Democratization Processes and Homicide Ratesin the Balkan Region, Bulgaria and Romania

Serena Favarin

# Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013

Abstract The transition of countries from an autocratic to a democratic regime is a complexprocess characterized by big political, social and economic changes. This process is usuallyaccompanied by an increase in violent crime rates which has been investigated by a largenumber of studies in the last decades. A special role in this analysis is played by the studies onthe former communist countries, especially the ones that stress the relationship between post-communist regimes and the exponential rise of violent crime rates experienced in theirtransition. The majority of these studies have tried to explain the violent crime booms, but noresearch empirically tested if violent crime is willing to decrease as democracies consolidated.According to one of the most recent studies by Alvazzi del Frate and Mugellini, the WesternBalkan region and a large number of “Non-Western” countries have recently experienced a dropin their homicide rates which has not been empirically analysed yet. This article aims atfulfilling this lack of knowledge by empirically analyzing eight countries of the Balkan region,Bulgaria and Romania. The main hypothesis is that, in terms of reduction of violent crime, thereis a benefit in shifting from a transitional to a more democratic regime in post-communistcountries. Data on Polity score and homicide rate from 1995 to 2011 were collected to conduct afixed effect panel data analysis on the level of democracy and violent crime in the Balkanregion, Bulgaria and Romania confirming a negative association between the two variables.

Keywords Balkanregion .Countries in transition.Democracy.Homiciderate .Post-communistcountries . Violent crime

Introduction

One of the main features of the Globalization Era is the democratization of countries; indeed,“for the first time in human history the world has become a predominantly democratic one”(Marshall and Cole 2009, 12).1 The global shift towards greater numbers of democracies is

Eur J Crim Policy ResDOI 10.1007/s10610-013-9227-1

1 The concept of democracy is very complex and its definition is sometimes controversial. A large number ofauthors have tried to define it by highlighting the features that have characterized old and new democracies. In-depth analysis can be found in Dahl (1989), Huntington (1991), Gunther et al. (1996), and Kaldor and Vejvoda(1997).

S. Favarin (*)Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Largo Gemelli, 1-20123 Milano, Italye-mail: serena.favarin@unicatt.it

understood as a very important and generally positive trend, given the correlation of highlevels of democratization with high levels of modernization of countries, grounded in strongrule of law and ethical principles. The positive trend created by the establishment of demo-cratic governments should lead to reductions in violent crime, since safer and more securecountries should be synonymous with progress and better quality of life, both of which arecharacteristics of modern, democratic countries. According to Keane (2004), democraciesconsider themselves “system[s] of lawful power-sharing, whose actors are aware of thebenefits of non-violence” (Keane 2004, 3). In the light of these considerations, violence isunderstood by the author as “anathema to the spirit and substance of democracy” (Keane 2004,3). Nevertheless, simultaneously with the third wave of democratization which doubled thenumber of the world’s democracies since the 1970s (Huntington 1991), the homicide rate, areliable proxy of violent crime, also doubled throughout the world (LaFree and Drass 2002). Inaddition, some previous studies give evidence that the regions of the world which haverecently undergone processes of democratization experienced rapid increases in violent crimerates. This is the case in Latin America (Fajnzylber et al. 1998; Diamond 1999; Villarreal2002; Fruhling et al. 2003), Sub-Saharan Africa (Ashforth 2005; Daniel et al. 2005), EasternEurope and the post-communist countries (Savelsberg 1995; Backman 1998; Karstedt 2003;Los 2003; Gruszczynska 2004; Pridemore and Kim 2006). The transition of countries from anautocratic to a democratic regime is a complex process characterized by big political, socialand economic changes. This process is usually accompanied by an increase in violent crimerates which has been investigated by a large number of studies in the last decades. The increaseof violence in countries in transition has different explanations also depending on the peculiarcharacteristics of countries, but it can be associated with weakness of institutions, socialdisorganization or lack of social control. According to the modernization perspective, thisinitial increase of violent crimes in the transition should decline as democracies mature.Nevertheless, the majority of the studies on the topic have tried to explain violent crimebooms that transitional countries had faced all over the world (Bratton and Van de Walle 1999;Villarreal 2002; Los 2003; Karstedt 2003; Karstedt and LaFree 2006; Pridemore and Kim2006; Karstedt 2008), but little research empirically tested the decrease of this trend as thesedemocracies consolidated. According to one of the most recent studies by Alvazzi del Frate andMugellini (2012) the Western Balkan region and a large number of “Non-Western” countrieshave recently experienced a drop in their homicide rates which has not been empiricallyanalysed yet. More in general, it appears that no other studies investigated the new crime dropinvolving post-communist countries nor the improvement in their levels of democracy. In mostof the cases, studies directed their efforts towards the understanding of the causes of the crimepeak that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union without monitoring further steps in thedemocratic development of those countries. This article aims to fulfil this lack of knowledgeanalysing the last fifteen years of democratic growth and the violent crime drop in post-communist countries. The states and territories included in the study are: Albania, Bosnia andHerzegovina, Croatia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Montenegro, theRepublic of Serbia, and Slovenia, which are all part of the Balkan region. In addition, in order tomake the sample even more robust, Bulgaria and Romania were also included because theywent through transitions after the 1990s and they share a common history marked by cultural,political and social similarities. Studying the most recent democratization processes can help inunderstanding whether violent crime rates will decrease as democracies mature also in post-communist countries, which are currently facing a new democratic consolidation era. In order toachieve this goal and investigate the empirical relationship between democracy and violentcrime in the Balkan region, Section Democratization Processes and Crime in the Literatureprovides a brief literature review of previous qualitative and quantitative studies on democracy,

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crime and countries in transition. Section Data and Methodology describes the data and themethodology used to test the main hypothesis, whereas Section Analysis of the Results andConcluding Remarks present the results and the conclusions respectively.

