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R. J. Rummel
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Rudolph Joseph Rummel (born October 21, 1932) is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Hawaii. He has spent his career assembling data on collective violence and war with a view toward helping their resolution or elimination. Rummel coined the term democide for murder by government, his research claiming that six times as many people died of democide during the 20th century than in all that century's wars combined. He concludes that democracy is the form of government least likely to kill its citizens and that democracies do not wage war against each other.
Rummel is the author of 24 scholarly books, and published his major results in Understanding Conflict and War (1975-81).
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Rudolph Joseph Rummel (born October 21, 1932) is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Hawaii. He has spent his career assembling data on collective violence and war with a view toward helping their resolution or elimination. Rummel coined the term democide for murder by government, his research claiming that six times as many people died of democide during the 20th century than in all that century's wars combined. He concludes that democracy is the form of government least likely to kill its citizens and that democracies do not wage war against each other.
Rummel is the author of 24 scholarly books, and published his major results in Understanding Conflict and War (1975-81). He then spent the next fifteen years refining the underlying theory and testing it empirically on new data, against the empirical results of others, and on case studies. Power Kills (1997) sums up Rummel's research. Other works include (1990); (1991); (1992); (1994); and (1997). Extracts, figures, and tables from the books, including his sources and details regarding the calculations, are available online on his website. Rummel has also authored (1970) and (1976). He is the author of the series of alternative-history novels, in which a secret society sends two lovers armed with fabulous wealth and modern weapons back to 1906 with orders to create an alternative, peaceful century. These works are available online.
He has an extensive FAQ on his webpage, answering many questions and objections regarding the democratic peace and democide. The book is available on his website. This book aims at popularizing his findings and is available as a free download.
Career
He received his B.A. and M.A. from the University of Hawaii in 1959 and 1961, respectively, and his Ph.D. in Political Science from Northwestern University in 1963. He began his teaching career at Indiana University. In 1964 he moved to Yale University, and finally in 1966 returned to the University of Hawaii, where he spent the rest of his active career. In 1995 he retired and became Professor Emeritus of Political Science. His research was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, DARPA, and the United States Peace Research Institute.
Rummel has written about two dozen books and over 100 professional articles. His book Applied Factor Analysis was selected as a "Citation Classic" by the Institute for Scientific Information in 1987. He received the Susan Strange Award of the International Studies Association in 1999 for having intellectually most challenged the field, and in 2003 was given the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Conflict Processes Section, American Political Science Association.
Research
Democide
Rummel is the creator of the term democide: "the murder of any person or people by a government, including genocide, politicide, and mass murder". He has further stated: "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."
Research by him shows that the death toll from democide is far greater than the death toll from war. After studying over 8,000 reports of government-caused deaths, he estimates that there have been 262 million victims of democide in the last century and that six times as many people have died from at the hands of people working for governments than have died in battle.
He argues that there is a relation between political power and democide. Political mass murder grows increasingly common as political power becomes unconstrained. At the other end of the scale, where power is diffuse, checked, and balanced, political violence is a rarity. "The more power a regime has, the more likely people will be killed. This is a major reason for promoting freedom." He concludes: "Concentrated political power is the most dangerous thing on earth."
Democratic peace
Rummel was one of the early researchers on democratic peace theory, after Dean Babst. He finds that in the 1816-2005 period there were 205 wars between non-democracies, 166 wars between non-democracies and democracies, and 0 wars between democracies.
The definition of democracy used is "where those who hold power are elected in competitive elections with a secret ballot and wide franchise (loosely understood as including at least 2/3rds of adult males); where there is freedom of speech, religion, and organization; and a constitutional framework of law to which the government is subordinate and that guarantees equal rights". In addition, it should be "well-established". He states "enough time has passed since its inception for peace-sufficient democratic procedures to become accepted and democratic culture to settle in. Around three years seems to be enough for this". Regarding war, he adopts the definition of a popular database: War is a conflict causing at least 1,000 battle deaths.
The peace is explained thus: "Start with the answer of the philosopher Immanuel Kant to why universalizing republics (democracy was a bad word for Classical Liberals in his time) would create a peaceful world. People would not support and vote for wars in which they and their loved ones could die and lose their property. But this is only partly correct, for the people can get aroused against nondemocracies and push their leaders toward war, as in the Spanish-American War. A deeper explanation is that where people are free, they create an exchange society of overlapping groups and multiple and crosschecking centers of power. In such a society a culture of negotiation, tolerance, and splitting differences develops. Moreover, free people develop an in-group orientation toward other such societies, a feeling of shared norms and ideals that militates against violence toward other free societies"
Mortacide
Democide requires intention. Yet what about those regimes that unintentionally, yet culpably, cause the deaths of their citizens through negligence, incompetence or sheer indifference? One example might be a regime where corruption has become so pervasive and destructive of a people's welfare that it threatens their daily lives and reduces their life expectancy. Rummel terms such deaths mortacide. He argues that democracies have the least amount of such deaths.
Famine, economic growth, and happiness
Rummel does include famine in democide if he deems it the result of deliberate policy, as he does with Holodomor. However, he argues that there have been no famines in democracies, deliberate or not. He also argues that democracy is an important factor for economic growth and raising living standards. and points to research showing that average happiness in a nation increases with more democracy.
