Coquitlam College ECON 202 – Final Exams (50 points).docx

Coquitlam College
ECON 202 – Final Exams (50 points)
Spring 2020
Instructor: Kojo Laryea
QUESTION:
The COVID-19 outbreak has struck Canada as well as every
other part of the world since it was first
reported in December 2019 and the disease continues to cause
so much havoc. Although this is a
public health issue, it has managed to hit the global economy
negatively in different ways. The stock
market continues to plummet everyday, with people losing
billions of their wealth; most businesses
have come to a halt and workers have been asked to stay home
in order to reduce the spread of the
deadly virus; the virus is also causing people to fall sick and not
being able to work. This pandemic
has also caused some small-scale businesses to lay-off workers

partly because they are not able to pay
them wages and salaries. The airline industry has come to a
standstill because various countries have
closed their borders and are limiting traveling. Due to this,
airline companies like WestJet are expecting
to lay-off between 20%-50% of their workers if the situation
persists in the coming days. Most
sporting events and leagues around the world have been
suspended. Companies like Nike and Apple
have closed all stores due to this pandemic. Also, Crude oil
prices keep plunging over these few
months.
Throughout the semester, we have discussed various economic
variables and how they are related. We
have also discussed the difference between the Classical and the
Keynesian Economists’ view about
how the economy reacts to shocks in the market. We have also
discussed how the government and
the central bank can use Fiscal Policies and Monetary Policies
respectively to help solve a recession in
an economy.
With reference to everything we discussed in class throughout
the semester, discuss how the COVID-

19 pandemic has affected or is affecting the Canadian economy
and how the government of Canada
together with the Bank of Canada are trying to mitigate the
problem.
Guideline: Your essay should include, but not limited to the
information in this guideline
1. Make sure to discuss how this pandemic will affect Canada’s
GDP and growth rate (makes will
be awarded for explanation and examples.) (5 marks)
2. Make sure to discuss how the pandemic will affect Canada’s
interest rates. (3 marks)
3. Make sure to discuss how the pandemic will have an effect on
Canada’s inflation and also
discuss what the Bank of Canada should do/are doing to
maintain their core values with respect
to inflation. (5 marks)
4. Also, make sure to explain how the pandemic will have an
effect on unemployment. (3 marks)
5. Based on our discussions in class, how do you think this
pandemic will also have an effect on
the nominal exchange rates? (2 mark)

6. Explain the results that can be predicted from Classical
Economists’ view with respect to this
economic shock assuming the shock affects only aggregate
demand (make sure to explain what
will happen to both real and nominal variable) (6 marks)
7. Explain the results that can be predicted from Kaynesian
Economists’ view with respect to this
economic shock. Assuming the shock affects both the AD and
SRAS but not the LRAS, explain
the short run equilibrium, and how the economy will transition
back to its long run equilibrium
using the Supply-Side Adjustment Mechanism. (6 marks)
8. Considering your answer to question 7., what are the
Government of Canada and Bank of
Canada doing to mitigate this situation. Use the AD-AS model
to explain how they can solve
or reduce the economic effects of this pandemic. (10 marks)
9. Clarity and overall structure of the essay. (10 marks)
INSTRUCTIONS:
1. The deadline for this essay is Wednesday, 8th April, and it
will not be extended. If you do not

submit by the deadline, your essay will not be graded and that
will affect your final grade. No
excuses
2. You are required to upload your essay on C4 but not my
email. If you send it via email, it will
not be graded.
3. If I realise that you submit the same essay with another
person, it will have an effect on your
final score, so make sure you do this independently
4. Make sure to provide references of any article that you cite
in your essay.
5. Try to limit to three pages (Spacing at 1.5 lines, Use Time
New Roman 12pt font size).
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Terrorism and Political Violence
ISSN: 0954-6553 (Print) 1556-1836 (Online) Journal homepage:
https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ftpv20
Repression and Terrorism: A Cross-National
Empirical Analysis of Types of Repression and

Domestic Terrorism
James A. Piazza
To cite this article: James A. Piazza (2017) Repression and
Terrorism: A Cross-National Empirical
Analysis of Types of Repression and Domestic Terrorism,
Terrorism and Political Violence, 29:1,
102-118, DOI: 10.1080/09546553.2014.994061
To link to this article:
https://doi.org/10.1080/09546553.2014.994061
Published online: 23 Feb 2015.
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Repression and Terrorism: A Cross-National
Empirical Analysis of Types of Repression
and Domestic Terrorism
JAMES A. PIAZZA
Department of Political Science, The Pennsylvania State
University,
University Park, Pennsylvania, USA
While some scholars have theorized that repression reduces
terrorism because it
raises the costs of participating in terrorist activity by
dissidents, others argue that
repression stimulates terrorism by either closing off nonviolent
avenues for express-
ing dissent or by provoking or sharpening grievances within a
population. This study
investigates these contradictory sets of expectations by
considering whether or not
different specific types of repression yield different effects on
patterns of terrorism

in 149 countries for the period 1981 to 2006. By assessing the
impact of nine specific
types of repression on domestic terrorism, the study produces
some interesting
findings: while, as expected, forms of repression that close off
nonviolent avenues
of dissent and boost group grievances increase the amount of
domestic terrorism a
country faces, types of repression that raise the costs of terrorist
activity have no
discernible suppressing effect on terrorism.
Keywords dissent, domestic terrorism, regime type, restriction
of freedoms, state
repression
What is the relationship between state repression and terrorist
activity within
countries? Can repression both suppress and stimulate
terrorism? The burgeoning
body of work on regime type and terrorism gives some clues
about these questions.
Investigation of the structural determinants of terrorism has
most consistently found
that democratic regimes experience more terrorist activity than
nondemocratic or
illiberal regimes.1 The common explanation for this finding
limits itself to the obser-
vation that the executive limitations and preservation of
individual rights that are
part and parcel of democratic rule provide a more hospitable
environment for terror-
ists than is found in illiberal regimes.2 Democracies extend
civil liberties to citizens,
place restrictions on policing, extend due process and rights of
the accused to

arrestees, and tolerate a free media. All of these elements make
it easier for terrorist
movements to form, to plan and conduct attacks, to claim credit
for attacks via
media, and to protect their terrorist network if members are
arrested. The overall
conclusion is that the same ingredients that make a democracy
nurturing of civil
society and individual freedoms make it vulnerable to terrorism.
Conversely, regimes
James A. Piazza is Associate Professor in the Department of
Political Science at The
Pennsylvania State University.
Address correspondence to James A. Piazza, Department of
Political Science, The
Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802,
USA. E-mail: [email protected]
Terrorism and Political Violence, 29:102–118, 2017
Copyright # Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 0954-6553 print=1556-1836 online
DOI: 10.1080/09546553.2014.994061
102
mailto:[email protected]
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09546553.2014.994061
that are able to more easily and widely employ repression, such
as dictatorships,
should see reduced terrorist activity. Indeed, it is this line of
reasoning that prompted
commentators after the 9=11 attacks to suggest that countries
reduce their vulner-

ability to terrorism by curtailing or redefining citizens’ rights.3
The above findings would seem to close the book on the
relationship between
regime type and terrorism. However, research by scholars
focusing more specifically
on regime institutional features has substantially complicated
the picture. For
example, there is evidence that terrorist activity is not
uniformly high within liberal
polities and that different institutional elements of liberal
democratic rule have dif-
ferent effects on the level of terrorism a country experiences.
The framework for this
observation was first established by Eyerman,
4 who summarized theoretical wisdom
of the time in noting that some institutions within democratic
rule, such as citizens’
opportunities to engage in political activity and to play a role in
selecting regime lea-
ders, could be expected to dampen terrorism by providing a
nonviolent outlet for
political dissent while other qualities, such as the abundance of
easy targets and
the presence of a free media to amplify the propaganda impact
of terrorist attacks,
might make it more frequent. Eyerman described the first
quality as the ‘‘accessible
system’’ school of thought and the latter as the ‘‘soft target’’
school of thought.
Extending Eyerman, one may presume that illiberal regimes, by
restricting opportu-
nities for free political engagement, might present themselves to
dissidents as
‘‘inaccessible systems,’’ thereby incentivizing terrorism while

also presenting them-
selves as inhospitable or ‘‘hard’’ targets to terrorists by
repressing individual rights,
thereby reducing terrorism.
Subsequent scholarship has examined the intersection of regime
type and regime
institutions, and other features as explanatory variables for
terrorism. Li
5 first pro-
vided direct empirical evidence that, in part, supports the
contention that different
institutional aspects of liberal democracy, such as political
participation in elections
and constraints on executive authority, alternately reduce and
stimulate terrorism,
while Piazza6 found that young democracies are more terrorism-
plagued. Work by
Aksoy and Carter7 finds that among democracies, regimes with
proportional rep-
resentation systems and with higher levels of subnational
district magnitudes see a
more frequent emergence of certain types of terrorist groups.
Leveraging broader
scholarly trends in comparative politics, other current research
has also found that
dictatorships—regimes assumed to be inhospitable to terrorist
movements and
terrorist activity due to their heightened ability to mobilize
repression against
dissenters—are not uniformly impervious to terrorism. Wilson
and Piazza
8 find evi-
dence that among authoritarian regimes, military regimes

experience substantially
more terrorist attacks than do civilian-led, single-party
dictatorships. This is due to
the ability of such regimes to maximize both coercive and co-
optive tools to manage
domestic political dissent. Conrad et al.9 produce a
corresponding finding in their
empirical study of types of dictatorships and terrorism:
authoritarian regimes that
generate higher audience costs—military, single-party, and
dynastic autocracies—
experience more terrorism. Finally, Aksoy et al.10 find that
dictatorships that tolerate
opposition parties within their legislatures see fewer terrorist
groups emerge than
those that exclude opposition parties. This is because such
dictatorships are able to
better manage dissent and channel it into controllable avenues.
We can, therefore, see evidence that both regime type and
specific intra-regime
political institutions and institutional configurations matter as
predictors of terrorist
activity in countries. Can we extend this to say that regime
behaviors vis-à-vis
Repression and Terrorism 103
citizens’ rights—which can be conditioned on or shaped by
regime type and regime
institutions, but are distinct phenomena—matter as well? Some
research suggests, at
least preliminarily, that the answer to this question is yes. For
example, we do know

