Does democracy matter? Comparative perspectives on violence and democratic institutions

Abstract

Comparative perspectives on crime and violence have paid little attention to the institutional context of the polity with few exceptions. Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature (2011) presents an underlying narrative of institutional change and the evolvement of democratic institutions to the secular process of decreasing violence, between as well as within states. Do democracies have comparative advantages in curbing violence? This paper translates Pinker's diachronic perspective into a synchronic and cross-sectional analysis of violence in contemporary societies between 2005 and 2009. Its largely descriptive exploration ranges from the microfoundations of democracies to the institutional breakdown in processes of state failure, using different descriptive indicators of institutional patterns as diagnostic tools. Institutional perspectives in comparative criminologyComparative research on punishment and justice has certainly acknowledged the role of institutions, as they coalesce in a certain type of political economy or political regime, in shaping the ways in which offenders are punished. Thus the polity in general -defined here as the institutional ensemble that constitutes the political regime of a country -and the different types of democratic regimes in particular, are presently seen as a quasinatural corollary and determinant of prison populations and prison conditions by a number of authors (Barker

Examining the link between facial affect recognition and violent offending: A comparison between web‐recruited volunteers with histories of violent and non‐violent offending

“…The decrease of violence, both in criminal acts and across society at large, is a popular though often polarising topic, and a number of books (Goldstein, 2012; Levitt & Dubner, 2005; Morris, 2014; Pinker, 2011a) and articles (Eisner, Nivette, Murray, & Krisch, 2016; Friedson & Sharkey, 2015; Karstedt, 2015; Mikton, Butchart, Dahlberg, & Krug, 2016) have discussed the causes for this decline. Authors often point to sociological factors, such as the increasing power of the rule of law and changes in political institutions (Goldstein, 2012), while others have stressed the importance of changes in cognition (Pinker, 2011b).…”

Organizational democracy and employee outcomes: The mediating role of organizational justice

“…Since 1990 and specifically after 2003, Academy of Management Annual Meeting conference "Democracy in a Knowledge Economy" and with the August 2004 special topic issue of the Academy of Management Executive "Democracy in and Around Organizations," this political and western-based phenomenon received considerable attention from researchers around the world. Nonetheless, in this tenor, literature evidenced that implementing democratic practices at work will promote a number of organizational and employee related outcomes in a positive way including trust and communication (Holtzhausen, 2002(Holtzhausen, , 2002, job flows (Alves, Burdin, & Dean, 2016), improved psychological capital (Geckil, Ileri, & Kaya, 2016), organization citizenship (Geckil & Tikici, 2016), equality (Oseen, 2016), higher job satisfaction and commitment Vitols, 2009;Weber, Unterrainer, & Schmid, 2009), employee well-being (Vliet, 2012), socio-moral climate (Weber et al, 2012) improved employee health (Foley & Polanyi, 2006), freedom (Fenton, 2012), better labor relations (Hickland, 2017), enhanced productivity and creativity (Deetz, 1992;Harrison & Freeman, 2004;Kerr, 2004), employee voice (Dahl, 1985), and reduction in violence (Karstedt, 2015), decreasing the turnover rate (Heller, 1998;Strauss, 2006); improving work relationships (Gunn, 2011); decreasing job stress (Franca & Pahor, 2012;Kalleberg, Nesheim, & Olsen, 2009); improving the skills and abilities of individuals toward more collaboration (Verdorfer, Weber, & Unterrainer, 2013). Although there exists a number of studies supporting democratic models for organizations and its related outcomes; yet there are faint whispers for the paradigm of organizational democracy among contemporary scholars in the social and management discourse.…”

Do National Homicide Rates Follow Supranational Trends?

“…Many scholars assume or claim global and other supranational homicide rate trends exist, and metanarratives-such as modernization and conflict theories-that account for long-term social change often have implications for interpersonal violence rates (Durkheim [1893(Durkheim [ ] 1984(Durkheim [ , [1897(Durkheim [ ] 1979(Durkheim [ , [1900(Durkheim [ ] 1957Elias 2000;Gurr 1981;Pinker 2011). Similar things can be said of the existence and explanation of shorter term and recent crime trends (Baumer and Wolff 2014;Karstedt 2015), especially in Western Europe (Tonry 2014). While there are several studies of the temporal patterns of international homicide rates, very few search for correspondence between global or other supranational rates and rates in individual nations.…”

“…It would be remarkable, though, if nations distributed geographically throughout the world and with very different histories, cultures, levels of development, state institutions, polities, and violence rates followed the same global trend. Recent work hypothesizes global and regional violence trends over both the long (Pinker 2011) and short terms (Karstedt 2015; Tonry 2014).…”