Democratization Processes and Crime in the Literature

Previous studies on democratization processes and crime have investigated the relationshipbetween different types of democracies and different types of crime such as corruption (Sajó1998; Lipset and Lenz 2000; Kotkin and Sajó 2002; Sung 2004; Sandholtz and Taagepera2005; Szarek 2006; Sun and Johnston 2009), organized crime (Allum and Siebert 2003;Jackson 2007), property crime (Gruszczynska and Gruszczynski 2005; Lin 2007; Stamatel2008; Stamatel 2009b) and violent crime (LaFree and Drass 2002; LaFree and Tseloni 2006;Karstedt and LaFree 2006; Karstedt 2006; Karstedt 2008). Cross-national analysis on homi-cides have always been an interesting area of scientific inquiry, but recently a special attentionhas been given to the increased number of homicides in countries in transition from anauthoritarian to a democratic regime.2 This is mainly because during the second half of thetwentieth century levels of democratization and violent crime rates have exponentially grownin many countries of the world (LaFree and Tseloni 2006). Since democracy is considered as anon-violent concept per se, different studies have tried to explain the relationship betweenthese two trends all over the world. Evidence has been provided to show the connectionbetween the transitional phase of the democratization processes and high level of crimes,especially violent crimes, in different areas of the world (Bratton and Van de Walle 1999;Villarreal 2002; Los 2003; Gruszczynska 2004; Pridemore and Kim 2006; Selih and Zavrsnik2012). A special role in this analysis is played by the studies on the former communistcountries (Kaldor and Vejvoda 1997; Nagle and Mahr 1999), especially the ones that stressthe relationship between post-communist regimes and the exponential rise of violent crimerates experienced in their transition (Karstedt 2003; Los 2003; Gruszczynska 2004; Karstedt2006; Karstedt and LaFree 2006; Pridemore 2005; Pridemore and Kim 2006; Karstedt 2008;Stamatel 2009a). The desegregation of the Soviet Union represents one of the most importantsocio-political transformations of the last twenty years and it has led to a sudden change ofpolitical assets, market economy and cultural values in most of the countries of Central andEastern Europe, the Balkans and Russia. According to Karstedt (2003) the transition todemocracy and market in these countries came with an abrupt and extraordinary rise of violentcrime that needs to be explained, whereas LaFree and Drass (2002) stress how post-communistcountries offer a strategic test of modernization and violent crime arguments because they haveundergone sudden changes in their economic and political system at about the same time.According to the modernization perspective an escalation of violent crimes can be the result ofrapid social and political changes experienced by nations that are in transition from traditionalto modern forms of organization (LaFree and Drass 2002). This theoretical approach can bedirectly linked to Durkheim’s assessment of the transition from traditional to modern society(Durkheim 1893/1984; Durkheim 1947). A large number of studies have tested Durkheim’stheory on homicides taking into account different aspects of his approach, but recently somescholars showed interest in the aspect predicting an increase of violent crime rates duringsocial and political crisis.3 Durkheim argued that during periods of acute political crisis,

2 For an in depth review of cross-national and comparative studies on homicide see Neapolitan (1997) andLaFree (1999).3 For a comprehensive review of studies that tested Durkheim’s theory on homicides see DiCristina (2004).

Democratization Processes and Homicide Rates

interpersonal violence increases due to the threat to collective sentiments posed by the crisis(Durkheim 1893/1984). In the transitional phase to democracy the role of new institutions isstill ambiguous and general incomprehension of the new normative guidelines can createdisorder and high crime rates in countries. In addition, the transition is characterized by a largedecline in deterrence because of the deep social and economic changes undergone bytransitional societies (Dušek 2012). These factors lead to a rise in violent crime rates whichwill decline as democracies mature and consolidated institutions are established (LaFree andDrass 2002; Karstedt 2003; LaFree and Tseloni 2006; Pridemore and Kim 2006).Nevertheless, the majority of the previous studies on post-communist countries focused onthe transitional dynamics and no recent research addressed the democratic consolidation thesecountries have recently began. The little research which empirically analysed both transitionaland consolidated democracies took into account only the years between 1950 and 2000without including the most recent democratic growths and the new crime drop that involvedpost-communist countries.

LaFree and Drass (2002) conducted a cross-national study on thirty-four industrializing andindustrialized countries analysing World Health Organization (WHO) homicide victimizationrates from 1956 to 1998 to investigate violent crime booms all over the world. The study tookinto account both transitional and fully democratic regimes giving support to the modernizationperspective stating that 70 % of the industrializing nations sample experienced violent crimebooms, whereas only less than 21 % of the industrialized nations sample did (LaFree and Drass2002, 791).4 LaFree and Tseloni (2006) collected annual time-series data from theWorld HealthOrganization (WHO) on homicide victimization rates for 44 countries for varying yearsbetween 1950 and 2000, measuring the level of democracy through a composite measure(“Polity score”), first developed by Gurr and his associates (Gurr et al. 1990). The study, using ahierarchical linear model approach, gave major support to the modernization perspectivepredicting that violent crime rates will initially increase with the transition to democracy butdecline as democracies mature, even though the results also suggest that attaining full democ-racy does not solve national crime problems permanently (LaFree and Tseloni 2006, 45). Lin(2007) collected crime rates through the International Crime Survey (ICS) conducted by theInternational Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) from 1971 to 1996 and victimization databy the International Crime Victimization Survey (ICVS) in 1989, 1992 and 1996. To measuredemocracy the author used the index of political liberty from the Comparative Freedom Survey(CFS) by Freedom House and using a fixed effect panel data model the author analysed therelationship between democracy and crime through the adaptation of punishment, deterrenceand other controls. The conclusion showed that democracy increases crimes with lower severityindices like burglary and theft, but decreases serious crime like homicide (Lin 2007, 481–482).