that regime treatment of citizens in terms of physical integrity
rights and regime
respect for minority rights both affect patterns of terrorism in
countries.11 Coupled
with a more general literature showing that degrees of
preservation of liberal rights
and deployment of repression against political dissent vary
considerably among
democratic regimes, as well as among dictatorships,12 these
scant findings suggest
that particular regime behaviors—whether or not citizens are
subject to political
repression—might predict the circumstances under which
terrorism will occur.
This suggests a closer look at repression, across countries, as a
predictor of ter-
rorism. Regime type is an overly aggregate predictor of
terrorism and disaggregating
repression into specific manifestations, I argue, is a way to
make sense of these
observed divergent and complex relationships. In this study, I
examine the impact
of different types of repression on the amount of domestic
terrorist attacks a country
sustained for the period 1981 to 2006. I undertake this
investigation starting with the
observation that repression can take different forms, affecting
different aspects of
citizens’ political, social, and personal rights. These different
forms, I theorize, could
yield different impacts on patterns of terrorism in countries. In
the next section, I
discuss three such theoretical relationships involving different
mixes of types of
repression that are hypothesized to either suppress or stimulate

terrorist attacks. I
then, in the subsequent section, test these different relationships
using data on nine
different types of repression—restriction of freedoms of speech,
association, move-
ment, religion, political self-determination, access to a free and
independent media,
physical integrity, labor rights, and minority political and
economic rights—as well
as aggregated indices of types of repression. I conclude with a
discussion of the
implications of the findings.
Repression as a Suppressor and Stimulant of Terrorism:
Three Theoretical Stories
In investigating repression, in all of its manifestations, as a
predictor of terrorist
attacks within countries, I identify three theoretical
relationships between forms of
repression and domestic terrorism. This set of three
relationships is intended to be
collectively exhaustive, from a theoretical standpoint. In the
first relationship, I
argue that repression raises the costs for engaging in terrorism
by political dissidents,
thereby reducing terrorist activity in a country. The second
relationship theorizes
that repression closes nonviolent avenues for political dissent,
which incentivizes
engagement in terrorist activity, leading to an increase in
terrorism. The third and
final theoretical relationship considers repression to be a key
ingredient in the forma-
tion and aggravation of group grievances, leading to higher
rates of terrorism in

countries. I discuss each of these relationships in turn.
Repression and Raised Costs of Terrorism
In this first theoretical story, state application of repression to
compel citizen
political support and to quash dissent produces a poor strategic
environment for
would-be terrorists, in a manner consistent with previously
discussed literature
(e.g., Schmid
13). Suppression of citizens’ ability to freely assemble and
engage in
104 J. A. Piazza
autonomous political activity inhibits the ability of terrorist
groups to form, draw
recruits, and plan their activities. Restrictions on media and on
free speech further
curtail the communication and propaganda efforts of terrorist
movements, com-
monly assumed to be the raison d’être of terrorism.14 Finally,
lack of constraints
on police surveillance, arrest, detention, physically punishing
interrogation, and even
disappearances of dissidents that are hallmarks of repressive
states dramatically
enhance the counterterrorism advantages of officials. All of
these elements are essen-
tially the flip side of Eyerman’s15 ‘‘soft target’’ depiction of
democratic regimes.
While liberal democracies are easy venues for terrorist

movements to work within,
illiberal regimes are inhospitable environments that suppress
terrorist activity by
making it more difficult, dangerous, and costly for dissidents to
engage in, and less
likely to be effective in terms of garnering public attention.
This scenario rests heav-
ily on the assumption that the decision of dissidents to engage
in terrorism is driven
by a strategic, rational calculus in which they opt to use the
tactic most likely to
advance their political objectives: to get attention, to influence
an audience, and to
secure concessions from their adversaries. State repression, in
this scenario, makes
the decision to engage in terrorism suboptimal. Therefore, we
should observe states
employing repression under these conditions, and using specific
types of restrictions
that raise the costs of terrorism—restriction of citizens’
movement, control over
independent citizen association, press censorship and
unconstrained policing, deten-
tion and interrogation—to experience less terrorist activity.
Repression and Closed Avenues for Dissent
In the second theoretical story, repressive means employed by
the state actually
incentivize would-be peaceful political dissidents to engage in
terrorism. This is a
scenario consistent with theoretical work by Crenshaw
16 and DeNardo17 and with
some of the empirical findings produced by Li,18 Aksoy and
Carter,19 Aksoy

et al.,20 Bravo and Dias,21 and Wilson and Piazza.22 In this
scenario, state
repressive measures that close legal avenues for political
dissent and redress of grie-
vances incentivizes dissenters to resort to more extreme, extra-
legal measures such as
terrorism. In contrast to the first scenario, suppression of free
speech and inde-
pendent press prompts dissidents to engage in demonstrations of
violence, like ter-
rorism, in order to break through official censorship to call
attention to
political grievances.
23
This theoretical story, therefore, makes use of the flip side of
Eyerman’s24
‘‘accessible system’’ school of thought regarding democracies
and terrorism. In
conditions under which the political system is ‘‘inaccessible,’’
dissidents are more
likely to see value in engaging in political violence and terrorist
activity, despite
the risks of doing so, than would be the case if legal avenues to
engage in dissent were
present. Again, this scenario is informed by some empirical
findings. Using a sample
of Latin American countries, Bravo and Dias25 find that those
that respect political,
civil, and human rights experience less anti-government
terrorist activity. Aksoy
et al.26 and Wilson and Piazza27 determine that dictatorships
that provide some
official opportunity for political dissent, albeit incomplete and

managed, are more
impervious to terrorism than those that do not. And like the first
scenario, it rests
on a rational=strategic actor assumption: dissidents engage in
terrorism because it
is a potentially more profitable course of action relative to
working within the
system.
Repression and Elevation of Group Grievances
In the third theoretical story, state repression also stimulates
terrorism, but via a
different route from the ‘‘Closed Avenues’’ story above. Rather
than altering the
strategic costs and benefits of using terrorism, repression in this
scenario alters the
overall climate of public approval of the government, thereby
affecting the potential
scope and effectiveness of terrorist activities. Experience of
repression de-legitimizes
the state and alienates citizens from government, fostering and
strengthening
anti-state, anti-status quo popular grievances. Repression
creates an environment
that is easily exploited by extremists engaged in terrorism, who
can more profitably
draw support from a sympathetic public, can more easily recruit
new members, can
more easily turn attacks into propaganda tools, and are less
vulnerable to potential
backlash normally generated by terrorist attacks.

28 In instances where state use of
repression is broad and indiscriminate, affecting dissidents and
apolitical bystanders
alike, opportunities for extremist movements to exploit public
outrage are even
greater.29 Furthermore, repressive states may find other states
less likely to cooperate
on counterterrorism efforts such as sharing of information and
extraditing terrorism
suspects because such activities violate internationalized
norms.30
There are several strands of theoretical and empirical support
for this scenario.
Borrowing from a theoretical framework for grievance and
rebellion developed by
Gurr,31 Crenshaw32 and Ross33 demonstrates, using examples
from historical case
studies of terrorist campaigns, that state oppression is an
important precipitant of
group grievances that help terrorist groups overcome collective
action and other
problems standing in the way of recruitment and mobilization of
political violence.
Research by Piazza34 empirically determines that countries
characterized by political
and economic discrimination against ethnic minority groups
experience significantly
more terrorism than countries without minority discrimination.
Moreover, noting
that some qualitative historical literature observes that state use
of repression—
particularly human rights abuses—ultimately undermines
government counterter-
rorism and counterinsurgency efforts by damaging relations

with local populations
and spurring domestic and transnational political opposition,
35 Walsh and Piazza36
find a positive empirical link between government respect for
physical integrity rights
and lower levels of terrorism in a cross-national sample. Bravo
and Dias37 produce
corresponding results for a sample of Latin American countries.
Hypotheses
These three theoretical stories translate into three testable
hypotheses:
H1: Forms of repression that contribute to the raising of the
costs
associated with engaging in terrorism reduce terrorist activity.
H2: Forms of repression that contribute to the closure of
peaceful
avenues for political dissent or redress increase terrorist
activity.
H3: Forms of repression that provoke or exacerbate group
grievances
increase terrorist activity.
In the study, these hypotheses are tested using sets of repression
indicators
developed from existing databases on regime attributes and
behaviors. These include
measures of restriction on citizens’ freedom of movement, both
domestically and
internationally, restriction on freedom of association and

membership in political
106 J. A. Piazza
and social organizations, restriction on electoral self-
determination through voting,
repression of independent labor unions, workplace
organizations, strikes and collec-
tive bargaining rights, restriction of free speech by citizens,
religious repression and
restriction of freedom of conscience, formal and informal
discrimination against
ethnic minorities, press restriction, and censorship and abuse of
citizens’ rights to
physical integrity.
To test the first hypothesis, forms of repression most clearly
associated with
raising the costs of engaging in terrorism by dissidents, or with
producing an inhos-
pitable or suboptimal strategic environment for using terrorism,
are regressed
against counts of terrorism. These include: restriction of
movement and association,
both of which make organizing, planning, and executing
terrorism difficult; press
censorship, which severely discounts the ability to use terrorist
attacks to transmit
propaganda or to influence a wider audience; and physical
integrity rights abuse,
which are associated with the use of torture, indefinite detention
and targeted
assassination=extrajudicial killing of terrorists, terror suspects,
and terrorist group

supporters. These types of repression are hypothesized to reduce
terrorism.
The second hypothesis is tested using forms of repression
reasonably argued to
be associated with closing peaceful avenues of dissent,
including: restriction of elec-
toral self-determination, restriction of free speech, and labor
restriction including
bans on the right to strike or public protest. Also tested along
with these forms of
repression is press censorship, which in the context of this
hypothesis is used to oper-
ationalize reduced opportunity for citizens to express
independent, critical, and
unauthorized political opinions. These types of repression are
hypothesized to
increase terrorism.
The third hypothesis is tested using forms of repression that are
most closely
associated with the provocation and sharpening of grievances in
the population,
including religious repression and ethnic minority
discrimination. Also included in
this category is abuse of physical integrity rights, given that
Walsh and Piazza
38 the-
orize that such abuses often undermine state counterterrorism
efforts because they
aggrieve and alienate the wider population, thereby
hamstringing government efforts
to gather intelligence about terrorists and their supporters and
to garner community
support to fight terrorism.

