ABSTRACT

This paper delves further into the relationship between regime type and state-sponsored mass murder. I disaggregate regimes into theoretically relevant component elements and, revisiting the analyses of the State Failures Task Force published by Harff (2003), I examine which if any institutional or procedural components of democracy negatively affect the likelihood of the state using lethal force to eliminate an entire domestic communal or political group. The results confirm some of R. J. Rummel's findings regarding democracy and the lethal state, but are unable to help explain how and why democracies decrease the likelihood of genocide or politicide.