Review of political violence across world civilizations

Body Count a quantitative review of political violence across world civilizations Pdf Download

REVIEW OF POLITICAL VIOLENCE ACROSS WORLD CIVILIZATIONS – Book Sample

Death-toll ranking of major violent conflict (0–2008 ce)

A note on methodology: Estimating the death-toll of conflicts is often fraught with dangers that derive both from the absence of data as well as its (un)reliability. Governments or other political groups often have vested interests in suppressing information or releasing partial or misleading information which either exaggerates or omits death figures.

The problem is augmented by the longevity of the present study, as the reliability of information tends to deteriorate over time. We have in each case attempted to corroborate numbers from several sources and guessti-mated a reasonable range, supported by scholarly accounts.

Although it generally holds true that the older the conflict, the less reliable the data, even recent events sometimes have death toll estimates that differ by a factor of 10 (for example Operation Desert Storm of 1991). Where possible, we have tried to narrow down the range, but on occasions the range has been set wide in order to accommodate diverse opinions and sources.

A second-order problem arises from a monocausal allocation of blame for acts of political vio-lence, which often emerge out of complex historical and political antecedents. Here we have not classed all engaged parties as belligerent, but simply those who have initiated hostilities in a particular given event. In particular complex

conclusions – REVIEW OF POLITICAL VIOLENCE ACROSS WORLD CIVILIZATIONS

The present study has, on the basis of empirical examination of political violence in the last two millennia, made some startling findings.

1.             We have found that the total death toll from acts of political violence (war, civil war, democide, and structural violence) has been between 449.38 million and 708.61 million in the years 0-2008. The median figure of nearly 579.00 million amounts to twice the U.S. population in the year 2000.

2.             The distribution of the median death-toll is illustrated below, expressed first in absolute figures and next in percentage of the total.

To read more about the Body Count A Quantitative Review Of Political Violence Across World Civilizations book Click the download button below to get it for free

or

Report broken link