Analysis
To test the three hypotheses, the study conducts a series of
zero-inflated negative
binomial estimations using the nine individual measures of
repression in 149 coun-
tries for the period 1981 to 2006, the full range of years for
which I have relatively
complete data for all variables. These nine types of repression
constitute the main
independent variables of the study. Seven of the independent
variables are derived
from the Cingranelli and Richards (CIRI) Human Rights Data
project.39 CIRI pro-
vides ordinal scale measures of the status of and protections for
various political,
civil, social, and physical rights within countries for the period
1981 to 2006. I pro-
cess and re-scale many of these to produce a complement of
indicators of repression
of these rights in countries for the same time period to use in
my analyses. These
include measures of Physical Integrity rights abuse, restriction
of movement, free
speech, free association, electoral self-determination, restriction
of women’s empow-
erment, labor rights repression, and religious repression. To
measure abuse of Physi-
cal Integrity rights—protections against physical torture,
political imprisonment,

extrajudicial killing, or disappearance—I subtract eight from
the ‘‘PHYSINT’’
(Physical Integrity) indicator coded by CIRI to produce a scale
between 0 and 8,
where 8 indicates severe repression of physical integrity of
citizens. I measure restric-
tion of movement similarly by adding the two CIRI indicators
for restriction of dom-
estic and foreign movement or travel (‘‘DOMMOV’’ and
‘‘FORMOV’’) and
subtracting the sum from 4, producing a scale where 4 indicates
severe restriction
on citizen movement. Restriction of free speech, free
association, electoral self-
determination, labor rights, and religious rights are similarly re-
scaled in the analysis
by subtracting the original CIRI scores (for ‘‘SPEECH,’’
‘‘ASSOC,’’ ‘‘ELECSD,’’
‘‘WORKER’’ and ‘‘NEW_RELFREE’’) from 2, producing new
scales where 2
indicates severe repression of these rights.
I use data from non-CIRI sources for the remaining two
measures of repression.
I re-code data from the Freedom House Index of Press
Censorship,
40 converting the
original measure into a 10-point index where 10 indicates
severe restriction of media.
I also operationalize repression of minority group rights by
combining two indica-
tors derived from the Minorities at Risk41 database—political
discrimination
(‘‘POLDIS’’) and economic discrimination (‘‘ECDIS’’) suffered
by minority

groups—to construct a singular index scored between 0 and 8,
where 8 indicates
severe minority discrimination.
The dependent variable is a count of domestic terrorist attacks
occurring in a
country-year. This count is derived from data from the Global
Terrorism Database
(GTD) in Enders, Sandler, and Gaibulloev’s
42 study. The types of repression
engaged in by states would seem to most impact the amount of
domestic terrorist
activity—defined as terrorism launched by nationals of a
country targeting
co-nationals or domestic targets within the boundaries of the
country—occurring
within a country. So regressing measures of repression to counts
of domestic terror-
ism is an obvious design element.43 Alternative measures, such
as counts of terrorist
attacks that include transnational terrorism—defined as attacks
by foreigners
against domestic targets—would not seem to be clearly affected
by country-level
attributes such as political repression by a regime. Such attacks
are, therefore,
excluded from the analysis. Because the dependent variable is a
count indicator char-
acterized by significant levels of spatial and temporal
dispersion, and has a prepon-
derance of zero values (67.3% of all observations are zeros), I
utilize a zero-inflated
negative binomial regression estimation technique.
44 My decision to do this is further

buttressed by the results of Vuong tests conducted on all
models, the results of which
are all significant, indicating that a zero-inflated negative
binomial estimation tech-
nique is more efficient than a negative binomial technique that
pools
zero-observations and counts of terrorism.45 Finally, in all
models I also calculate
robust standard errors clustered on country.
Controls
Included in every model estimation are some standard
covariates, frequently found
in other cross-sectional time series empirical studies of
terrorism.46 Because the inde-
pendent variables measure regime behaviors rather than regime
type per se, I also
include a measure of political regime in each estimation. I use
the 21-point Polity
score for this. To hold constant level of economic development
and distribution of
incomes within countries, all specifications include country
Human Development
indices—which measure gross national income, literacy and life
expectancy
108 J. A. Piazza
rates—and national Gini coefficient measures of income
inequality. These are both
expected to be positive predictors of terrorism given that
Piazza47 found that econ-
omically developed countries—specifically countries that score

highly in terms of
human development as measured by the HDI—are more prone to
terrorist attacks
than poor or developing countries,48 and Eyerman49 and Li50
both find countries
with high levels of income inequality experience more
terrorism. To consider the
impact of state capacity to project military force, some of which
may be deployed
in a counterterrorism capacity, I also include the CINC index of
national capacity
from the Correlates of War database. My expectation is that this
will be a negative
predictor of terrorism. Also included are natural logged
measures of national popu-
lation and surface area of countries, both of which have been
found to positively pre-
dict terrorism.
51 The estimations also control for whether or not the country is
engaged in an interstate war and is experiencing a civil or intra-
state war to hold con-
stant other manifestations of violence.52 Because Eyerman53
found that older,
mature regimes are less likely to experience terrorism, the study
also controls for
age of political regime using the ‘‘Durable’’ score from the
Polity IV database.
Finally, all estimations control for past experience of terrorist
attacks.54 All inde-
pendent variables in the study are furthermore lagged one
period, within
country-case, to capture delayed effects and to aid in
determining direction of
causation.

Descriptive statistics for all variables used in the study are
presented in Table 1.
Table 1. Descriptive statistics
Variable Obs. Mean SD Min Max
Domestic terrorist attacks
(Enders et. al 2011)55
4,260 7.49 32.99 0 524
Physical integrity rights abuse 3,837 3.15 2.35 0 8
Restriction of movement 3,916 1.12 1.28 0 …
Journal of Criminal Justice 47 (2016) 12–20
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Journal of Criminal Justice
Sensitivity to the Ferguson Effect: The role of managerial
organizational justice
Justin Nix a,⁎, Scott E. Wolfe b
a University of Louisville, 2301 South 3rd Street, Louisville,
KY 40292, United States
b University of South Carolina, 1305 Greene Street, Columbia,
SC 29208, United States
⁎ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: [email protected] (J. Nix).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jcrimjus.2016.06.002
0047-2352/© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
a b s t r a c t
a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:
Received 25 May 2016
Received in revised form 27 June 2016
Accepted 28 June 2016
Available online 6 July 2016
Purpose: We argue that the police have been adversely impacted
by Ferguson-related negative publicity in ways
beyond the supposed increase in crime (e.g., reduced motivation
and increased perception of danger). Further,
we suggest that organizational justice is a key factor that
influences officers' sensitivity to such Ferguson Effects.
Methods: We used a sample of 510 sheriff's deputies surveyed 6
months after the incident in Ferguson. We ex-
plored whether organizational justice is associated with
deputies' sensitivity to several manifestations of the
Ferguson Effect using OLS and ordered logistic regression
models.
Results: The results demonstrated that deputies who believed
their supervisors were more organizationally fair
were less likely to feel unmotivated, perceive more danger,
believe their colleagues have been negatively impact-
ed, or feel that US citizens and local residents have become
more cynical toward the police in the post-Ferguson
era.
Conclusions: Police supervisors who use organizational justice
as a guiding managerial philosophy are more likely
to shield their officers from the negative work-related outcomes
that can follow recent Ferguson-type publicity.
Supervisors should be fair, objective, honest, and respectful
when dealing with their subordinates in order to
communicate that the agency has their back even when it may
appear the community does not.
© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords:

Policing
Police management
Organizational justice
Ferguson Effect
1. Organizational justice and sensitivity to the Ferguson Effect
Over the last eighteen months, there has been much debate
about
the so-called “Ferguson Effect” on US police. This idea holds
that in re-
sponse to heightened scrutiny of the police following the fatal
shooting
of unarmed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in August
2014, offi-
cers are less motivated to aggressively perform their duties and
are
pulling back from proactive strategies. Proponents suggest that
this
“de-policing” will result in increased crime rates throughout the
US.
The most robust empirical assessment of this argument to date
recently
revealed that the Ferguson Effect has not caused increased
crime across
the US (Pyrooz, Decker, Wolfe, & Shjarback, 2016; but see also
Rosenfeld, 2016). While this evidence is good news and puts to
rest
any worries of a nationwide crime wave (see Mac Donald,
2015),
there may in fact be other ways in which the Ferguson Effect
manifests
itself. For instance, research has shown that negative publicity
sur-
rounding the police in the aftermath of Ferguson was associated
with
lower levels of officer self-legitimacy (Nix & Wolfe, 2015) and

reduced
willingness of officers to engage in community partnerships
(Wolfe &
Nix, 2016a). These are important findings because extant
research has
demonstrated that officers with greater self-legitimacy are more
committed to using procedural justice with citizens (Bradford &
Quinton, 2014) and less reliant on physical force to gain
compliance
(Tankebe & Meško, 2015), while community partnerships are an
essen-
tial aspect of community and problem-oriented policing (Braga,
Kennedy, Waring, & Piehl, 2001; Gill, Weisburd, Telep, Vitter,
&
Bennett, 2014). Thus, while systematic crime rate increases do
not
seem to be a direct consequence of the Ferguson Effect, there is
reason
to believe that police officers have been adversely impacted by
the
Ferguson controversy (and related incidents across the US),
which in
turn has implications for crime. In this way, sensitivity to the
Ferguson
Effect can be viewed as a negative work-related outcome for
officers,
their supervisors and agencies, and the communities they serve.
The problem, however, is that we know very little about what is
as-
sociated with officers' sensitivity to such Ferguson Effects. In
other
words, what is it that makes a police officer more or less likely
to feel af-
fected by negative publicity and public discontent stemming
from