It is interesting to notice that studies on both transitional and consolidated democratic regimescentred their analysis on the years from 1956 to 1998, 1950 to 2000 and 1971 to 1996respectively, giving the opportunity to investigate what has happened in the most recent decadeof democratization processes. A study published in 2012 identified a decrease in the trend ofcompleted intentional homicides in the countries of the Western Balkan region and in a largenumber of “Non-Western” countries, highlighting the presence of a new crime drop that involvesalso post-communist countries Alvazzi del Frate andMugellini (2012). The study hypothesises arelationship between this crime drop and the higher level of democratization reached by thesecountries in recent years, but it does not empirically investigate this possible link. The studyshines a light on the possible relationship between the violent crime drop and the systems of

4 The countries were classified as industrializing or industrialized according to the World Bank definitionincluded in the “World Development Report” (1999/2000).

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government without quantifying this relationship in terms of reduction of violence. Post-communist countries are currently facing a new consolidation phase and their level of democ-ratization is growing. To close the gap in knowledge on quantitative studies, this article aims atempirically analysing the latest violent crime drop in the Balkan region, Bulgaria and Romania,in relation to their democratic development. In addition, this analysis will verify or discard alsofor post-communist countries the main hypothesis of the previous studies that predict that violentcrime rates will initially increase with the transition to democracy but decline as democraciesmature (LaFree and Drass 2002; LaFree and Tseloni 2006) and confirm that democracy is proneto decrease the level of serious crimes such as homicides (Lin 2007, 481–482). The mainquestions to be answered are: does the higher level of democracy experienced by the Balkansand the other post-communist countries reduce their level of violent crime rates, and if so, to whatextent? The main hypothesis is that, in terms of reduction of violent crime, there is a benefit inshifting from a transitional to a more democratic regime also in post-communist countries. Totest this hypothesis and to quantify the reduction in violent crime rates this paper will analyse thelast fifteen years of democratization processes, from 1995 to 2011, in eight countries of theBalkan region, Bulgaria and Romania. The hypothesis will be tested through a cross-sectionalanalysis of these ten countries using a fixed effect model that will verify whether violent crimewill effectively decrease and to what extent in relation to a shift from a transitional to ademocratic phase.5

Data and Methodology

Violent Crime

Measuring violent crime rates in countries in transition from an autocratic to a democraticregime can be tricky especially because these countries have almost always faced armedconflicts and large cultural, social and economic changes. The time period included in thisstudy ranges from 1995 to 2011. By 1995 the Balkans had already achieved independence,except for Serbia and Montenegro,6 which achieved independence in 2006 and Kosovo,7

which formally declared its independence in 2008. Moreover, in 1995 the Jugoslav wars endedand the last armed conflict in this region occurred from 1998 to 1999 between Serbia andKosovo. Data on violent crime were not collected for these countries in those years, since theywere not considered independent yet. In this way, armed conflicts should not have affected theanalysis. In this study, violent crime was measured using homicide rates which are considereda reliable proxy of violent crime according to the previous studies on the topic (Karstedt 2003;LaFree and Tseloni 2006; Lin 2007; UNODC 2011). In addition, homicide data have fewerunderreporting problems because it is very rare that a homicide is not reported or discoveredby law enforcement agencies. Moreover, since comparing crime data is always a sensitiveoperation especially when crime definitions do not directly correspond, using an internationaland reliable source, as the United Nations Surveys on Crime Trends and the Operations ofCriminal Justice Systems (UN-CTS), should avoid problems of the comparability of data

5 The ten countries/territories are: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the former YugoslavRepublic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Montenegro, the Republic of Serbia, Romania, Slovenia.6 In 1992 Serbia and Montenegro declared their independence from the former Yugoslavia and formed theFederal Republic of Yugoslavia. In 2006 they achieved independence from each other.7 At present the country is not recognized as an independent State by a number of international members of UNand EU.

Democratization Processes and Homicide Rates

belonging to different countries and legal systems Alvazzi del Frate and Mugellini (2012,134).8 In the last years, UN-CTS significantly invested in improving usability and compara-bility of data, providing metadata information and crime definitions in the data collectionquestionnaire. Nevertheless, the literature frequently used WHO data on homicide, whichusually report also causes of death. This offers the possibility of taking into account only thosedeaths resulting from intentional injuries and not including deaths resulting from self-inflictedinjuries and civil wars (Cole and Gramajo 2009). WHO data are not available for Bosnia andHerzegovina and Kosovo, and a few years are available for Albania and Montenegro.Nevertheless, it is interesting to note that the distribution of the UN-CTS homicide rate seemsquite similar to the WHO murder rate, except for Albania, which registered a peak value in the1997 UN-CTS data, which corresponds to the year of the collapse of the government. In anycase, this value is also high in the WHO murder rate which represents a correspondencebetween the two datasets (Table 1).

8 The UN-CTS is the "United Nations Survey of Crime Trends and Operations of Criminal Justice Systems" ofthe United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. The CTS questionnaire consists of four parts dealing withinformation on the main components of the criminal justice systems (police, prosecution, courts and prisons) ofthe member states.

