Democracy

A: One necessary and sufficient set of characteristics involves the electoral system through which people choose their representatives and leaders, and thus give their consent to be governed and communicate their interests. They comprise regular elections for high office, a secret ballot, a franchise including nearly the whole adult population, and competitive elections. Real competition in the elections is a key requirement. A government with these characteristics is called an electoral democracy. If the government also recognizes freedom or religion, speech, transparency (in particularly knowing how one's representatives voted and debated), and the right to organize around special interests (even political groups representing a small radical minority), then it is called a liberal democracy. I elaborate on these characteristics in Chapter 3 of my book, Saving Lives (link here). My references to democracy in this Q&A are to both kinds, unless otherwise noted. Note that the “standard” definition of democracy in political science is: a political system characterized by mass participation and contested elections, and the protection of rights by laws. My definition of democracy is congruent with this “standard” definition.

A: I define a totalitarian state as one with a system of government that:

-- is not held responsible to the public by periodic secret and competitive elections;

Under Stalin, the Soviet Union was thus totalitarian, as was Mao's China, Pol Pot's Cambodia, Hitler's Germany, and U Ne Win's Burma. Presently, North Korea is a prime example. Totalitarianism is an ideology for which a totalitarian government is the agency for realizing its ends. Thus, totalitarianism characterizes such ideologies as state socialism (as in Burma), Marxism-Leninism as in the former Soviet Union, and Nazism (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei -- National Socialist German Workers' Party; although racist and nationalist doctrines dominated, economically all become subverted to the party, as under communism; as Hitler said: "We are socialists"), and Italian fascism. Other versions dot the modern world, such as the socialist Baathist Party that ruled Iraq under Hussein and still rules Syria. Not all totalitarianism is socialist. Theological totalitarianism, for example, characterized the Taliban, does so for revolutionary Islamic Iran since the overthrow of the Shah in 1978-79 and Saudi Arabia. Here totalitarianism is married to Islamic fundamentalism. In short, totalitarianism is the ideology of absolute power.

A: This is an 17th-18th century understanding, when democracy was much feared by classical liberals. Both the terms liberal and democracy have undergone a change in definition since then. Liberal no longer means what it did then; now it is what we call a conservative or libertarian (depending on which 18th Century liberal one reads). And democracy that was then limited to the meaning you use, has now evolved to mean both parliamentary (the closest to traditional democratic institutions) and republic. In present political science writing, democracy means any government, whether a parliamentary democracy, majority rule democracy, or a republic, that has open, fair, and periodic elections for the highest offices, near universal franchise, and secret ballot. A liberal democracy would be one with not only such elections, but also civil rights, like freedom of religion and speech. What can be said about violence and democratic freedom applies to all forms of democracy, and best to liberal democracy.

A: I do not say that democracy is an indicator of freedom? It is a system of governance through which (if one is talking about liberal democracy) civil and political rights are guaranteed.

A: Hardly. Such ties were a function of the Cold War. American foreign policy was focused on containing the Soviet Union and communism. As part of this attempt to prevent the spread of communism, the U.S. allied itself with many unsavory anticommunist regimes. There has been much criticism of this, but strangely, there has been no similar criticism of the American alliance with Stalin to defeat Hitler. Yet, of all regimes, Stalin's was worse than any military or authoritarian regime we supported after the war, and on par with Hitler's. Why the unhappiness with our support of, say, Chile (after the coup) during the Cold War, and not of the Soviet Union in World War II?

A: American wars have not been waged on women and children. As in Iraq and Afghanistan, the wars were fought against bloody dictators to free the people of these countries and promote democracy in them. It was the Taliban and Hussein that waged war on their own women and children. So far as we have been able to determine, Hussein murdered about 800,000 of his people. Just recently, a new burial site was uncovered in Iraq in which 400 women and children were found with bullets in the back of their head.