Ferguson? This is an important policy question for police
agencies and
command staff. What can supervisors do to help prevent their
officers
from being adversely impacted by negative publicity stemming
from
high-profile incidents like that in Ferguson? Organizational
justice the-
ory offers a sound framework for such an understanding
(Cohen-Charash & Spector, 2001; Sheppard, Lewicki, &
Minton, 1992).
Within the business management literature, studies have shown
that
greater perceived supervisor organizational justice is associated
with
http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1016/j.jcrimjus.20
16.06.002&domain=pdf
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00472352
13J. Nix, S.E. Wolfe / Journal of Criminal Justice 47 (2016) 12–
20
beneficial work-related outcomes such as increased productivity
and
greater organizational commitment among employees (Colquitt,
Conlon, Wesson, Porter, & Ng, 2001). And although relatively
few stud-
ies have applied the organizational justice framework to the
study of
police behavior, the available evidence suggests that officers
who per-
ceive their supervisors as being fair are more likely to identify

with
their organization, comply with procedures, and hold more
favorable
attitudes toward community policing, procedural justice, and the
public
more generally (Bradford, Quinton, Myhill, & Porter, 2014;
Myhill &
Bradford, 2013; Tankebe, 2014). On the other hand, officers
who believe
their supervisors are unfair express less trust in their agency
(Wolfe &
Nix, 2016b) and are more likely to engage in misconduct (Wolfe
&
Piquero, 2011). It is with these results in mind that we argue
organiza-
tional justice may also be associated with less sensitivity to
negative
publicity stemming from Ferguson-related public discontent.
Officers
who feel fairly and respectfully treated by their supervisors may
be par-
tially shielded from the effects of negative press surrounding
their occu-
pation. This is particularly important in agencies across the US
that may
not have experienced a high-profile police shooting but are
neverthe-
less dealing with the fallout of such events in other
jurisdictions. Such
organizational justice likely communicates to officers that they
can
trust their agency and supervisors and that they will be there to
support
them in the face of public scrutiny.
Accordingly, the present study considered whether perceived

orga-
nizational justice was associated with several different
indicators or
manifestations of the Ferguson Effect. We accomplished this
using a sur-
vey of sheriff's deputies (N = 510) employed by an agency in a
south-
eastern US metropolis. Multivariate regression equations were
estimated to determine the extent to which organizational
justice was
associated with sensitivity to the Ferguson Effect and to rule
out the
possible confounding influence of other individual traits (e.g.,
self-legit-
imacy). Our findings provide valuable insight for police
executives who
wish to protect their officers from the public outrage
surrounding their
profession in the post-Ferguson era of policing. In this way we
are not
interested in finding ways for officers and their agencies to skirt
ac-
countability for wrong-doing. Rather, the overarching goal of
this
study was to provide empirical evidence concerning the type of
police
supervisor actions that can help ensure officers do not become
less mo-
tivated, withdraw from their duties, or become less effective
cops be-
cause of the threat of media scrutiny and cell phone video
recording.
The implications of this study are important from a police
policy stand-
point but also because internal fairness within a police agency
may ulti-

mately impact public safety by creating better street cops.
2. The Ferguson Effect
Dating back to the summer of 2014, there have been several
highly
publicized fatal encounters between white police officers and
unarmed
black citizens. The first occurred in Staten Island, NY, when
Eric Garner
died after being placed in a choke hold by NYPD officers. A
bystander
captured the incident on video – which included Garner saying
multiple
times “I can't breathe” – and it ultimately went viral on the
internet.
Shortly thereafter, in Ferguson, MO, unarmed Michael Brown
was shot
and killed by Officer Darren Wilson. This encounter was not
captured
on video, but several witnesses claimed that Brown had his arms
raised
over his head as if to be surrendering when he was shot.
Although the
officer's use of force was later ruled justified by the US
Department of
Justice (i.e., evidence suggested that Brown attempted to grab
the
officer's gun), the incident sparked civil unrest that lasted
several
weeks in Ferguson and captured extraordinary media attention.
Eight months later, in North Charleston, SC, cellphone video
emerged of Walter Scott being shot five times in the back as he
was flee-
ing Officer Michael Slager, who has since been indicted for

murder and
is awaiting trial. Just one week after Scott's death, Freddie Gray
went
into a coma while being transported by a Baltimore Police van
for pos-
session of an illegal switchblade. The media suggested Gray
(who died
from his injuries one week later) had been the victim of a
“rough
ride,” and six officers were ultimately indicted for various
charges in-
cluding false imprisonment (the knife turned out to be a pocket
knife)
and manslaughter.1 Days after Gray's funeral, televised protests
in
downtown Baltimore turned violent: rocks were thrown, fires
were
started, patrol cars were destroyed, and many people (including
police
officers) sustained injuries. The rioting eventually forced the
governor
of Maryland to declare a state of emergency and call in the
National
Guard.
Though allegations of excessive use of force against unarmed
black
citizens are nothing new (e.g., Rodney King in Los Angeles),
these and
related events have resulted in unprecedented levels of police
scrutiny
in recent months (Weitzer, 2015). This is due in large part to
the advent
of social media and the ease with which citizens can record
police be-
havior on cell phones and upload to the Internet for millions to

view.
Such continuous negative publicity surrounding the police at a
national
level has led some to argue that the police are withdrawing from
their
duties in order to avoid being the next viral video on YouTube
(Martinez, 2015; Sutton, 2015) – an argument that has become
known as the “Ferguson Effect.”2 One month after the
Baltimore riots,
the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by Heather Mac
Donald
(2015), in which she argued that crime increases being
experienced in
several major US cities were precursors to a nationwide crime
wave
that is the direct result of the Ferguson Effect and de-policing.
Top law
enforcement officials such as St. Louis Chief Sam Dotson (who
coined
the term “Ferguson Effect”), FBI Director James Comey and
DEA Chief
Chuck Rosenberg, city mayors such as Rahm Emmanuel, and
others
have all echoed concerns over de-policing stemming from the
Ferguson
Effect.
2.1. The evidence concerning the Ferguson Effect
Until recently, the Ferguson Effect debate has been “long on
anec-
dotes and speculation and short on data” (Pyrooz et al., 2016:3).
For ex-
ample, the FBI Director warned of the Ferguson Effect and
President
Obama argued it may not exist, but both suggested we need data

to an-
swer such questions. To determine whether Ferguson was
associated
with changes in crime rates at the national level, Pyrooz and his
co-au-
thors analyzed monthly UCR Part I offenses in 81 large US
cities
12 months before and 12 months after the death of Michael
Brown in
Ferguson. They found no evidence of a post-Ferguson change in
overall,
violent, or property crime trends – although disaggregated
analyses
suggested that robbery rates were on the rise in the post-
Ferguson
era. Importantly, they did reveal that a handful of cities—those
with
higher than average crime rates, larger African-American
populations,
and greater police per capita—experienced increases in violent
crime
starting at about the same time as the Ferguson incident.
Substantively,
however, the magnitude of such crime rate changes was quite
small. For
example, in the “Ferguson Effect cities” it would take nearly
two years to
witness a one-unit increase in homicides, on average. A
Ferguson Effect?
Probably – but certainly nothing to sound alarm bells over.3
What Pyrooz and colleagues' analyses could not speak to,
however,
was whether Ferguson and related events have resulted in de-
policing.
In a recent report for the 21st Century Cities Initiative at Johns

Hopkins
University, Morgan and Pally (2016) explored this possibility
in Baltimore by examining trends in both crime and arrest data
from
2010 to 2015, which captures the deaths of both Michael Brown
and
Freddie Gray. With respect to crime, the authors found that
shootings,
homicides, robberies, carjackings, and automobile thefts all
increased
in the three months following Gray's death. Yet despite these
crime in-
creases, the arrest count over the same period declined by 30%
(in fact,
arrests had been declining during the 8 months prior to Gray's
arrest,
which is perhaps attributable to the events surrounding Brown's
death in Ferguson). Thus, the authors found that negative
publicity sur-
rounding Gray's death in Baltimore was associated with both
increases
in crime and a slowdown in police activity. Together, these
studies
14 J. Nix, S.E. Wolfe / Journal of Criminal Justice 47 (2016)
12–20
suggest that there is no Ferguson Effect on national crime rates;
howev-
er, negative publicity stemming from events like Ferguson and
Balti-
more do appear to have an effect on police behaviors.
Importantly,
such an effect seems to occur regardless of whether a city has
experi-

enced a high-profile incident of its own (e.g., Baltimore's de-
policing
after Brown's death, but before Gray's death).
Equally important is the possibility that, in response to both
negative
media attention and public discontent, the police have begun to
ques-
tion the confidence they have in their own moral authority, or
self-legit-
imacy (see Bottoms & Tankebe, 2012). Indeed, Nix and Wolfe
(2015)
demonstrated that reduced motivation due to negative publicity
in the
months following Ferguson was associated with lower levels of
self-le-
gitimacy among officers in their sample. This is especially
troubling
given that higher levels of self-legitimacy have been linked to
greater
organizational commitment and less dependence on physical
force to
gain compliance (Tankebe & Meško, 2015), as well as greater
commit-
ment to using procedural fairness (Bradford & Quinton, 2014).
Similarly, Wolfe and Nix (2016a) found that officers who felt
less
motivated as a result of negative publicity surrounding law
enforcement
indicated less willingness to engage in community partnerships
– a key
component of policing in the community-problem solving era.
Impor-
tantly, however, the study also revealed that officers' lack of
willingness

