R. J. Rummel
Rudolph Joseph Rummel was an American political scientist, a statistician and professor at Indiana University, Yale University, and University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. He spent his career studying data on collective violence and war with a view toward helping their resolution or elimination. Contrasting genocide, Rummel coined the term democide for murder by government, such as the genocide of indigenous peoples and colonialism, Nazi Germany, the Stalinist purges, Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution, and other authoritarian, totalitarian, or undemocratic regimes, coming to the conclusion that democratic regimes result in the least democides.
Rummel estimated that a total of 212 million people were killed by all governments during the 20th century, of which 148 million were killed by Communist governments from 1917 to 1987. To give some perspective on these numbers, Rummel stated that all domestic and foreign wars during the 20th century killed in combat around 41 million. His figures for Communist governments have been criticized for the methodology which he used to arrive at them, and they have also been criticized for being higher than the figures which have been given by most scholars. In his last book, Rummel increased his estimate to over 272 million innocent, non-combatant civilians who were murdered by their own governments during the 20th century. Rummel stated that his 272 million death estimate was his lower, more prudent figure, stating that it "could be over 400,000,000." Rummel came to the conclusion that a democracy is the form of government which is least likely to kill its citizens because democracies do not tend to wage wars against each other. This latest view is a concept, which was further developed by Rummel, known as the democratic peace theory.
Rummel was the author of twenty-four scholarly books, and he published his major results between 1975 and 1981 in Understanding Conflict and War. He 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. He summed up his research in Power Kills. His other works include Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocides and Mass Murders 1917–1987, China's Bloody Century: Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1900, Democide: Nazi Genocide and Mass Murder, Death by Government: Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1900, and Statistics of Democide. Extracts, figures, and tables from the books, including his sources and details regarding the calculations, are available online on his website. Rummel also authored Applied Factor Analysis and Understanding Correlation.
Early life, education, and death
Rummel was born in 1932 in Cleveland, Ohio, to a family of German descent. A child of the Great Depression and World War II, he attended local public schools. Rummel received his Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts from the University of Hawaiʻi in 1959 and 1961, respectively, and his PhD in political science from Northwestern University in 1963.Rummel died on March 2, 2014, aged 81. He is survived by two daughters and one sister.
Academic career and research
Rummel began his teaching career at Indiana University. In 1964, Rummel moved to Yale University, and in 1966 returned to the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, where he taught for the rest of his active career. In 1995, Rummel 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. In addition to his books, Rummel was the author of more than 100 professional articles.Rummel was a member of the advisory council of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.
Democide
Rummel coined democide, which he defined as "the murder of any person or people by a government, including genocide, politicide, and mass murder." Rummel further stated to "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 they may soon die of malnutrition, unattended disease, and forced labor, or deporting them into wastelands where they may die rapidly from exposure and disease."In his work and research, Rummel distinguished between colonial, democratic, and authoritarian and totalitarian regimes, and found a correlation with authoritarianism and totalitarianism, which he considered to be a significant causative factor in democides. Rummel posited 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. For Rummel, "he more power a regime has, the more likely people will be killed. This is a major reason for promoting freedom." He wrote that "concentrated political power is the most dangerous thing on earth." This correlation is considered by Rummel to be more important than reliability of estimates.
Democracy and peace
After Dean Babst, Rummel was one of the early researchers on the democratic peace theory. Rummel found that there were 205 wars between non-democracies, 166 wars between non-democracies and democracies, and no wars between democracies during the period between 1816 and 2005. The definition of democracy used by Rummel is "where those who hold power are elected in competitive elections with a secret ballot and wide franchise ; 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", stating that "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, Rummel adopted the definition of a popular database, namely that 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 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
While democide requires governmental intention, Rummel was also interested in analyzing the effects of regimes that unintentionally, yet culpably, cause the deaths of their citizens through negligence, incompetence or sheer indifference. An example is a regime in which corruption has become so pervasive and destructive of a people's welfare that it threatens their daily lives and reduces their life expectancy. Rummel termed deaths of citizens under such regimes as mortacide, and posited that democracies have the fewest of such deaths.Famine, economic growth, and happiness
Rummel included famine in democide, if he deemed it the result of a deliberate policy, as he did for the Holodomor. Rummel stated that there have been no famines in democracies, deliberate or not, an argument first advanced by Amartya Sen, and he also posited that democracy is an important factor for economic growth and for raising living standards. He stated that research shows average happiness in a nation increases with more democracy. According to Rummel, the continuing increase in the number of democracies worldwide would lead to an end to wars and democide. He believed that goal might be achieved by the mid-21st century.Political views
Rummel started out as a democratic socialist but later became an anti-communist, a libertarian, and an advocate of economic liberalism. Apart from being an outspoken critic of communism and Communist states, Rummel criticized right-wing dictatorships and the democides that occurred under colonialism, which also resulted in hundreds of million of deaths. Rummel was a strong supporter of spreading liberal democracy, although he did not support invading another country solely to replace a dictatorship. Rummel posited that there is less foreign violence when states are more libertarian.Rummel was critical of past American foreign policy such as the Philippine War of 1899–1902, involvement in the 1900 Battle of Peking, and the strategic bombing of civilians during World War II, and he also believed that the United States under the Democratic Party US president Woodrow Wilson was a domestic tyranny. Rummel strongly supported the war on terror and the Iraq War initiated by the Republican George W. Bush administration, arguing that "the media biased against freeing Iraqi from tyranny." Rummel also proposed that an intergovernmental organization of all democracies outside of the United Nations deals with issues about which the United Nations cannot or would not act, in particular to further the promotion of peace, human security, human rights, and democracy through what he termed "an Alliance of Democracies can do much better." Rummel thought that Democratic United States senator Ted Kennedy's opposition to the Vietnam War led to the state killings in Cambodia and Vietnam during the 1970s. Following the death of Kennedy, Rummel condemned the media reaction as too benign, and stated that "the post-war blood of millions is on Kennedy's hands."
Rummel was critical of Barack Obama and the Democratic Party, alleging that they were seeking to establish an authoritarian, one-party state. He believed that global warming was "a scam for power" and opposed Obama's carbon-trading scheme. Rummel thought that Obama killed off a democratic peace that Democrat Bill Clinton and Republican George W. Bush had been pursuing. Rummel posited that there was a leftist bias in some parts of the academic world that selectively focused on problems in nations with high political and economic freedom and ignored much worse problems in other nations. Related to this, he also criticized the tenure system.