A: The answer is no to each of these questions. Out of 192 nations in 2004, 119 were democratic – 62 percent of the world’s countries. This number of democracies is a sharp increase from the sixty-nine that existed in 1985, and well shows that the world is becoming increasingly democratic. Democracy is now the world's dominant form of government, and with the death of fascism through World War II, and of communism with the end of the Cold War, democracy has no real competitors for hearts and minds. Were you born today, the odds of you being born in a democracy are greater than 50 percent. Democracies are now spread all over the world, and manifest different cultures, different religions, different languages, and different levels of economic development.

A: I understand this and the danger is real. However, rather than making democracy a matter of faith and gut belief, it can be made a moral and utilitarian choice. That is, democracy is consistent with the core of human rights -- freedom -- that is now enshrined in international law and international conventions, is an engine of human welfare and development, and is a solution to war, democide, and famine. I wrote a book on this, Saving Lives . . . ., which is on my website at: www.hawaii.edu—WF.COVER.HTM

Q: How do you define freedom?

Q: What color is freedom to you? Why?

Q: Limited-Government is an outright contradiction of concepts. Haven’t both logic and history already clearly demonstrated that government cannot be limited?

Q: Does national freedom always grow stronger, or does it suffer when free countries fight ones that are more repressive?

Alternative Types of Governments

A: In this type of government, somebody has to decide and make policy about social problems, national issues, protests, and political demands that arise in a society. In a democracy, it is elected leaders subject to recall that do this -- they are responsible to the people for their actions, and lose power if they step on too many toes, are corrupt or incompetent. In an authoritarian system, the leaders are not so beholden to the people. With such leaders (really, rulers) free to exercise their power over the people, what then will happen to human rights? Well, we have a very long history of authoritarian systems of all kinds against which to answer this question. And the answer is uniformly simple: people lose their freedom.

A: This was a distinction made in the 16th and 17th centuries. Democracy meant then direct voting on issues by the people. Political philosophers then distinguished this from a republic (a government without a monarch), or representational democracy. In the 20th century, this distinction collapsed, since direct democracy (pure democracy) was not feasible and really did not exist anywhere. Now the term democracy stands for a republic or parliamentary political system.

A: The Manifesto says, “ . . . the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy.” Of course, since democracy has become in our era a good word, many ideologies claim to be trying to achieve it. But there should be no doubt what I mean by it, which is a wide franchise, secret ballot, periodic elections for the highest office, competitive political parties, and for liberal democracies, civil and political rights, and liberties.

A: The simplest and most obvious answer is that the entire world lives in anarchy – which best characterizes the international system. Since the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, the major European nations, and gradually all nations, have been at the highest level of political architecture, interacting in a global anarchy. In the international relations of nation-states, groups and organizations, and individuals, there has been no law with force, and no government with a monopoly of force, or any global force at all. This is the definition of anarchy. Strange to say, that this has been missed by most everyone who has actually lived under this anarchy for all their lives.

Now, has there been a sub-international anarchy, as in states themselves? Yes, at two levels. One has been at the level of the nation-state, in what are often called failed states. Somalia and the Congo are contemporary examples. One can point to China from the fall of the Manchu Dynasty in 1912 to well after 1928 -- the Warlord Period. Also, the Soviet Union from the Bolshevik coup in 1917 to the final victory of the communists over the White Armies in the later 1920s. None of these have collapsed into mob rule, but have been stabilized in one way or another by quasi-sub-government rule by armed groups or warlords, comparable to what took place in international relations with the formation of nation-states, or by the victory of a national government.

Stability

A: Little theoretical/empirical research has been done on this, but we do know enough about democracies historically to suggest the following. Aside from the effects of foreign invasions and occupation (as of France by Germany in 1940), the stability of democracies seems to depend on (1) their age (democracies are most unstable in the first years of their life), (2) on the degree of the people's civil rights and political liberties (the more free, the more stable), and (3) the degree of economic development. Russia today falls down on all three factors, and it is hardly surprising, therefore, that it displays the current instability and authoritarianism. I don’t believe there is a case (aside from war and invasion) of a well-established liberal democracy turning authoritarian or totalitarian. The democratic Germany that Hitler corrupted and overthrown was not liberal in terms of the civil and political rights the people had.