to work with community members was more a result of
perceived su-
pervisor unfairness and lack of self-legitimacy. Finally, some
commenta-
tors and law enforcement officials have proclaimed that
policing has
become more dangerous in the wake of Ferguson due to officers
being
more hesitant to use force when the situation calls for it
(Canterbury,
2016; Reese, 2014; Safir, 2015). Some have even suggested that
the
number of police officers being assaulted and killed in the line
of duty
has increased sharply (Hattem, 2015), though empirical
evidence sug-
gests otherwise (Maguire, Nix, & Campbell, 2016).
Anecdotes and opinions concerning the Ferguson Effect abound
and
many cops argue that it is real. The problem with most media
attention
concerning the Ferguson Effect is that it is treated often as a
singular
phenomenon. The reality is that there may be many Ferguson
Effects.
While research suggests that a Ferguson Effect on crime rates
appears
to be confined to select cities in the US, there are many other
conse-
quences experienced by officers that have resulted from
negative pub-
licity. In this way, empirical evidence confirms much of the
conjecture
and anecdotes. Some cops are less motivated and confident,
view the

job as more dangerous, are arresting fewer people for minor
offenses,
and are more hesitant to engage with community members in the
post-Ferguson era. Again, it is important to emphasize that
social
media contagion has allowed Ferguson-type incidents to be
experi-
enced in agencies that have not experienced their own high-
profile po-
lice shooting (see Pyrooz et al., 2016). Ultimately, social media
has
created a situation where citizens and officers alike can reap the
nega-
tive effects of such incidents regardless of geographical
proximity. Offi-
cers need to be held accountable for wrongdoing but this
evidence
suggests that a sizeable portion of police officers are feeling the
ill effects
of intense public scrutiny. These are important observations not
only for
police agencies but the communities they serve. Ultimately,
officers im-
pacted in this manner are less effective than they should be.
This has di-
rect implications for the safety of citizens and the wellbeing of
communities. Unfortunately, we know very little about what
factors
are associated with officers' sensitivity to Ferguson-related
negative
publicity. Organizational justice theory offers one possibility
for us to
begin to establish an evidence-based understanding of the
phenomenon.
3. Organizational justice

Organizational justice theory has a long history in the business
man-
agement literature (see, e.g., Lind & Tyler, 1988). In fact,
several meta-
analyses have demonstrated strong empirical support for the
conclu-
sion that employees are more likely to engage in a wide-range
of
beneficial work-related behaviors when they perceive their
organiza-
tion as fair (Cohen-Charash & Spector, 2001; Colquitt et al.,
2001).
There are three primary components to organizational justice,
the first
of which is distributive fairness. Employees base their
evaluations of su-
pervisors partially on the extent to which they perceive
organizational
outcomes, such as salary and promotion decisions, as being
distributed
evenhandedly across the organization (i.e., such decisions are
not based
on individual characteristics or “who you know”). The second
compo-
nent, interactional justice, concerns the degree to which
employees
feel they are treated with respect and politeness by supervisors.
The
third, and most important, element of organizational justice is
proce-
dural fairness. Over and above outcome-based equity,
employees look
for supervisory decisions and organizational processes to be
handled
in procedurally just manners—decisions are clearly explained,

unbiased,
and allow for employee input.
Given the overlap between the management of cooperate busi-
nesses and police organizations, a wave of organizational
justice re-
search in policing contexts has occurred in the past few years.
Wolfe
and Piquero (2011), for example, showed that officers were less
likely
to engage in misconduct when they viewed their agency and
supervi-
sors as organizationally fair. Other research has echoed this
finding
and revealed further beneficial outcomes that stem from
organizational
justice. Officers are more likely to identify with their agency
and its
goals, hold more favorable views of community policing (and
the public
more broadly), use procedural justice, and have higher levels of
self-le-
gitimacy when they perceive their supervisors as
organizationally fair
(Bradford & Quinton, 2014; Bradford, Quinton, Myhill, &
Porter, 2014;
Myhill & Bradford, 2013; Tankebe, 2014; Tankebe & Meško,
2015;
Tyler, Callahan, & Frost, 2007). Relatedly, but using slightly
different ter-
minology, recent studies have underscored the importance of
“internal
procedural justice” within police departments (Trinkner, Tyler,
& Goff,
2016; Van Craen, 2016). The President's Task Force on 21st
Century

Policing (2015) even included internal procedural justice as a
corner-
stone of building trust within the community—trust must start
from
the inside before being sustained in communities. Taken
together, the
literature demonstrates that officers who feel their supervisors
are pro-
cedurally fair, distribute outcomes based on objective criteria,
and treat
subordinates with respect, engage in more organizational
citizenship
behaviors and harbor positive attitudes that are beneficial to
both the
agencies they work for and the communities they serve.
With such results in mind, there are several reasons why we
would
expect organizational justice to be associated with less
sensitivity to the
Ferguson Effect. First, it is important to emphasize that we view
sensi-
tivity to the Ferguson Effect as a negative work-related outcome
given
the many potential negative consequences of such an
orientation. If of-
ficers feel less motivated or believe citizens have worse
opinions of the
police in the wake of Ferguson, for example, they may be less
likely to
engage in successful crime reduction strategies such as using
procedural
justice, community-oriented policing, or order-maintenance
policing.
Empirical evidence supports this conclusion (Morgan & Pally,
2016;

Wolfe & Nix, 2016a). On the other hand, officers may be
protected
from such negative outcomes when they are treated in a fair
manner
by their supervisors. Organizational justice communicates to
individual
officers that their supervisors and the broader agency have their
back—they are there to support them.4 Furthermore, being
treated fairly
and respectfully by supervisors lets officers know that they have
a voice
in their agency and they are a part of the department, not simply
a sub-
ordinate employee. Most importantly, supervisors who use
organiza-
tional fairness are indicating to officers that “we are in this
together”
regarding public scrutiny and Ferguson-related negative media
atten-
tion. This sends an important psychological message to officers
that if
something does go wrong it will be dealt with fairly.
It is important to determine whether organizational justice is
related
to officers' sensitivity to the Ferguson Effect because of
relatively easy-
to-implement policy implications that would follow.
Organizational
fairness can be used as a management philosophy by ensuring
that
15J. Nix, S.E. Wolfe / Journal of Criminal Justice 47 (2016) 12–
20

supervisors treat officers in a procedurally fair, unbiased, and
respectful
manner, and by offering them a voice in decisions. In turn, this
strategy
can help stave off any negative psychological effects of media
and public
scrutiny. This is important in itself but using organizationally
fair super-
vision techniques also has a number of other benefits that come
with it
such as creating officers who are more committed to and
trusting of
their agency, more willing to work with the community and use
proce-
dural justice, and less likely to engage in counterproductive
work be-
haviors (e.g., misconduct). Organizational justice is also likely
to help
lead to needed reforms in agencies with strained police-
community re-
lations. In short, the organizational justice return on investment
is great.
4. The current study
Accordingly, the present study explored whether officers'
percep-
tions of organizational fairness within their agency was
associated
with their sensitivity to the Ferguson Effect. We examined this
question
with a survey of sheriff's deputies that was conducted about six
months
after Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson. This was a time
period
when the “Ferguson Effect” was receiving a great deal of

attention on so-
cial and conventional media sites and when high ranking
officials were
warning of the ill-effects of the phenomenon (see, e.g.,
Anderson, 2014;
Frizell, 2014; Matt, 2014; Reese, 2014). We use a variety of
measures to
explore officers' attitudes concerning various possible
manifestations of
the Ferguson Effect. The purpose of the present study was to
provide a
theoretically sophisticated understanding of the correlates of
sensitivity
to the Ferguson Effect in order to provide evidence-based police
policy
recommendations. The overarching goal was to further
demonstrate
the utility of organizational fairness within police agencies.
5. Methods
5.1. Data
Shortly after the beginning of 2015, we surveyed 510 full-time,
sworn sheriff's deputies employed by an agency in a
southeastern US
metropolis (response rate = 85%).5 The survey was
administered online
at a password-protected website and participation was
encouraged by
ensuring anonymity and securing the endorsement of the
agency's
Deputy Advisory Council – a group of deputies who represent
the inter-
est of their colleagues and is very respected throughout the
agency. As is

typical of survey research, some respondents returned
incomplete sur-
veys, which resulted in a small amount of missing data. We
employed
multiple imputation using chained equations (MICE; 10
imputations)
to handle missing data, which is available in Stata 14 (Andridge
&
Little, 2010; Fuller & Kim, 2005).
5.2. Dependent variables
We measured sensitivity to the Ferguson Effect with five
separate
dependent variables meant to capture various consequences
attribut-
able to the Ferguson controversy. Specifically, we considered
whether
the respondent felt s/he has been impacted, his/her colleagues
have
been affected, and the public has been affected by the Ferguson
contro-
versy, respectively, in the wake of Michael Brown's death and
subse-
quent related events in the ensuing months.
5.2.1. Ferguson Effect on self
We presented respondents with eight statements regarding the
ex-
tent to which negative publicity had impacted them in the 6
months
leading up to the survey (the survey was administered
approximately
6 months after Brown's death in Ferguson). For example,
respondents

were asked to indicate their level agreement (1 = strongly
disagree,
2 = disagree, 3 = neutral, 4 = agree, 5 = strongly agree) that
over the
past 6 months, negative publicity surrounding law enforcement
had
“made it more dangerous to be a law enforcement officer,”
“made it
less enjoyable to have a career in law enforcement,” and “made
it
more difficult for you to be motivated at work.” A complete list
of the
items used to measure the effect of negative publicity on
respondents
is available in Appendix A. Principal components analysis
(PCA) with
varimax rotation demonstrated that the eight items loaded onto
two
distinct components – one pertaining to less motivation (λ =
4.18, load-
ings N0.66) and the other to increased danger on the job (λ =
1.06, load-
ings N0.60). Each component demonstrated adequate internal
consistency (motivation α = 0.87, danger α = 0.71) and,
therefore,
were combined into separate additive scales. Less motivation
ranges
from 5 to 25, with higher scores indicating the respondent felt
less mo-
tivated to do his/her job as a result of negative publicity over
the prior
6 months. Increased danger ranges from 3 to 15, with higher
scores
reflecting a belief on the part of the respondent that law
enforcement
had become more dangerous as a result of negative publicity

following
Ferguson and related events. Descriptive statistics for all
variables used
in the analyses are presented in Table 1.
5.2.2. Ferguson Effect on colleagues
It is possible that regardless of whether officers believed
negative
publicity stemming from the Ferguson controversy had affected
them,
they might believe that it had influenced other police officers,
including
their colleagues. This is an important consideration given that
police of-
ficers routinely rely on their colleagues for backup. For
example, officers
may hesitate to stop suspicious persons if they feel their
colleagues are
reluctant to use force when it may be necessary. To capture this
senti-
ment, we asked respondents to indicate their agreement (1 =
strongly
disagree to 5 = strongly agree) with statements regarding
whether neg-
ative publicity surrounding law enforcement in the previous 6
months
had: (1) made it more difficult for coworkers to do their job, (2)
made
it more difficult for coworkers to be motivated at work, (3)
caused co-
workers to be less proactive on the job than they were in the
past, and
(4) caused coworkers to be more apprehensive about using force
…

