Murder by the State

Studies | Crime

No. 211
Monday, September 01, 1997
by Gerald W. Scully


Notes

  1. R. J. Rummel, "Appendices: Centi-Kilo Murders, 1900-1987," unpublished, Haiku Institute of Peace Research, 1993, pp. 6-9.
  2. Rummel estimates that 350,000 were murdered during the Spanish Inquisition. "Pre-20th Century Government Killing," unpublished manuscript, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HA, p. 31. He estimates that 1.6 million were murdered during China's Cultural Revolution. Ibid., p. 10.
  3. Ibid.
  4. Thus genocide is one type of democide. For example, from 1966 through 1987, there were 150,000 murders by the state in Burundi; this democide was also genocide because the tribe that dominated the government killed members of another tribe.
  5. Rummel, "Libertarianism and International Violence," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 27, No. 1, pp. 27-71. Not all countries are included in Table I, so the total differs from totals mentioned in the text of this study.
  6. Rummel, "Appendices: Centi-Kilo Murders, 1900-1987," p. 11.
  7. Rent seeking is the use of government to improve one's economic position beyond what one could gain in the marketplace. Rent is the amount of gain.
  8. The estimate of killing in China was confined to the regime of Mao Tse-tung. The killing in Rwanda was estimated at 500,000 in 1994. The GDP data are from R. Summers and A. Heston, "The Penn World Table (Mark 5): An Expanded Set of International Comparisons, 1950-1988," Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1991, pp. 327-68.
  9. (1) The regression in logarithmic form was:

    Log DEMOCIDE = 22.2153 - 1.4411 Log RGDP, R2 = .488.
                                 (11.59)           (5.44)
  10. Rummel, "Appendices: Centi-Kilo Murders, 1900-1987."
  11. G. W. Scully, Constitutional Environments and Economic Growth (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), pp. 148-65.
  12. Gary S. Becker, The Economics of Discrimination (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957).
  13. A. O. Krueger, "The Political Economy of the Rent-Seeking Society," American Economic Review, 1974, Vol. 64, pp. 291-303.
  14. G. Tullock, "The Welfare Costs of Tariffs, Monopolies, and Theft," Western Economic Journal, 1967, Vol. 5, pp. 224-32.
  15. Data for the period 1960-90 were available for the following nations. Africa: Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Egypt, Ivory Coast, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Senegal, Togo, Tunisia, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Latin America: Dominican Republic, Mexico, Panama, Ecuador and Venezuela. Asia: Jordan, Taiwan and Thailand.
  16. These nations are as follows. Africa: Algeria, Angola, Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, Ethiopia, Guinea, Kenya, Liberia, Mozambique, Rwanda, Uganda and Zaire. Latin America: El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay. Asia: Bangladesh, India, Iran, Iraq, Myanmar (Burma), Pakistan, Philippines and Sri Lanka.
  17. This sample consisted of Botswana, Cape Verde Islands, Seychelles, Swaziland, Barbados, Costa Rica, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Malaysia, Malta and Fiji.
  18. Scully, Constitutional Environments and Economic Growth.
  19. R. J. Rummel, draft table, Statistics of Democide, unpublished manuscript, 1993, pp. 366, 368.
  20. Rummel, Statistics of Democide, pp. 366-69.
  21. Rummel, "Pre-20th Century Government Killing," p. 31.

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