A: Studies have been done on the stability of democratic governments, and they have been found empirically to be the most stable, compared to communist, fascist, and other dictatorships. Of course, in history, specific father- to- son monarchies have lasted longer, but there are very few of these, while the era of democracies is just beginning. Even then, just considered the durability of the American and British democracies, and those in Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and so forth.

A: We have never had a nation-level pure democracy anywhere in recent centuries. But we have had republics like the U.S. and the parliamentary democracies, as in Europe, and in each of these, the people’s votes are restrained and circumscribed in one way or another. This having been said, it is true that the layers of insulation between what people want and government policy and action have been breaking down, and many democratic governments have been becoming overly centralized and powerful. Still, as long as there are civil and political rights and liberties, a secret ballot, true competition for office, regular elections, etc., then even an enlarged, more powerful democracy would still adhere to the democratic peace.

Q: Frequently you mention Iran as being nondemocratic. How can you say this, since they have elections and a legislature?

Q: What would it take for you to change your classification of the U.S. as a democracy?

Q: Could you enlighten me as to whether there exists, or ever existed any multi-party democracy in the Arab and, or Islamic world?

There is (or have been) a number of democracies among Islamic countries (50% or more Moslem), including Albania (1991-), Algeria (1995-2000), Bangladesh (1981, 1991-), Burkina Faso (1978-1979), Chad (1960-1961), Gambia (1965-), Guinea (1995-1999), Indonesia (1955-1958, 1999), Lebanon (1946-1989), Malaysia (1959-), Niger (1993-), Nigeria (1960-1965, 1979-1982, 1999-), Pakistan (1973-1976, 1988-1996), Senegal (1993-), Sierra Leone (1962-1996), Somalia (1960-1968), Sudan (1968), Syria (1954-1957), and Turkey (1950-). All were electoral democracies, except for (classification beginning in 1972) Bangladesh (1991-1993), Burkina Faso (1978-1980), Gambia (1972-1981, 1989-1994), Lebanon (1972-1975), Malaysia (1972-1974), Nigeria (1979-1984), and Turkey (1974-1980). While democracy, even liberal democracy, has been tried in a number of Moslem, and some Arab countries, as one can see, it is generally unstable and has only lasted for a few years.

Q: The amount of political arbitrariness (unfreedom) a population puts up with from its government is directly proportional to its threat perception. If you were to put the American populace between Europe, the Arab Crescent and China; give the Russians borders of Atlantic, Pacific, Mexico and Canada, wouldn’t your work then be praising Russian "freedoms.”

Q: What makes your concept of libertarianism any different than the concept of democracy and freedom that thinkers such as Montesquieu, Rousseau, Jefferson and others have already proclaimed?

I disagree with Rousseau's attacks on private property (he is one of forebears of socialism, which is antithetical to libertarianism), and his belief in a Common Will of the people that government must follow, despite the majority will, and which justifies government dictating to the majority. It's understandable that he was the godfather of the bloody dictatorship following the French Revolution. No matter how misconceived in detail, however, I agree with his emphasis on his two principles that government and morality must go together, and that government is meant to preserve freedom.

Q: Do you believe that theocracies are a positive or negative way of ruling a population? Why?

Q: Do you feel that countries with a secular government generally have a better way of life compared to countries ruled by religion?

Q: What do you see as the trends worldwide - toward greater or less democracy?

Q: Isn’t your 15,000,000 killed in World War II way off? According to some sources, such as the National Institute on War Documentation (NIOD, Netherlands), all of World War II showed a sum of about 50,000,000 people killed in all theaters. The Russians alone claimed about 20,000,000.