How Prior Military Experience Influences
the Future Militarized Behavior of Leaders
Michael C. Horowitz and Allan C. Stam
Abstract Policy-makers and the electorate assume political
executives’ life experi-
ences affect their policy choices once in office. Recent
international relations work on
leaders focuses almost entirely on how political institutions
shape leaders’ choices
rather than on leaders’ personal attributes and how they
influence policy choices. This
article focuses the analytic lens on leaders and their personal
backgrounds. We theorize
that the prior military background of a leader is an important
life experience with direct
relevance for how leaders evaluate the utility of using military
force. We test several
propositions employing a new data set, building on Archigos,
that encompasses the
life background characteristics of more than 2,500 heads of
state from 1875 to 2004.
The results show that the leaders most likely to initiate
militarized disputes and wars
are those with prior military service but no combat experience,
as well as former rebels.
In the 2004 US presidential election, American voters faced a
stark choice at the top
of the ballot. The sitting president, George W. Bush, had served
in the Texas Air
National Guard but never saw combat. His opponent, John
Kerry, was a decorated
veteran who served in combat during the Vietnam War. With the

United States in
the midst of fighting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, many
pundits argued that their
respective military service backgrounds represented a window
into their qualifica-
tions to be commander in chief. In a series of interviews,
speeches, and columns,
Kerry and his staff explicitly suggested that his combat
experience in Vietnam
gave him wisdom that would make him a more effective
wartime president than
Bush. During his speech accepting the Democratic Party’s
nomination to be their
presidential candidate, Kerry even stated, “As President, I will
wage this war with
the lessons I learned in war.”1
The way different types of prior military service may affect the
future decisions of
leaders is not only an issue for the American electorate. At the
height of the Cuban
Missile Crisis, as the United States and Soviet Union stood on
the precipice of
war, Nikita Khrushchev, a combat veteran from World War II,
sent a message to
another combat veteran from World War II, John F. Kennedy.
The message, in
part, read, “I have participated in two wars and know that war
ends when it has
The authors would like to thank Hein Goemans, Ed Mansfield,
Rose McDermott, Phil Potter, Dan Reiter,
Jessica Weeks, Alex Weisiger, the anonymous reviewers, the
editors of IO, and seminar participants at
several universities for their thoughtful feedback. All errors are
the sole responsibility of the authors.

1. Kerry 2004.
International Organization 68, Summer 2014, pp. 527–559
© The IO Foundation, 2014 doi:10.1017/S0020818314000046
rolled through cities and villages, everywhere sowing death and
destruction. For such
is the logic of war. If people do not display wisdom, they will
clash like blind moles
and then mutual annihilation will commence.”2 Khrushchev
explicitly argued that his
experiences in war made him understand the consequences of
escalation and inter-
ested in finding another way to resolve the crisis.
The general observation that life experiences shape an
individual’s future behavior
constitutes a central proposition of psychology and sociology.
This article focuses on
variation in a particularly salient life experience: the military
backgrounds of heads of
state. We build on existing research in two ways. First, despite
enormous growth in
research on leaders over the past several years,3 much of the
literature on leaders and
international conflict focuses on how domestic political
institutions shape the choices
of leaders, rather than leaders as independent actors. Second,
most existing research
on leaders themselves, though useful, focuses on particular
individuals as an exist-
ence proof to demonstrate they matter, rather than
systematically testing propositions
across space and time.4

Accounting for the relative impact of leaders, however, is a
logical step toward
building more accurate models of international behavior.
Incorporating variation in
the beliefs of individual leaders could play a role in influencing
the credibility of
threats, the policy choices of domestic institutions, and the use
of force. In this
article, we focus on how the particular military experiences of
leaders influences
their future militarized decisions, while accounting for the
interaction between
leaders and the domestic political institutions. Institutions, after
all, both screen the
selection of leaders and constrain the range of policy options
available to them.
Does military service increase familiarity and knowledge about
the use of force,
making those who serve more likely to support military action,
or does the exposure
to danger in the military make those who serve more hesitant to
use force in the
future?5 Existing research on how military backgrounds shape
future beliefs often
fails to differentiate military service itself from actual
participation in combat. We
theorize that the most conflict-prone leaders should be those
with military experience
but no combat experience. These leaders, such as Kaiser
Wilhelm II and Muammar
Qaddafi, have the familiarity with military service that makes
them more likely to
support use of the military when they reach office, but they lack
the combat experi-

ence that might them more knowledgeable about the risks and
consequences.
Additionally, rather than just thinking about uniformed military
service, we
develop and test hypotheses concerning the effect of military
service outside the
confines of the nation-state. Rebel group participation is a
particularly dangerous
endeavor—challenging the state with military force is an
activity much more likely
2. Khrushchev 1962.
3. For recent examples, see Weeks 2012; Debs and Goemans
2010; and Croco 2011.
4. Saunders 2011. Exceptions exist in research on leader
selection and leaders and economic growth. See
Besley and Reynal-Querol 2011; Besley, Montalvo, and Reynal-
Querol 2011; and Jones and Olken 2005.
Also, see Colgan 2010, on revolutionary leaders.
5. See Feaver and Gelpi 2004; Weeks 2012; Huntington 1957;
Janowitz 1960; and Sechser 2004.
528 International Organization
to end in failure than success. Those on the losing side also
often suffer severe per-
sonal consequences. Individuals who self-select into leadership
positions in rebel
groups should thus be especially risk acceptant and receive
reinforcement from
those experiences, giving them efficacy beliefs that often carry
over when they

enter office later in life.6
Our results show that leaders with prior military service, but not
combat experience,
are significantly more likely to initiate militarized disputes and
wars than other leaders.
Prior rebel participants are even more likely to initiate
militarized disputes than leaders
lacking any rebel or military experience. Domestic political
institutions clearly matter,
however. In severely autocratic countries or regimes that lack
strong civilian control of
the military, even controlling for other characteristics of those
regimes, leaders with
combat experience appear significantly more likely to engage in
militarized behavior.
We argue that this results from both socialization and a
selection process that, in auto-
cratic regimes such as Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, rewards
individuals with unusually
high willingness to engage in violence and aggression.
We also explicitly deal with questions of endogeneity
concerning leader selection
and the propensity for leaders to have prior military service or
rebel experience. In par-
ticular, it is tempting to think that any effect of military
experience might be attribut-
able to a screening process whereby countries in dangerous
neighborhoods are more
likely to select leaders with prior military experience. We
control for this possibility
throughout. We also show that our results hold even when
looking at leaders’ entrance
into office though the most “random” possible process and by
controlling statistically

for whether or not a leader is likely to have prior military
experience.
Bringing Leader Experiences Back in
Reviewing the Study of Leaders
Examining how leaders’ formative experiences shape their
behavior in office is fun-
damentally different from most of the existing international
relations literature on
leaders. Most of the current literature, while investigating the
effects of varying
leader types, is not actually about leaders. Instead, this
literature focuses on how vari-
ations in domestic institutional constraints affect leadership
tenure,7 the institution-
ally induced relationship between leadership tenure and
conflict,8 the responsibility
and punishment of leaders,9 and the decisions of leaders in the
military arena.10
This research convincingly shows that domestic political
institutions profoundly
shape the incentives leaders face for various types of policy
choices.
6. Differences may exist for foot soldiers pressured into service
because of rebel control or coercion.
Kalyvas and Kocher 2007.
7. See Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003; and Chiozza and
Goemans 2003 and 2004.
8. See Goemans 2008; and Debs and Goemans 2010.
9. See Goemans 2000; and Croco 2011.
10. Weeks 2012.

Prior Military Experience & Future Militarized Behavior of
Leaders 529
In these models, the leaders themselves, however, are
“dispensable” black boxes,
to paraphrase Greenstein.11 Rather than assuming that leaders
residing in the same
institutional contexts will behave similarly, we unpack a
leader’s propensity to
engage in militarized behavior by focusing on formative
military experiences and
evaluating how leaders facing the same institutionally induced
incentives may
behave differently.
As previous work demonstrates, leaders operate within the
constraints of a political
system, rarely having the capacity to rule by fiat. Even Mao and
Stalin worked within
the constraints of a communist party central committee, though
they are properly con-
sidered personalist leaders.12 Many authoritarian leaders face
institutional checks and
balances, albeit typically weaker ones than those in democratic
systems, that make it
difficult to enact policies exactly when and how they wish.13
Therefore, examining
the effect of leaders’ personality attributes on policy requires
outlining at the outset
how the beliefs that follow from those attributes might translate
into policy.
Figure 1 demonstrates, conceptually, how leader beliefs operate
through domestic
political institutions to influence the policy process.

