Does democracy increase crime? The evidence from international data

Empirical evidence for a relationship between democracy and crime has not been investigated. This paper combines several international data sets to show that, compared to non-democratic governments, democratic governments punish major (minor) crime more (less) severely and hence this crime rate is lower (higher). Namely, the effect of democracy on crime is negative for serious crime such as murder and positive for minor crime such as theft. This empirical result is robust across different data sets and estimation methods. A 2SLS method is also used to solve the endogeneity problem embedded in OLS. In addition, GDP has a negative effect on all crime rates. Furthermore, inequality and unemployment increase, while clearance rate decreases, crime. Evidence also suggests that democracy per se rather than transitional or political instability causes the relationship. Using prison sentence length, clearance rates, and prisoners per crime as measures of deterrence, it was found that deterrence can explain approximately 40% of the effect of democracy on crime. Journal of Comparative Economics 35 (3) (2007) 467-483. © 2007 Association for Comparative Economic Studies.