A: You are confused on this, as are your sources, by the way war dead are often counted. Take World War II for example. The most authoritative sources, widely relied in the field of war studies, are the statistical books of J. David Singer (search under COW Project). His figure for World War II war dead is 15,000,000. Now, you may think he is in error, since that often given for the U.S.S.R. alone is about 20,000,000, and 50,000,000 to 60,000,000 is the total for the war often cited. What has caused these massive disparities is the confusion between those killed in combat and its crossfire, and those murdered by governments during the war (democide). Aside from battle or military engagements, during the war the Nazis murdered around 20,000,000 civilians and prisoners of war, the Japanese 5,890,000, the Chinese Nationalists 5,907,000, the Chinese communists 250,000, the Nazi satellite Croatians 655,000, the Tito Partisans 600,000, and Stalin 13,053,000 (above the 20,000,000 war-dead and democide by the Nazis of Soviet Jews and Slavs). I also should mention the indiscriminate democidal bombing of civilians by the Allies that murdered hundreds of thousands, and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Most of these dead are usually included among the war-dead. But those killed in battle versus in democide form distinct conceptual and theoretical categories and should not be confused. That they have been consistently confounded helps raise the toll during World War II to some 60,000,000 people, way above the estimated 15,000,000 killed in battle and military action. And that the almost universally accepted count of genocide during this period also is no more than "6,000,000" Jews, around 13 percent of the total wartime democide, has further muddled research and thought.

Q: How are the Iraqi and Afghani wars related?

Q: Aren’t we engaged in the Middle East in a struggle between our Western values and those wanting to maintain Islamic culture and traditions?

Q: Can war bring peace?

Q: Is war ever justified, in your opinion, or not?

Q: Is the war in Iraq a just war?

No War Between Democracies

A: They fall into four groups. First, and the largest number of adherents, are those who argue from historical examples that allegedly disprove DP. Favorites are the Civil War, Hitler being democratically elected, and World War II, the various French-British crises, democratic Finland being allied with Germany in World War II, and certain democratic American Indian tribes on which the U.S. made war. Also, there is the finger pointing at all the wars that the U.S. and U.K. fought.

The third group argue from balance of power or power superiority theories, a la Hans Morgenthau, and assert that DP is Wilsonian idealism, i.e., unrealistic and wishful thinking.

Q: Are you saying that democracies do not engage in aggression against their neighbors or intentionally disturb the peace of the world?

Q: If all you say about democratic freedom as a solution to war and democide is true, aren’t you afraid of turning democracy into a secular religion that will become intolerant of other views? Look what happened to Marxism.

Yes, look at what happened to Marxism, especially as practiced in the Soviet Union and Mao’s China. Yes, the Soviet Union and PRC did turn it into a secular religion. But, a true democracy acts in a democratic manner to decide value issues and conflicts, and by votes of the people's representatives. This always involves some people having values they don't agree with being imposed on them. Such as polygamy being made illegal, or drugs, or gambling, etc. But, in a democracy people can speak out, and fight against this to overthrow the law or win the next election. And, this can only be done in a democracy. In nondemocracies, the value whims of a small elite or one thug is applied to all, and the people better not protest.

A: No, the U.S. is a democracy, and in a variety of historical cases it has been restrained from foreign violence by public opinion. But, this explanation is incomplete, since democratic publics also have been a force for war. So, because of this, one has to dig deeper for an explanation of the democratic peace, which I do in terms of cross-pressures, a democratic culture, the restraint of a belief in liberalism, and the common spontaneous society of democracies.

To the statement that on the average democracy has the least foreign violence, think not only of the U.S., but also of Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, Costa Rica, Denmark, New Zealand, Japan, etc.

A: Yes. Research on this has been done among indigenous tribes, and this is the finding.

Q: Are not your findings a matter of definition?

Now, consider this from the opposite side. Undoubted nondemocracies, such as the PRC, U.S.S.R., Nazi Germany, militarist Japan, Nationalist China, Vietnam, Khmer Rouge Cambodia, Iraq, Iran, and so on, have made war on each other. In other words, at the poles of democracy and non-democracy the empirical proposition that democracies don't make war on each other and that non-democracies will make war on each finds its clearest manifestation.

There is still another way of looking at this. If you push political scientists for a definition of liberal democracy, most will agree on several essentials, but they will also differ in detail and emphasis. It is important to note, then, that even though those who have done research on the relationship between democracy and violence, including war, have defined liberal democracy in different ways at the margins, almost all have agreed in their empirical findings that democracies do not (or rarely) make war on each other.

Possible Exceptions

Q: Democratic countries go to war. How can you deny that in the face of the American wars in Afghanistan and Iraq?

