Publication

Using a newly assembled dataset spanning from 1820 to 1998, this paper studies the relationship between the occurrence and cruelty of episodes of mass killing and the levels of development and democracy across countries and over time. The author finds that massacres are more likely at intermediate levels of income and less likely at very high levels of democracy, but he does not find evidence of a linear relationship between democracy and probability of mass killings. He further explains that in the 20th century, discrete improvements in democracy are systematically associated with less cruel massacre episodes.