The causal sequence shown in Figure 1, illustrating the link
between leader experi-
ences, domestic politics, and national policy, shows the
potential importance of cap-
turing leader experiences in explaining state behavior.
Why Do Leader Experiences Matter?
People and their personalities result from more than a simple
aggregation of their
experiences; but our individual experiences matter a great deal
in shaping our atti-
tudes during subsequent periods. The experiences people have
in late adolescence
and early adulthood, particularly as they leave home, have large
and persistent
effects on personality and risk propensity later in life.14
Research by Jervis and
Goldgeier, among others, demonstrates that lessons drawing on
prior experience
function as heuristics that drive how people estimate the
potential costs and
FIGURE 1. Theoretical relationship between leater experiences
and policy outcomes
11. Greenstein 1969, 51–55.
12. Weeks 2012.
13. Cheibub, Gandhi, and Vreeland 2010.
14. See Roberts, Caspi, and Moffitt 2003; and Caspi, Roberts,
and Shiner 2005.

benefits of their choices and the types of strategies they view as
likely to succeed.15
As Matthews observes, “Human beings perceive what goes on
about them within a
frame of reference determined by their total previous
experience.”16 This is true
for political leaders as well as the general population. George
argues that the prior
experiences of leaders inform their “sense of personal
efficacy,”17 the view they
have of their capabilities. The higher the level of knowledge
leaders believe they
have about a given situation, something drawn in part from
prior experience, the
lower the level of uncertainty about the appropriate policy
response.18 Burden and
others show that the personal backgrounds of elected officials
affect their policy
choices.19 Kennedy similarly finds that efficacy beliefs drawn
from experience
shape the future foreign policy behavior of leaders.20
It is important to be clear and recognize that our argument
captures only some of
the variation in the way that individual leaders behave. For
example, the beliefs and
psychologies of leaders may play a critical role in filtering how
experiences are trans-
lated into policies. We also do not capture the role of nature, as
opposed to nurture.
The Role of Military Experience
There are many reasons to suspect that military experience

might have a particularly
powerful and systematic impact on leaders’ behavior once they
reach office. First,
military service offers a potentially direct connection between a
behavior someone
engages in prior to entering office—fighting a war—and
something they might do
while in office—initiating a militarized dispute or war. Second,
military experiences
can be particularly acute or traumatic and often occur during
late adolescence, an
important developmental stage.21 It is also not simply the case
that those with
riskier personalities select into the military. Those who enter
militaries do so for
many reasons (see the online appendix). Experimental research,
as well as twin
studies, suggests that those experiences have an independent
influence on an individ-
ual’s personality and risk propensity.22 This makes it a fruitful
area for study. Third,
frequent conflicts between military and civilian leaders over the
use of force in the
United States since the Cold War lend credence to the idea that
military and civilian
elites may think differently about the use of force.23
15. See Jervis 1976; and Goldgeier 1994.
16. Matthews 1954, 3.
17. George 1980, 5.
18. Ibid., 27.
19. See Burden 2007; and Washington 2007.
20. Kennedy 2011. Our argument captures only some of the
variation in the way that individual leaders
behave. For example, the beliefs and psychologies of leaders
may play a critical role in filtering how experi-

ences are translated into policies.
21. See Caspi, Roberts, and Shiner 2005; and Cutchin et al.
2008.
22. Roberts, Caspi, and Moffitt 2003.
23. Feaver and Gelpi 2004.
Leaders 531
Some argue that those with military service may be more prone
to militaristic be-
havior. Military service, after all, generates expertise in the use
of violence. It social-
izes participants to think about the use of force as a potentially
effective solution to
political problems. This can crowd out other potential solutions
for dealing with mili-
tary challenges, leading to a perceptual bias in favor of using
military force.24 Sechser
argues that ties to the military also create parochial interests in
favor of using force
and decision-making biases favoring rapid escalation.25
Concern with the militaristic
attitudes of those in the armed forces in the United States, for
example, goes back to
the founding of the nation. In the early nineteenth century,
Alexis de Tocqueville
wrote, “a great army in the heart of a democratic people will
always be a great
peril.”26
Exposure to combat represents a foundational experience that
can influence
future beliefs about violence. Some micro-level data suggest

that exposure to
combat makes people more risk acceptant. Survey research by
Brunk and colleagues
focusing on retired military officers in the United States found
that those who
had participated in combat were significantly less sensitive to
risk.27 In Burundi,
Voors and colleagues used variation in exposure to combat at
the village level as a
way to measure risk attitudes among villagers. They showed
that people in
villages exposed to combat have higher levels of risk seeking
and discount the
future more.28
While much of this literature has been focused on the United
States, Weeks and
Brecher find that military regimes are more likely to initiate
conflicts than other
types of regimes.29 Weeks specifically argues that the
normalization of violence
for leaders in military regimes, given that they often come to
power through violence,
makes them more likely to use force in office.
An alternative perspective originated with Huntington, who
found that, within
professional organizations, military experience actually leads to
conservatism
around the use of force. Though military leaders are more likely
to view
the world through a lens focused on potential threats,30 they are
risk averse in
the actual use of force. They view other states based on their
capabilities,
rather than their intentions.31 Huntington wrote that “The

military man
normally opposes reckless, aggressive, belligerent action…war
should not
be resorted to except as a final recourse…the military man
rarely favors
24. See Posen 1984; and Snyder 1984. Some argue this leads to
biases in favor of offensive doctrines, but
that does not necessarily imply biases toward using force, just
using force in a particular way if a crisis
occurs. See Snyder 1984; and Feaver and Gelpi 2004, 26.
25. Sechser 2004, 750–51.
26. de Tocqueville 2000, 622.
27. Brunk, Secrest, and Tamashiro 1990, 101.
28. Voors et al. 2010, 1–2.
29. See Weeks 2012; and Brecher 1996.
30. TISS data show that those with military experience tend to
view China as a greater threat than those
without military experience. Feaver and Gelpi 2004.
31. Huntington 1957, 69–70.
war.”32 Essentially, military experience leads to a desire for
greater armaments
and preparedness, not a greater desire to use force.
Similarly, Janowitz argues that a lack of civilian knowledge
about the military
leads to the flawed perception of professional militaries as
militaristic. In fact, mili-
tary officers are often more realistic and conservative about the
use of force than
their civilian counterparts.33 Statements by then-General

Dwight Eisenhower after
World War II reflected a military operational code that viewed
war not as inevitable,
but as a last resort.34 Conservatism results for several reasons:
military personnel are
the ones who will actually risk death in conflicts; in some
organizations, setbacks can
be career ending or worse for senior military officers; and
military leaders often per-
ceive civilians as naive, perpetually underestimating the costs
and risks of armed
conflict. Civilian leaders, lacking knowledge about how force is
used or an accurate
understandings of the costs, are more prone to risky
adventurism, or “chicken-hawk”
aggressiveness.35 This military conservatism argument extends
beyond the United
States. Before World War I, German generals “generally
viewed” war “as the last
resort of policy.”36 Even in the early Nazi period, German
generals favored a slow
buildup of German military forces to deter foreign influences
and discouraged
Adolf Hitler’s rapid adventurism at times.37
Most existing work, however, tends to assume that all military
service is essentially
equivalent.38 In contrast, we theorize that different experiences
within the military
might affect individuals’ attitudes in different ways. We focus
in this study on
three elements of prior service: exposure to combat, the type of
political regime in
which someone serves, and rebel group participation.
Differentiating between those with combat experience and those
without may

provide a way to resolve the perennial dispute between the
military conservatism
and militarism schools of thought. The militarism argument is
predicated on the
idea that exposure to the military leads to socialization that
makes support for the
use of force more likely. The causal logic of the military
conservatism argument,
however, is not about military experience as a whole, but about
the exposure to
the risk of death in the military. Direct exposure to combat is a
logical trigger
for the type of conservatism that would accentuate planning and
arms buildups but
not the use of force.
32. Ibid., 69. This is sometimes presented along with a
“chicken-hawk” claim about civilians. The ques-
tion of why some leaders without military experience become
chicken hawks while others do not is an inter-
esting avenue for future research. We briefly empirically
address this issue in the results section.
33. Janowitz 1960, 4, 230–31.
34. Ibid., 274.
35. See Janowitz 1960, 259; and Sirota 2011. Betts found that,
excluding commanders actively deployed
in the field, high-level military officers in the early Cold War
were not more supportive of deployments or
warfare than their civilian counterparts, though they were more
supportive of escalation once war began.
Betts 1977, 4–5, 216.
36. Huntington 1957, 101, 105.
37. Hitler eventually replaced those generals. Ibid., 117–21.
38. Feaver and Gelpi’s work is an exception. See the online
appendix. Feaver and Gelpi 2004.