Q: You say that, “Free, democratic nations do not make war on each other and, overall, have the least foreign violence." But, the United States has engaged in an enormous amount of foreign violence over the last 40 years. It is currently occupying Iraq, a country that never attacked us. Does this mean that the U.S. is not truly democratic?

Q: During the Cold War, did not the U.S. intervene in many countries, some democracies such as Chile, Guatemala, and El Salvador, support death squads murdering rebels, and help behind the scenes mass murder, such as in Indonesia?

Q: wouldn't the U.S. intervention against the democratically elected Allende count as a war between two democracies?

A: No one who has studied the question of Chile and other possible interventions in Central and South America, such as Guatemala, and looked for exceptions to the rule that democracies do not make war on each other has categorized any of them as a war. Also, your assumption is incorrect. The U.S. did not intervene against Allende. The coup against him was an internally generated matter. The U.S. did favor it, however. You should keep in mind that Allende was a communist, aided by Castro and the Soviet Union, was attempting to convert Chile to a dictatorship, like that of his model, Castro. Allende had destroyed virtually all his pubic support, including the unions, business, the church, and, of course, the military.

Q: Isn’t the Civil War, America's bloodiest war, fought between a democratic north and democratic south, a contra-example of democracies making war on each other?

Q: What about the War of 1812 between Britain and the U.S.?

A: At the time of the War of 1812, Great Britain was not a democracy, regardless of the existence of a parliamentary government. Voting was not secret, the franchise was highly restricted to a small minority, many new cities (such as Birmingham and Manchester) had no representation in the House of Commons while many small villages might send two or three members, and in any case, only less than one-third of the Commons was properly elected. The greater majority of seats were appointed or selected (such as by guilds), or bought or rented. Moreover, the House of Lords, an appointed body, had considerable power and could veto any general legislation the Commons passed. Democracy did not come to Great Britain until the franchise was extended to the middle class by the Reform Act of 1832, to industrial workers by the Reform act of 1867, and to agricultural laborers by the Reform Act of 1884.

Q: As for the U.S. having "never made war on another democracy," what about the American invasion of the Iroquois tribal nation, with an established a government, and the Cherokee tribal nation?

Q: The North American Indian nations considered themselves true nations. Their governments were closer to true democracies than anything the U.S. has ever experienced. However, war between the U.S. and these nations took place. How can you say, “No War between democracies?”

Now, while Indian tribes were truly independent, they were not part of an international legal system that recognized that independence, and, in fact, were seen as tribes of savages. This was the major reason for their treatment by Britain, France, Spain, and first the American colonists, and then the sovereign United States. There is also a major issue as to whether the term democracy would apply to their internal governance. Perhaps the closest to this was the Cherokee nation of Georgia, which did have elections. However, their democracy broke down over the issue of their accepting the demands to leave Georgia, when a faction seized control and then harassed, beat up, and in some cases murdered, those among them who wished to accept the conditions for their removal.

Germany, World War I, and Hitler

A: Germany was not a democracy at the time it carried out its genocide and mass murder, and aggression. Nor was Hitler elected. Before then, he turned Germany into a dictatorship. He lost badly the two national elections in which he ran. He was appointed. In the 1932 presidential election, Hindenburg got over 18,700,000 votes to Hitler’s 11,300,000, but Hindenburg missed having an absolute majority of the votes as required by law. In a second election held a month later, Hindenburg then got over 19,400,000 votes to Hitler’s 13,400.000. With much behind the scenes maneuvering, especially by Franz von Papen who had just resigned as chancellor, Hitler was appointed the chancellor as head of a coalition in which the Nazis held only 3 of 11 seats. However, Hitler got the coalition to agree to new elections to the Reichstag. During this election campaign the Nazis used violence and threats to discourage voting for opposition candidates, and probably rigged the burning down of the Reichstag building, alleging it was part of a communist plot. Still, the elections did not give the Nazis a majority in the Reichstag. But with a voting coalition involving the Nationalists, the Nazis were able to get a bare majority of the votes. This enabled Hitler to have the Reichstag pass his enabling act, which gave him the power to rule by decree. The rest is bloody history.