Table 1 Descriptive statistics for homicide rates, 1995-2010

Country Source Count Mean SD Min Max

Albania UN data 16 9.4 11.7 2.7 49.9

WHO data 11 12.7 11.5 4.2 43.1

Bosnia and Herzegovina UN data 6 1.8 0.1 1.5 1.9

WHO data 0 N.A. N.A. N.A. N.A.

Bulgaria UN data 16 3.5 1.2 2.0 5.9

WHO data 16 3.0 1.1 1.5 5.0

Croatia UN data 16 2.0 0.7 1.1 3.6

WHO data 16 2.1 0.7 1.3 3.4

Kosovo UN - CARDS project 6 3.3 0.6 2.6 4.2

WHO data 0 N.A. N.A. N.A. N.A.

the fYR of Macedonia UN data 12 2.5 0.5 1.8 3.5

WHO data 9 3.1 1.4 1.6 6.5

Montenegro UN data 7 3.1 0.9 1.6 4.0

WHO data 4 2.3 1.2 0.8 3.8

Romania UN data 15 2.5 0.4 1.9 3.3

WHO data 16 3.2 0.7 2.1 4.1

Serbia UN data 11 1.7 0.4 1.2 2.4

WHO data 13 2.4 0.5 1.8 3.4

Slovenia UN data 16 1.3 0.5 0.5 2.2

WHO data 15 1.3 0.6 0.5 2.4

Source: author’s elaboration of UN-CTS data and WHO data

Abbreviation for the project “Development of monitoring instruments for judicial and law enforcement institu-tions in the Western Balkans” funded by the European Union CARDS (Community Assistance for Reconstruc-tion, Development and Stability) Regional Action Programme

Abbreviation for the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia

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Among the two sources, considering the similarities in their distribution, this studypreferred to use the UN data because of the larger availability of observations. The homiciderate per 100,000 inhabitants was collected through the UNODC – Homicide Statistics, mainlybased on UN-CTS data collection. In 2011 the UNODC published the “Global Study onHomicide,” which represents a comprehensive collection of cross-national and time-serieshomicide statistics useful in providing a global overview of this phenomenon (UNODC 2011,15). This new dataset provides data also for the Balkans, a region which has undergone deepchanges which jeopardised their stability and the punctual collection of data. Homicide datawere collected through UNODC – Homicide Statistics for Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina,Bulgaria, Croatia, Montenegro, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Romania, Serbiaand Slovenia from 1995 to 2010. 9 The UNODC dataset did not provide data for Kosovo andsince it was not possible to find any available data on homicide in any other international ornational sources, the data for this territory were exceptionally collected through the dataset ofthe project “CARDS - Development of monitoring instruments for judicial and law enforce-ment institutions in the Western Balkans”, founded by the European Commission and con-ducted by the UNODC and Transcrime - Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (Milan) in 2009.One of the aims of the project was to collect comparable data for Kosovo from 2004 to 2009and to improve administrative and survey-based statistics generated by justice and home affairsinstitutions. In addition, the organizations responsible for the data collection in Kosovo arereliable international organizations, e.g. UNODC, which is already the source of homicide datafor the other countries in this study. Kosovo is a crucial area of the Western Balkan region that

9 According to the recent “Global Study on Homicide” (UNODC 2011) the sources of the data for these countrieswere the UN-CTS and also Eurostat, when UN-CTS data were not available. In the case of Albania the UNODCalso consulted the UNICEF TransMONEE Database to complete the dataset for this country.

Fig. 1 Percentage variation 1995–2010 of homicide rate in the Balkan region, Bulgaria, Romania. Source:author’s elaboration of UNODC and UNODC-TRANSCRIME CARDS project data

Democratization Processes and Homicide Rates

should be taken into account in a comprehensive study on homicide in the Balkans and thesedata represent a unique opportunity to include the territory in the study.

The percentage variation of the homicide rate in the Balkans, Bulgaria and Romania during theperiod 1995–2010 confirms a general decrease in the violent crime rate since 1995 for all thecountries except for Montenegro, which registered an increase in its rate in 2010 (Fig. 1). 10 Thehighest variations are registered by Slovenia, Croatia and Bulgaria that changed their homiciderates from −50.1 % to −70.0 % from 1995 to 2010. Serbia, Romania and Albania registered avariation from −40.1 % to −50.0 %, whereas Kosovo changed from −30.1 % to −40.0 %. Theformer Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina showed the lowestvariations (−30 % - 0 %), whereas Montenegro had an increasing variation (0 % -+10.0 %).

Democracy

The level of democracy during the period from1995 to 2011wasmeasured using the Polity score,which is an index developed by the Center for Systematic Peace. This indicator measures levels ofboth democracy and autocracy for each country and year using information on the generalqualities of institutions, executive recruitment, executive action and political competition(Marshall and Cole 2011, 8). The Polity score ranges from −10, designating fully institutionalizedautocracy, to +10, representing fully institutionalized democracy. These two forms of governanceare commonly viewed as antithetical even if, despite their differences, both ideal forms are oftenperceived as comparably stable and effective in maintaining social order (Marshall and Cole2009). Nevertheless, in most cases, countries are prone to presenting mixed-types rather thanperfect forms of government. Countries that range from −5 to +5 are called anocracies, whichrepresent a middle-category rather than a distinct form of governance. Anocracies are character-ized by “institutions and political elites that are far less capable of performing fundamental tasksand ensuring their own continuity. Anocratic regimes reflect an inherent quality of instability (…)and are especially vulnerable to the onset of new political instability events, such as outbreaks ofarmed conflict, unexpected changes in leadership, or adverse regime changes” (Marshall and Cole2009, 9). They represent an incoherent mix that usually characterizes a transitional stage incountries that have not fully accomplished the processes of democratization. The Center forSystematic Peace classifies different types of anocracies:

