Global Trends of Violence: How Democracy and Capitalism Are Relevant to Justifiability of Inward and Outward Violence

Background and purpose: At the global level, violence is recognized as a serious human rights violation and public health issue because regardless of its manifestations, violence has a physical and mental impact on persons who are directly or indirectly involved. Macro-level factors such as democracy and capitalism may impact violence. It remains unclear whether the direction of violence (i.e., inward violence such as suicide or outward violence such as violence against others) has been examined at a global-scale and with regards to a countries’ economic and political values (i.e., democracy, capitalism).. Whether violence has increased or decreased throughout the last few centuries remains to be debated. This study compares Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and non-OECD countries to examine the association between democracy and capitalism and the direction of violence, therefore, suggesting macro-level factors associated with the direction of violence.

Methods: This study is a secondary data analysis using the World Values Survey (WVS). Data from 84,638 individual respondents across 57 countries (12 OECD countries and 45 non-OECD countries) were analyzed. To examine the preferences for democracy and capitalisms associated with the justification of suicide and violence against others, this study used multigroup logistic regression with robust maximum likelihood estimation using Mplus ver. 8.

Results: The constrained model, which assumes all parameters to be equal between OECD and Non-OECD countries, demonstrated that the data fit the model adequately (χ2 = 1262.21, df = 8, p < .001, CFI = 0.945, RMSEA = 0.044, and SRMR = 0.021). Regarding OECD countries, democracy was positively associated with the justifiability of suicide (β = 0.042, p < .001), while capitalism was negatively associated with the justifiability of suicide (β = -0.074, p < .001). Further, both democracy (β = -0.176, p < .001) and capitalism (β = -0.015, p < .05) were negatively associated with the justifiability of violence against. In non-OECD countries, democracy (β = -0.03, p < .001) and capitalism (β = -0.04, p < .001) were negatively associated with justifiability of suicide. Further, democracy (β = -0.103, p < .001) and capitalism (β = -0.063, p < .001) were negatively associated with justifiability of violence against others.

Conclusions and Implications: To our knowledge, this is the first study to examine how democracy and capitalism are associated with the direction of violence in OECD and non-OECD countries. As OECD values democracy and market economy, a set of international standards is offered to solve social, economic, and public health problems. Overall, both preference for democracy and capitalism decreased the justification of violence in both OECD and non-OECD countries. However, there was one exception among OECD countries; preference for democracy increased the tendency to justify suicide. In OECD countries, where democracy is relatively more developed, self-control, independence, and taking responsibility for oneself, may become internalized, increasing the justification of suicide.