Q: To the argument that democracies never make war on one another, I see one big exception, World War I. Were not both France and Germany democracies in 1914?

Other

A: Egypt was not a democracy during these wars. It had and still has an authoritarian government.

A: Regarding the 1946-1986 test, it may be true that the Cold War accounted for the particular lack of war between democracies, but what about other periods? I did several other tests for much longer periods, including 1816-1974, and found the same positive results. Also, ignore the statistics and consider Europe, the historical cauldron of war, and what has happened since the end of the Cold War. Unity has continued to grow, rather then hostility. And, incredibly, those old enemies, France and Germany, have even considered forming a common army. Moreover, once the former enemies became democratic, they have tried into a larger economic and political Europe.

A: Yes, if I had my way I would wave a wand and extirpate from political science all concepts that have political (as in social justice) connotations. I would rename the idea of justice "alpha," freedom "beta," and democracy "xocracy." If I then argued that xocracies (that is political systems with certain characteristics) do not make war on each other and here is the data, the empirical results, and the theory, there would be much less of a problem with people accepting and understanding this. This would be, of course, because few would have any prior meaning or allegiance to attach to this type of political system.

Q: Your validations are not in fact valid tests. For example, your use of the binomial theorem to test the chance that no democracies have made war on each other is silly. This is because many of the democracies would not make war on each other by virtue of their size, economics, and/or proximity to far more powerful neighbors. They are not in a position to attack anybody, no matter what kind of government they have. Response?

A: Two things. One is that many of us doing research on this question have used multiple regression (linear and polynomial) and analysis of variance to assess the impact (or hold constant) those factors the question mentions, among others. I have, for example, analyzed through these methods the effect of size, economic development, number of borders (many democracies have none or one), religion, culture, geographic location in the world, and so on. None of these factors have any meaningful impact on the finding that democracies do not make war on each other -- the results remain statistically significant, regardless.

A: Yes, according to theory and with regard to the empirical tests of other possible explanations, e.g., distance, common borders, power, culture, religion, technology, education, and so on for dozens of variables. Only democracy explains this greater peacefulness.

A: Yes. Consider the clearest sponsors: Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Libya, Sudan, and North Korea.

A: Two countries being democracies is a sufficient, but not a necessary condition for peace. Peace can also obtain for other reasons, but then we get into probabilities. Given any two countries such that one or both are nondemocracies, then the likelihood of war between them is increased by how totalitarian their governments are, whether they share a common border, the imbalance of power between them, their historic grievances, and whether one is allied with the enemy of the other.

A: Religion was a major cause of war was in Europe and the Islamic Empire during the Middle Ages. But even then, wars were being fought elsewhere in the world for other reasons, such as in Asia. In recent centuries, religion has been simply one minor cause among others for some minor wars. Major causes of major wars have been conflict over territory, ethnic grievances, honor, greed, and power. There was no religious component to World Wars I and II, nor the Korean and Vietnam Wars. However, the current war on terror has a fundamentalist Islamic aspect to it, but it is not one religion pitted against another, but fundamentalist Islam against the freedom and values of democratic countries.

Q: You say that democracies have the least severe foreign violence. What do you mean by “severe”?

Q: Can you compare pre-World War I Germany with the United States under Bill Clinton and George Bush? In both cases, a single person has committed the government and nation to war.

Q: When plotting the degree to which a nation is democratic (x-axis) against its internal violence (y-axis), isn’t the resulting curve U-shaped? Don’t democracies have low violence on the average, while authoritarianism produces much violence, totalitarianism, with all its controls and suppression of dissent, has much less violence?

Q: Has much research been done on the domestic aspect of the democratic peace, that is that domestically democracies have the least violence?

Q: Even within a democracy, there can be a high level of violence -- although not to the degree caused directly by the worst of governments. What comes first to my mind is organized crime. For example, when alcohol was prohibited a large illegal industry grew to meet the demand. Similar industries arose to meet the demand for prostitutes or gambling. These industries have been characterized by violence. Of course, there are many other kinds of violence within a nation. Has your approach of research and analysis been used to identify what may cause overall violence within a nation to decrease?