& “Closed” and “Open” anocracies, where Polity score ranges from −5 to 0 and from +1 to +5 respectively

& Collapsed and occupation regimes, where Polity codes are −77 and −66& Countries administrated by transitional governments, where Polity codes are −88

The countries in the Balkans have generally increased their level of democracy over theperiod from 1995–2011, except in the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Slovenia. For thewhole period of analysis, indeed, Slovenia scored the maximum value (+10) indicating thepresence of a fully democratic regime, whereas Bosnia and Herzegovina scored −66representing a collapsed and occupation regime. The average Polity score calculated takinginto account all the countries in analysis was equal to 2.7 in 1995, to 5.1 in 2001 and it reachesthe value of 7.0 in 2011.11 The years between 2001 and 2003 symbolized a turning point in the

10 The percentage variation was calculated by subtracting the 1995 homicide rate value from that of 2010,dividing by the 1995 value and multiplying by 100.11 The average Polity score was calculated producing the mean of the values of the countries for each year. Inorder to generate more plausible and comparable numbers the values −66, -77 and −88 were re-codified as −10which is the minimum value in the scale of the Polity score.

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democratization processes for the countries that present an older democratic tradition such asAlbania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. In theseyears, they reached a consolidation in their processes of democratization reaching Polity scoresabove +8. The newer democratic countries such as Montenegro, Serbia and Kosovo presentedquite high Polity scores in the period since the start of their democratization processes.Montenegro ranked +9 in its first year of formal democracy, while Kosovo and Serbia scored+8. Possibly, the processes of democratization in these countries informally started before theyear in which they effectively reached their formal independence, due to the diffusion ofdemocratic systems in East and Central Europe, as well as to the efforts of internationalorganizations who seek to export the “democratic western model” in these territories. Inaddition, it interesting to stress that Serbia and Montenegro were already independentfrom the former Yugoslavia when they became independent from each other and thismay explain the high Polity scores that they registered since the beginning of theirindependences.

To understand whether a shift between transitional and democratic phases can effecthomicide rates in the countries under analysis, and in line with previous studies (Barro1999; LaFree and Tseloni 2006; Lin 2007), the Polity score was re-coded in two differentcategories, where 0 (≤ +5) represents the anocracies that are still considered transitional and 1(> +5) represents countries that are reaching or have already reached the status of fulldemocracy (Table 2). The first purpose is to obtain two categories of values; one that capturesthe homicide rates during the transitional phase and another that explores the rate during thedemocratic phase in these countries, in order to understand the changes that a shift from thefirst phase to the second may imply. Secondly, some countries ranked −66 and −88 in differentyears. These values represent collapsed and occupational regimes as well as countries admin-istered by transitional governments. They do not represent real values in the Polity scale,which ranks from −10 to +10, but cut-off values which needed to be re-codified to fit theanalysis. These values cannot be considered as expression of democratic regimes, for thisreason they were re-codified as transitional regimes under the value 0.

Control Variables

There are multiple factors that can affect crime rates, including demographic compo-sition of the population, especially the presence of youths, socio-economic conditionssuch as poverty and unemployment, as well as various aspects of the criminal justicesystem (Kikuchi 2010, 17–18). LaFree and Tseloni (2006) identified, based onprevious quantitative studies on the topic, three types of control variables: economicdevelopment, economic inequality and population structure (LaFree and Tseloni 2006,39). In line with this framework, this study used controls for the above three factors(Table 3). The logarithm of the GDP per capita and GDP growth expressed in annualpercentage were used as measures of economic development in the countries studied.12

12 In this study the natural logarithm of the GDP per capita was introduced in the analysis to account for the highvariation in the variable.

Table 2 Descriptive statistics fortype of government, 1995-2011

Source: author’s elaboration ofPolity score data

Government Count Percentage

Transitional (0) 30 22 %

Democratic (1) 105 78 %

Democratization Processes and Homicide Rates

GDP is probably the most common indicator of economic development and it hasbeen used in a larger number of studies (Bennet 1991; LaFree and Tseloni 2006; Lin2007), whereas GDP growth has a significant crime-reducing impact in the case ofviolent crime (Fajnzlber et al. 2002; Fajnzylber et al. 2002). In order to understandthe aspects concerning the economic inequality of the countries the variables finalhousehold consumption expenditure as a percentage of the GDP and inflation as apercentage of the annual consumer prices were included in the analysis. The GDPand the GDP growth can chiefly tell about the economic well-being of a country,whereas household expenditure and inflation can explain more about families’ eco-nomic health and people’s daily lives. Inflation and income or household expendituresare often connected with economic inequality (Albanesi 2001; Thalassinos et al.2012), as well as inflation and unemployment (Cardoso and Urani 1995). In conclu-sion, the demographic composition of the population and its growth are often takeninto account by different studies to measure the aspects connected with the populationstructure, since literature has often reported that young people are more likely tocommit violent crime compared to adults (Bennet 1991; LaFree and Tseloni 2006;Cole and Gramajo 2009; Kikuchi 2010). Unfortunately, the proportion of the juvenilepopulation was not available for the countries analysed in this paper. Populationgrowth and employment to population ratio aged 15–24 were included in the analysisas measures of the population structure and the socio-economic conditions of juve-niles aged 15–24. Employment and unemployment, indeed, seem to have an impacton the decrease or increase of crime (Steven and Winter-Ebmer 2002; Lin 2007).Except for the dimensions of economic development, inequality and populationstructure, other studies on the topic include in their analysis other important variablessuch as education (Soares 2004; Lin 2007; Cole and Gramajo 2009), deterrence andcontrols for the aspects concerning the criminal justice system (Levitt 1997; Soares2004; Lin 2007; Dušek 2012). This was not possible in the case of the Balkancountries, which lack data on education enrolment, education expenditure, numberof police personnel and criminal justice system resources. In order to fill this gap,health expenditure as a percentage of the GDP was included as a proxy for socialdevelopment and good organization of the welfare state. Health expenditure is con-sidered a measure of development and is one of the variables taken into account tocreate the World Development Index. Including this variable in the study provides anopportunity to control not only for economic and demographic aspects, but also forsocial characteristics of countries.