Leaders 533
For example, while also making people less sensitive to risk,
the study from Voors
and colleagues showed that those exposed to combat also
become more altruistic—
potentiallysimilartothewayveteransintheFeaverandGelpisurveyb
ecomemorehesi-
tant about the initial use of force in many scenarios. Brunk and
colleagues also find that,
while combat veterans are more risk acceptant, they are also
more restrictive about the
situations in which they think the use of force is appropriate.39
These findings are sup-
ported by experimental psychological research on risk
propensity, which shows that
exposure to fear-triggering events generally has a restraining
influence on future risk-
seeking behavior.40 As a risky experience likely to trigger fear
in most individuals,
direct exposure tocombat
shouldthereforegeneratemoresensitivity torisk inthefuture.
Charles de Gaulle, the famous French leader, recognized that,
for soldiers “war is,
first and last, the purpose of their lives.” Yet he also stated that
military men do not
necessarily “approve of the principle of war. It would not be
difficult to show that
they, of all men, are only too well aware of its horrors.”41 In
Janowitz’s survey of
military personnel, one respondent cited “recent combat

experience,” which led to
“intimate knowledge of the horrors of modern warfare,” as the
force behind military
conservatism.42
Some micro-level survey evidence also demonstrates a link
between combat par-
ticipation and lower levels of support for some types of military
action. In 1975,
the second wave of the Jennings and Niemi panel study included
several questions
about military service, including a question that allows us to
differentiate those
who deployed to Vietnam from those who just had some form of
military
service.43 The population surveyed had all been high school
seniors in 1965,
making Vietnam the first war where they could have deployed.
The third wave of
the Jennings-Niemi panel study, in 1982, then included a
question about respondent
attitudes concerning American foreign policy. While the
question was not specifically
focused on the use of force, foreign policy attitudes are a
reasonable proxy—
especially given the lack of other data on the topic. The results,
available in the
online appendix, showed that those who deployed to Vietnam
were more skeptical
of an active American foreign policy than those who had served
in the military but
had not deployed to Vietnam.44 We therefore theorize the
following:
H1: Leaders with military experience but no combat experience
should be more likely

to initiate militarized disputes.
39. Brunk, Secrest, and Tamashiro 1990.
40. Lerner and Keltner 2001.
41. de Gaulle 1960, 102.
42. Janowitz 1960, 230.
43. While not all who deployed to Vietnam would have had
direct exposure to combat, all would have
been in a combat zone as defined by the Defense Department.
Even this imperfect measure allows us to
differentiate in some way within the “veteran” population.
44. Jennings, Markus, and Niemi 1991. Also, see Gelpi, Feaver,
and Reifler 2009. Average survey respon-
dents might also differ from leaders in some systematic way.
Thus, we need to look at the actual behavior of
leaders to determine the relationship.
Effects of Civilian Control of the Military
The literature on military professionalism also provides a way
to differentiate
between the socialization of military personnel in different
types of political
regimes, as well as the relationship between prior military
service and the selection
of leaders into office. Professionalized military forces should
view war as an inher-
ently political process, with military aims and interests
subservient to political
ones. Thus, professional militaries should be those where the
conservative values
of the military, as outlined by Huntington and Janowitz, should

shine through
most clearly.
In political regimes run by the military, classical military
professionalism is, by
definition, impossible. Those militaries that lack classical
professionalism will natur-
ally tend to select for political leaders who lack those values as
well. Consistent with
Weeks’s findings about military regimes,45 nonprofessional
militaries, by not embed-
ding deference to political authority, are more likely to select
for leaders who interpret
their own military experiences in ways that lead to militarized
behavior. The leaders
who rise through those militaries to take power will be more
inherently aggressive
because that aggressive behavior is what got them into power in
the first place.
Thus, the micro-level data suggesting a positive relationship
between combat
exposure and future militarized behavior should be especially
plausible in nonprofes-
sionalized militaries and extreme autocracies. This is
particularly true given that the
path to power is more likely to be through coups or other
irregular means, which are
dangerous endeavors.46
In nonmilitary regimes, the military personnel that become
civilian political
leaders tend to be strong, but less militaristic.47 For example,
following World
War II, it was Eisenhower, not his more aggressive
counterparts, Generals
Curtis LeMay and Douglas MacArthur, who subsequently rose

to the American
presidency. The domestic political institutions in nonmilitary
regimes are more
likely to avoid selecting for military personnel who react to
those experiences
by becoming more aggressive. Instead, when selecting those
with prior combat
experience, they are likely to select strong leaders that appear
more stable.
Those who react to experiencing combat by becoming
exceptionally aggressive
and risk acceptant, rather than coming to power in autocracies
and military
regimes through risky gambits, are more likely to be selected
out in other types
of regimes.
H2: Leaders with combat experience in autocracies and military
regimes should be
more likely to initiate militarized disputes.
45. Weeks 2012.
46. Goemans, Gleditsch, and Chiozza 2009.
47. Janowitz 1960, 4.
Leaders 535
Participation in Rebel Movements
Military service as part of a national military is not the only
type of military service a
future leader might have. Many national leaders have prior
experience in rebel groups

and some come to power directly as part of rebel movements.
Participation in a rebel
group is another type of experience that predicts more conflict-
acceptant behavior
once a leader takes office. Simply participating in a rebel
movement signals that an
individual is likely to be more risk acceptant than average. Even
though some
might enter rebel groups because of coercion or other factors
that make it a less
risky choice,48 former rebels who become national leaders tend
to have had at
least some position of leadership in rebel organizations,
meaning they are more
likely to join via active selection.49 Regardless of how a
leader’s selection occurred,
success as a militarized rebel would also serve to reinforce the
utility of military force
as a strategy.50
For example, consider Mao Zedong’s transition from a rebel to
the national leader
of China. In its early years, Mao’s China experienced high
levels of violence, both
internal and external. Research by Kennedy suggests that,
among other factors,
Mao’s prior successes as a rebel leader made him predisposed to
think, once he
entered office, that similarly martial behavior would be
successful. More generally,
drawing on George and Kennedy, the fact that a rebel in power,
by definition, sur-
vived the rebellion, should give them higher levels of martial
efficacy. Using experi-
mental neurological data, Xue notes that the higher the level of
risk and success in

previous events, the higher the likelihood of an individual
engaging in subsequent
high-risk behavior.51
The potential link between rebel experience and future military
behavior follows
from this …
Journal of Criminal Justice 47 (2016) 1–11
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Journal of Criminal Justice
Temporal changes in racial violence, 1980 to 2006: A latent
trajectory approach
Karen F. Parker a,⁎, Richard Stansfield b, Patricia L. McCall c
a Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice, University of
Delaware, Newark, DE 19716, United States
b Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminal Justice,
Rutgers University, 405-7 Cooper Street, Camden, NJ 08102,
United States
c Department of Sociology and Anthropology, North Carolina
State University, 1911 Building 365, Raleigh, NC 27695, United
States
⁎ Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: [email protected] (K.F. Parker), Rich
(R. Stansfield), [email protected] (P.L. McCall).
0047-2352/Published by Elsevier Ltd.
a b s t r a c t
a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:
Received 25 April 2016
Received in revised form 22 June 2016
Accepted 23 June 2016
Available online 1 July 2016
Objectives: The study examines the ability of a latent trajectory
approach to advance our understanding of the
temporal trends in white and black homicide rates over a critical
period, 1980 to 2006. After establishing distinct
trajectories that reveal hidden racial heterogeneity, we estimate
which of two dominant arguments concerning
the changes in homicide rates over time: 1)macrostructural
conditions and 2) crime control and drug sales—best
explain the latent class race-specific homicide rate memberships
at the city level.
Methods:Using homicide data from theUniformCrimeReports
alongwith decennial U.S. census data across three
time periods, we employ both latent trajectory and time series
approaches.
Results: Our latent trajectory approach identified three unique
trends or groupings of cities based on white and
black homicide rates, reflecting “high”, “medium” and “low”
temporal homicide trends. Time seriesmodels high-
light variation in which characteristics contributed to the
distinct race-specific homicide trends by trajectory
group.
Conclusions: Together, this study reveals hidden heterogeneity
among American cities with respect to temporal
trends that inform the current debate about diversity in the
location and magnitude of the crime drop as well as
which factors contributed to homicide trends by racial groups.
Implications are discussed.
Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Keywords:
Racial violence

Crime drop
Homicide trends
Latent trajectory approach
Macrostructural approach
Crime control strategies
Time series analysis
1. Introduction
Major shifts in national crime trends over the last quarter of the
20th
century, particularly among African-American males, have
prompted
criminologists to explore what social, economic and political
forces are
driving such changes (Blumstein, 1995). Scholars have
specifically doc-
umented the importance of age composition and gains in the
economy
(Blumstein & Wallman, 2006; LaFree, 1999; Parker, 2008;
Rosenfeld &
Messner, 2009) as explanations for declining crime rates since
the
early 1990s (Gartner & Doob, 2010). Strong evidence that the
U.S.
crime drop differed in magnitude across locales also led
scholars to re-
think the crime drop at local levels (Baumer & Wolff, 2014;
Messner
et al., 2007). These investigations revealed that the economy as
well
as policy-based factors such as police presence, prison
expansion, and
receding illicit drug markets might be key to understanding
American
based declines. The role of each factorwithin cities remains
hotly debat-

ed however, evidenced by the disagreement surrounding the role
of
specialized police strategies in New York City (Rosenfeld &
Fornango,
[email protected]
2014; Weisburd, Telep, & Lawton, 2014; Zimring, 2011). We
suggest
that accounting for racial differences could providemore
definitive con-
clusions about the role of crime control strategies and structural
condi-
tions in the American crime drop.
America's enduring problem of violence is not equally dispersed
across all cities or all groups. Scholars point to the considerable
differ-
ences in the average social and economic conditions of racial
and ethnic
groups, in addition to historic and contemporary differences in
criminal
justice responses across communities and groups. We examine
the ex-
tent to which latent trajectory techniques can inform us about
the un-
derlying factors contributing to race-specific U.S. homicide
trends
during the latter part of the 20th century and into the early years
of
the 21st century. Latent trajectory analyses have been applied
primarily
to individual-level longitudinal cohort data to identify distinct
offending
trajectories. Few studies have applied this technique to study
macro-
level crime trends, but there have been notable exceptions at the
street

or neighborhood level (Boggess & Hipp, 2010; Braga, Hureau,
&
Papachristos, 2011; Griffiths & Chavez, 2004; Kikuchi &
Desmond,
2010; Morris & Slocum, 2012; Weisburd, Bushway, Lum, &
Yang,
2004). To date, latent trajectory analysis has rarely been applied
to tem-
poral trends in city-level homicide (see Hipp, 2011; McCall,
Land, &
Parker, 2011), despite the predominant focus of the crime drop
http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1016/j.jcrimjus.20
16.06.001&domain=pdf
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00472352
2 K.F. Parker et al. / Journal of Criminal Justice 47 (2016) 1–11
literature on city dynamics. Applying this technique, along with
a time
series approach, allows us to identify different city-level
trajectories
with unique white and black homicide rate trends, thus allowing
us to
capture racial heterogeneity in violence within American cities.
Based
on extensive research (see e.g., Baumer & Wolff, 2014;
Blumstein &
Wallman, 2006; Levitt, 2004; Parker, 2008; Zimring, 2007 for
in-depth
reviews), we know that the crime drop was not universal. For
example,
Blumstein and Wallman (2006) discuss different patterns across

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