separation of public and private powers, and forms of capital, and employed fuzzy set QCA to identify the necessary and sufficient conditions for state-sponsored violence.

Authors

• Mohammad Khalilian, University of Kentucky

• Janet Stamatel, University of Kentucky