Q: Do you think that the existence of religious minorities in a country increases the potential for future violence?

Definition and Use

A: I do not restrict democide to just directly killing people, as by shooting them. I use the civil definition of murder, where someone can be guilty of murder if they are responsible in a reckless and wanton way for the loss of life, as in incarcerating people in camps where the may soon die of malnutrition, unattended disease, and forced labor, or deporting them into wastelands where they may die rapidly from exposure and disease.

A: One can never be certain of all the judgments that need to be made on one democide/genocide after another. What I tried to do was to be explicit as possible about definitions and the differences between democide and genocide. On democide versus genocide, see: www.hawaii.edu—GENOCIDE.HTM

A: Murder involves the intention to kill, or the killing of a person as though it was intended, as by imprisoning them under lethal conditions. Manslaughter is being responsible for someone’s death due to negligence, as deaths due to drunk driving, killing a person without malice, or causing a persons death by hitting out of sudden anger. To include manslaughter by government in my data collection, which already took eight years, would have been too much. I hope others, however, will do this. On my definition of democide, see www2.hawaii.edu—DBG.CHAP2.HTM

A: My first public use of the term was in Lethal Politics (http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE4.HTM). It was a central concept, e.g., “The Soviets committed democide by . . . and their total democide was . . . .“ From its publication (in 1990) on, whenever I wrote about genocide and mass murder I used the concept.

A: True. War and democide involve intent as part of their definition. What makes democide much more horrible than the plague, say, is that humans are intentionally murdering humans. Thus, a moral dimension is added, and in large-scale democide, this is sufficient to call it an evil. The plague wasn't evil -- the death toll under communism was, and that is why I focus on it. But note this: even though democide is an evil, with the exception of the Holocaust there is more published on the plague and famines and disease than there is on democide.

A: I do. This is “democide.” Democide is one concept, one term, which covers all the other ways of committing murder, such as massacre and genocide. It is actionable, describable, and empirical. perhaps all the levels and clauses involved in its definition are confusing. but, the attempt of the definition is to make clear to what the term is applicable. This is necessary if one is to collect data, and for others to evaluate what is included and excluded. Without such, the concept is entirely subjective. While this is the way journalists and politicians work, the scientists must be exact if others are to replicate their work. In general, however, simply treat democide as murder by government.

A: Yes, if knowingly deadly, as of the British embargo against Germany after World War I. This was democide, and I so counted it.

A: This is the central question of all my work on democide. For this reason I devoted a chapter to this in my Death By Government. It’s at: http://www2.hawaii.edu/~rummel/DBG.CHAP2.HTM. In brief, for deaths to be democide requires: (1) that the death be intended, or the result of a wanton disregard of a high risk of death (as murder is defined in civil law), as in incarcerating people in a prison environment in which life expectancy is three to six months due to disease, malnutrition, exposure, and overwork; and (2) that this be done by an agent of the government according to its policy, rules, high level orders, or high level acceptance (as in turning the other cheek). Silence, lack of punishment, or apparent lack of concern over such murdered is evidence of high government involvement and thus democide. Executions after a fair and open trial for crimes internationally considered the subject of severe punishment, as for murder, treason, brutal rape, etc., are excluded.

Q: Some people measure chemicals in the hair of Napoleon and come to the conclusion that the British murdered him slowly with arsenic. What would you call this method of killing somebody ?

Q: On the direct orders of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1988, 30,000 "political opponents,” some children, were hanged within a few weeks. The murders were done rapidly in number of locations, with forklifts raising the condemned to nooses hung from cranes, about a half hour per batch. The source is Khomeini's second in command at the time and apparent successor. What do you call this undeniably intentional mass murder by the ruler of Iran?

Note the abysmal public morals regarding this democide. Had the president of a well known corporation contracted with a gang of assassins to murder 100 of his competitors, as confessed by his vice president, this would be sizzling news all over the airways and other media. Every major network would immediately interrupt its programming to bring you this news -- it would surpass in coverage every previous public scandal. It would be a 100 point bold headline in the newspapers. Day after day, every little detail of this monstrous crime would be divulged, included whether in his youth this murderer had thrown spit