ABSTRACT
Many low-income countries are periodically beset by political violence. Since the fall of the Soviet Union the dominant international strategy for promoting peace in these societies has been democracy. The rationale for this strategy, over and above the intrinsic desirability of democracy, is that by making the government more accountable, citizens will have less cause for violent opposition. While such an accountability effect is indeed plausible, democracy may also have other effects on the risk of violence. In particular, accountability may curtail some government strategies that are effective in maintaining security. For example, unconstrained by accountability, both Stalin and Saddam Hussein were able to maintain peace through intense repression despite manifest reasons for popular grievance. In both societies, more democratic successor governments have faced more violence because accountability to the law has limited what security services are permitted to do. Democracy thus generates technical regression in repression, which can potentially more than fully offset accountability, so that democracy increases the risk of violence.