The continuing increase in democracy worldwide will soon, according to Rummel, lead to an end to wars and democide, possibly around or even before the middle of this century.
Political views
Rummel is a strong supporter of spreading liberal democracy, although he claims that he doesn't support invasion of another country solely to replace a dictatorship. Rudolph Rummel talks about the "miracle" of liberty and peace, and is an outspoken critic of communism. However, he also criticizes right-wing dictatorships and the democides that occurred under colonialism. He has also been critical of past American foreign policy: for example, the Phillipine War, the bombing of civillians during World War 2 and the involvement in the Sack of Peking.
He strongly supports the current War on Terror and the Iraq War. There is a need, Rummel argues, for an intergovernmental organization of all democracies outside of the United Nations to deal with issues about which the UN cannot or will not act, but particularly to further the promotion of peace, human security, human rights, and democracy -- an Alliance of Democracies.
He has also argued that there is a leftist bias in some parts of the academic world that selectively focus on problems in nations with high political and economic freedom and ignores much worse problems in other nations. Related to this, he has also criticized the tenure system.
Criticisms
Rummel's stance on many political and social issues has been subjected to some strong criticisms.
The democratic peace theory is now one of great controversies in political science and one of the main challenges to realism in international relations. More than a hundred different researchers have published multiple articles in this field according to an incomplete bibliography. Some critics argue that there have been exceptions to the democratic peace. Rummel discusses some claimed exceptions in his FAQ and he has referred to books by other scholars such as Never at War. There are also various other criticisms as discussed in the democratic peace theory article.
Rummel's first work on democratic peace received little attention. His results were incorporated in a "gigantic philosophical scheme" of 33 propositions in a 5 volume work, whose "immoderate pretensions", together with Rummel's "unrelenting" economic liberalism and "extreme" views on defense policy, may have distracted readers from his more conventionally acceptable propositions. (Quotations from Nils Pedder Gleditsch: "Democracy and Peace" (1995), a paper that warmly defends the existence of democratic peace, and asserts that it, and the difficulty distant states have in waging war against each other, fully account for the phenomena.)
His version of the democratic peace theory has some distinctive features disputed by some other researchers who support the existence and explanatory power of the democratic peace:
- Rummel's early research found that democracies are less warlike, even against non-democracies. Many other researchers hold only that democracies are far less warlike with each other. Some recent studies have supported Rummel's position.
- Rummel holds that democracies (properly defined) never go to war each other; and this is a "absolute or (point) claim". Some other researchers find that, whether there have actually been a couple exceptions yet, or not, this is a chance, or stochastic, matter; ; Rummel is deterministic. Many other researchers have also stated no wars.
Rummel does not always use his definition of democracy; nor does he always take pains to indicate when he is not. The opening paragraphs of an appendix from his book Power Kills adopt Michael Doyle's lists of liberal democracies for 1776-1800 and 1800-1850. Doyle uses a much looser definition: The secret ballot was first adopted, by Tasmania, in 1856, and Belgium had barely 10% adult male suffrage before 1894.
Most estimates of democide are uncertain and scholars often give widely different estimates. Rummel's counts 43 million deaths due to democide during Stalin's regime inside and outside the Soviet Union. This is much higher than an often quoted figure of 20 million. Rummel has responded that this is based on a figure from Robert Conquest's book The Great Terror from 1968 and that Conquest's qualifier "almost certainly too low" is usually forgotten. According to Rummel, Conquest's calculations excluded camp deaths after 1950, and before 1936; executions 1939-53; the vast deportation of the people of captive nations into the camps, and their deaths 1939-1953; the massive deportation within the Soviet Union of minorities 1941-1944; and their deaths; and those the Soviet Red Army and secret police executed throughout Eastern Europe after their conquest during 1944-1945. Moreover, the Holodomor that killed 5 million in 1932-1934 is not included.
Rummel used to publicly claim that he was a finalist for the Nobel Prize for Peace, based on an AP report, reprinted in his local paper, about an alleged Nobel short list of 117 names. He has retracted the claim, although it still appeared in one of his books. Per Ahlmark, Swedish writer and the former Deputy Prime Minister of Sweden, pledged in 1999 to nominate Rummel for a decade. Nobel nominations are inherently impossible to verify, since the Statutes of the Nobel Foundation expressly prohibit both nominators and the foundation itself from disclosing information about nominations and deliberations for a period of fifty years. Accordingly, there is no independent means of confirming that the nomination was actually made, nor is there any way to know whether such a public nomination was taken seriously by the committee. Rummel has further stated: "What is evident in communication on this is that the Northern Europeans with whom I am in contact seem to have a nonchalant attitude toward the Nobel Peace Nomination. Americans do not. Of whatever I've achieved, this is the one thing that people center on, and that gives my research on the democratic peace and its promotion the most credibility for Americans."
Rummel wrote a blog post titled "". This caused some controversy and Rummel in his next blog post stated that he only argued for censorship of military secrets.
Fictional works
Rummel is also author of the Never Again Series. According to , Never Again is "a what-if, alternative history... [in which] two lovers are sent back in time to 1906 with modern weapons and 38 billion 1906 dollars" in order to prevent the rise of totalitarianism and the outbreak of world war.
See also
External links
- Rummel's site
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- Interview in The Freeman
- Rummel's first novel in the Never Again Series
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