Table 3 Descriptive statistics for control variables, 1995-2011

Control variables Variable Count Mean SD Min Max

Log GDP Economic development 163 7.7 0.7 6.2 9.5

GDP growth Economic development 160 4.5 8.6 −11.2 89.0

Population growth Population structure 169 2.5 8.2 −11.0 32.2

Final Household expenditure Economic inequality 145 74.2 12.6 52.4 109.7

Inflation Economic inequality 140 19.8 91.3 −2.4 1058.4

Health expenditure Social development 141 7.6 1.5 3.2 11.3

Employment 15-24 Population structure 118 26.9 8.4 11.6 41.1

Source: author’s elaboration of The World Bank data

S. Favarin

Method

A fixed effect (FE) panel data analysis will be conducted using the software packageSTATA 12.0 to test whether homicide rates decrease in countries that shift from atransitional to a democratic regime. The dataset misses some time-observations, and forthis reason the sample used is an unbalanced. A fixed effect estimation was chosen tocontrol for unobserved time invariant factors such as culture, country specificities andreligion. In addition, according to Lin, a fixed effect model can also help to control fornational specific effects such as differences in crime definitions or reporting behaviorsamong different countries (Lin 2007, 472). Unfortunately, using a fixed effect estimationdoes not avoid problems related to omitted variables or simultaneity. Under endogeneitythe FE-estimator can be biased, indeed, “although fixed effect has been used to control forunobserved time invariant factors, there might be some time-variant variables that areomitted” (Lin 2007, 473) and homicide rates can affect democracy, thus creating a problemof reverse causality. The method of instrumental variables (IV) provides a general solutionto the problem of an endogenous explanatory variable. The IV-estimator must highlycorrelate with x, affecting the homicide rate only through democracy, but not correlatewith the error term.13 In this study, the instrumental variable employed is “voice andaccountability”, one of the six dimensions of the Worldwide Governance Indicators(WGI). The WGI are a long‐standing research project to develop cross‐country indicatorsof governance including six composite indicators of broad dimensions of governanceranking from 0 to 100 and covering over 200 countries since 1996. According to Lin,civil rights, free press and free speech should affect homicide rates only through democ-racy and therefore can be used as a good IV-estimator (Lin 2007, 473). Starting from thisevidence, voice and accountability is considered an appropriate instrument because itcaptures perceptions of the extent to which a country’s citizens are able to participate inselecting their government, as well as freedom of expression, freedom of association and afree media (Kaufman et al. 2010). Since the variable operates as an instrument of the Polityscore, it was dichotomized similarly to the Polity score, creating the same two categories,where 0 (≤ +50) represents countries with low values of voice and accountability and 1 (>+50) designates countries with high values (Table 4).14 By running a two-stage least-squares (2SLS), the study regressed democracy and voice and accountability at the firststage and then regressed the predicted value of democracy at the second stage obtainingthe unbiased estimator of democracy.15

13 The IVand the 2SLS estimators are identical when there is only one instrument for xit (Wooldridge 2002, 91).14 These categories are specular to the ones created to dichotomize the Polity score. The cut-off value is 5 for thePolity score and 50 for the instrument of voice and accountability.15 The precondition to accept the instrument is a rule of thumb for a Weak test with a F-value greater than 10. Thevoice and accountability instrument presents an F-value slightly greater than 10, so it can be consideredacceptable.

Table 4 Descriptive statistics for the instrument voice and accountability, 1995-2011

