ABSTRACT
Few have questioned how democracies as a group differ within and among
themselves. The most important study in this area of inquiry is
Powell's (1982) Contemporary Democracies. Unfortunately, some of his
results may be both inefficient and biased, due to the use of what we
now understand to be an inappropriate method. This study applies more
appropriate event count models to Powell's data in hope of gaining new
insights into the relationship between political violence and elements
of democracy. Evidence to support "Collective Action" explanations of
political violence was found. Strong support was found for the
arguments that Presidencies can be detrimental to the state and that
representational electoral systems and constitutions, especially
consociational constitutions, outperform majoritarian systems.
Environmental factors are important, but constitutional variables,
discounted to some degree by Powell (1982), were also found here to have
extremely important and significant effects on the degrees of violence
in democracies.
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