Voice and accountability Observations Percentage

Low (0) 53 41 %

High (1) 77 59 %

Source: author’s elaboration of Worldwide Governance Indicators data

Democratization Processes and Homicide Rates

Analysis of the Results

According to previous analysis of the trends, during the period from 1995 to 2011, homiciderates have generally decreased in the Balkan region, in Bulgaria and in Romania, whereas thelevel of democracy has generally increased in these countries. To test empiricallywhether there is a benefit in shifting from a transitional to a more democratic regimein terms of reduction of violent crime, seven different OLS models were run adding adifferent control variable at each stage before running the final model. Table 5 showsthe effects of the democracy measure on cross-national homicide rates controlling forthe variables: log GDP, GDP growth, population growth, final household consumptionexpenditure, inflation, health expenditure and employment at ages 15–24. At eachstage of the analysis, a negative association between democracy and log homicide isrecoded and the coefficients for democracy are significant at p<0.01 for all the OLSmodels. At the first stage (OLS1), the estimate of democracy on log homicide is−0.833 with the number of observations equal to 108 and ten countries observed. Inthe second stage (OLS2), the number of observations and the countries observed donot change, but the estimate for democracy on log homicide decreases, recording acoefficient equal to −0.325. Log GDP seems to have greater impact in the reductionof homicide rates compared to the shift from a transitional to a more democraticregime, though with the introduction of the other control variables the coefficient ofdemocracy increases its value. Nevertheless, it is important to notice that including thecontrol variables health expenditure in the OLS7 and employment at ages 15–24 inthe OLS8 models resulted in decreased observations. These variables represented veryinteresting and important factors to be considered in the model according to theliterature, even though it was not possible to find data on health expenditure forKosovo and employment at ages 15–24 for Kosovo and Montenegro. At this point inthe analysis a methodological choice was made to decide whether to retain moreobservations or include more control variables in the analysis. Since the majority ofthe control variables taken into account by this analysis and generally by the literatureare chiefly related to the macro-economic sphere of the countries, it seemed necessaryto retain in the model the variables for health expenditure and employment at ages15–24. This gives prominence to certain socio-economic aspects related to the man-agement of the welfare state and conditions in the juvenile population that areconsidered as important as economic ones in a comprehensive analysis of the rela-tionship between democracy and violent crime. The final model (OLS8) was runincluding all the control variables, despite the loss of some observations and coun-tries. If the econometric model results are valid and present a solid structure, furtherdata implementations can be made to complete the missing observations. The finalOLS8 suggests that by shifting from a transitional stage to a more solid democraticstage the Balkan countries, Bulgaria and Romania reduced their homicide rates by40.6 %. Moreover, the IV model extensively confirms the results of the previous fixedeffect models. The introduction of the instrumental variable “voice and accountability”permitted the elimination of problems related to reverse causality that could arise ifhomicide rate affects democracy, thus creating an endogenous explanatory variable.According to the IV model the homicide rate decreased by 80.5 %16 when a countryin the Balkans, Bulgaria or Romania moved from a transitional to a consolidated stageof democracy. This result is substantially in line with the previous quantitative

16 This coefficient is significant at p<0.05.

S. Favarin

Tab

le5

Resultsof

thefixedeffectmodelthatestim

ates

theeffectof

democracy

onhomicideratesin

theBalkanregion,B

ulgariaandRom

ania

OLS1

OLS2

OLS3

OLS4

OLS5

OLS6

OLS7

OLS8

IV

Variables

Log

(Hom

icide)

Log

(Hom

icide)

Log

(Hom

icide)

Log

(Hom

icide)

Log

(Hom

icide)

Log

(Hom

icide)

Log

(Hom

icide)

Log

(Hom

icide)

Log

(Hom

icide)

Dem

ocracy

−0.833***

−0.325***

−0.351***

−0.410***

−0.425***

−0.422***

−0.483***

−0.406***

−0.805**

(0.124)

(0.110)

(0.114)

(0.125)

(0.130)

(0.132)

(0.145)

(0.141)

(0.390)

Log

GDP

−1.496***

−1.477***

−1.434***

−1.386***

−1.392***

−1.386***

−1.441***

−1.052***

(0.172)

(0.175)

(0.179)

(0.208)

(0.217)

(0.233)

(0.232)

(0.372)

GDPgrow

th−0

.00645

−0.00674

−0.00690

−0.00707

−0.00685

−0.00896

0.00167

(0.00625)

(0.00625)

(0.00628)

(0.00641)

(0.00677)

(0.00683)

(0.00827)

Populationgrow

th−0

.0334

−0.0359

−0.0359

−0.0442

−0.00465

−0.0513

(0.0293)

(0.0299)

(0.0303)

(0.0324)

(0.0341)

(0.0585)

Household

final

0.00355

0.00504

0.00485

0.0119

−0.00828

consum

ptionexp.

(0.00783)

(0.00835)

(0.00893)

(0.00893)

(0.0115)

Inflation

−8.51e-05

−4.14e-05

−2.77e-05

0.00749**

(0.000282)

(0.000296)

(0.000280)

(0.00301)

Health

expenditure

0.0193

−0.0183

0.0516

(0.0451)

(0.0446)

(0.0515)

Employment15-24

−0.0306***

−0.0296***

(0.0115)

(0.0119)

Constant

1.589***

12.99***

12.88***

12.71***

12.10***

12.05***

11.98***

12.84***

10.94***

(0.108)

(1.316)

(1.331)

(1.337)

(1.903)

(1.993)

(2.095)

(2.150)

(3.178)

Observatio

ns108

108

107

107

107

106

101

9778

R-squared

0.318

0.618

0.614

0.620

0.621

0.622

0.624

0.670

0.665

AdjustedR-sq.

0.248

0.574

0.565

0.567

0.563

0.559

0.558

0.609

0.608

Num

bercountries

1010

1010

1010

98

8

Standarderrorsin

parentheses

***p<0.01,*

*p<0.05,*

p<0.1

Democratization Processes and Homicide Rates

literature on the topic which supports a negative relationship between consolidateddemocracies and violent crime confirming this pattern also in the case of the post-communist countries of the Balkan region, Bulgaria and Romania. In addition to theprevious analyses, this study was able to quantify this reduction by creating a robusteconometric model that takes into account unobserved time invariant factors thoughthe fixed effect model and controls for problems related to endogeneity through theuse of an instrumental variable. Moreover, the correlation matrix (see Table 6) amongthe variables, presented in the Appendix, clearly shows that the variables do notpresent problems of multicollinearity. The highest value is −0.77, registered betweenLog GDP and final household expenditure, but this can be still considered around thethreshold of acceptance of p>0.7. In conclusion, the strong points of this paper arethe analysis of the most updated data on democratization processes and violentcrimes from 1995 to 2011, as well as the fulfilment of the lack of quantitativestudies on latest processes of democratization and the latest drop in violent crimethat involved the Balkan region and other post-communist countries. According tothis study, the hypothesis that a shift in the system of government from a transitionalto a more democratic regime can produce a benefit in terms of reduction of violentcrimes is largely confirmed by the econometric analysis proposed. The homicide ratedecreases of 80.5 % when a country of the Balkans, Bulgaria or Romania shift froma transitional to a consolidate stage of democracy. This result confirms the previousquantitative analysis on the topic (LaFree and Drass 2002; LaFree and Tseloni 2006;Lin 2007) and empirically verifies the connection between the drop in violent crimerates in the Balkans and the change in their system of government previouslyinvestigated by Alvazzi del Frate and Mugellini (2012). In addition, the econometricmodel proposed could be further implemented with new data, and the main hypoth-esis of this study could be tested in considering other types of crime such asproperty crime, economic crime or other types of violent crime. Further researchcould be conducted to investigate the relationship between crime, deterrence anddemocracy. A few studies (Lin 2007; Dušek 2012) have found this relationship to bevery important in understanding crime dynamics, even if no data on the deterrencedimension were available for the Balkans.

Concluding Remarks

The decreasing trend of homicides in the Balkans, Bulgaria and Romania can be dueto different reasons, but these countries surely registered a general improvement ofthe democratic institutions that helped this decrease. The presence of a system of“disjunctive democracy” that seems to characterize transitional countries in LatinAmerica was also a common pattern of the post-communist transition (Los 2003;Pridemore 2007). This effect occurs where the democratization of political institutiondoes not correspond to the democratization of the criminal justice system and thecriminal justice agencies continue to follow the old autocratic rules (Caldeira andHolston 1999; Karstedt and LaFree 2006). In addition, police, public prosecutor andcourts of transitional post-communist countries were not properly prepared to reactquickly and appropriately to the increased level of crime (Gruszczynska 2004).Nevertheless, in the past years the rule of law in the Balkan region, Bulgaria andRomania has become stronger according to the Worldwide Governance Indicatorsmeasured by The World Bank. Despite voice and accountability, the WGI project

S. Favarin

includes also a measure of the level of rule of law. The trend of the countries understudy is increasing except for Slovenia that presents a very high stable value from1996 to 2011. The other countries present a percentage variation on their level ofrule of law between 1996 and 2011 that ranges from almost +6 % in Bosnia andHerzegovina to more than +300 % in Serbia. The respect of the rule of law and anefficient criminal justice system are fundamental characteristics for the developmentof democratic institutions. In addition, the establishment of a strong rule of lawshould educate citizen on the values and habits of the new democratic society(Karstedt and LaFree 2006). One of the major incentive in improving the level ofrule of law and the development of strong democratic institutions was the possibilityfor these countries to become members of the European Union. Strict standards ofacceptance were placed by the EU to the countries in transition to democracy, butmembership immediately became a desirable goal for each of them. Trying to adaptthemselves to European standards, post-communist countries have both increasedtheir levels of democratization and improved their processes of political, economicand social modernization.

According to Szarek (2006), in the 1990s, post-communist countries experienced“an unprecedented amount of interest and involvement of international agenciespromoting democracy”. The EU, however, was the most successful in fosteringdemocratic transition applying both economic and political conditionality to encour-age countries to conduct reforms and formulate a vast set of democratic membershipconditions which covered a wide range of key public policy areas (Szarek 2006).The Copenhagen European Council in 1993 was the opportunity for the EU tooutline, formally for the first time, the political and economic membership condi-tions for Central and Eastern European countries.17 In addition, membership wasused as an incentive to conduct anti-corruption policies in post-communist countriesthat had the highest level of corruption since this crime was perceived as one of themost significant obstacle to both democratization and economic development (Rose-Ackerman 1999). In light of these considerations, Slovenia became part of theEuropean Union in 2004, Bulgaria and Romania in 2007 and Croatia in 2013.Montenegro, Serbia and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia are candidatecountries, whereas Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo are still potentialcandidates. This means that the former are in the process of transposing or integrat-ing EU legislation into national law, whereas the latter do not yet fulfil therequirements for EU membership. The democratic development of these countriesin the last 15 years is undeniable. The growth of democratic institutions, theimplementation of new economic policies and the improvement of the criminaljustice system are solid proofs of this evidence. Nevertheless, the processes ofdemocratization are not at the same level among the countries and some of themhave not achieved their EU membership yet. This means that big steps are still to bedone to improve the democratization of those countries, but this also means thatthey are going in the right direction and their level of violent crime is successfullydecreasing.

17 The main political criteria included the stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, humanrights, respect for and protection of minorities, whereas the main economic criteria included the existence of afunctioning market economy and the capacity to cope with competitive pressures and market forces.

Democratization Processes and Homicide Rates

Tab

le6

Correlatio

nmatrix Log

homicide

Dem

ocracy

Log

GDP

GDPgrow

thPo

pulationgrow

thHousehold

expenditure

Inflation

Health

expenditu

reEmployment

15-24

Log

Hom

icide

1.0000

Dem

ocracy

−0.4175

1.0000

Log

GDP

−0.6367

0.2049

1.0000

GDPgrow

th0.1209

−0.1526

−0.0600

1.0000

Populatio

ngrow

th−0

.1659

−0.1489

0.2111

−0.0538

1.0000

Household

expenditu

re0.6648

−0.3754

−0.7718

0.1561

−0.3920

1.0000

Inflation

0.1430

0.0538

−0.0993

−0.1686

−0.0724

0.0200

1.0000

Health

expenditure

−0.5565

−0.0228

0.3084

−0.1401

0.0365

−0.2472

−0.2094

1.0000

Employment

15-24

0.2653

−0.0798

0.2620

0.1197

−0.0151

0.0721

0.0567

−0.5017

1.0000

App

endix

S. Favarin

Acknowledgments I would like to thank Marco De Simoni (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milano) forhis precious collaboration and suggestions.

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