[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoZeZprXnDg]
A propos of David’s recent posts on lax security surrounding Barack Obama, American voters can at least take heart from new research from Harvard University, which finds that the effect of assassination attempts in democracies – either successful or not – is negligible. In autocracies, on the other hand, they can have a decisive effect. Michael Moynihan in The American has the details:
In “Hit or Miss? The Effect of Assassinations on Institutions and War,” Olken and Jones looked at the effects of political assassination, using a strict empirical methodology that takes into account economic conditions at the time of the killing and what Olken calls a “novel data set” of assassination attempts, successful and unsuccessful, between 1875 and 2004.
Olken and Jones discovered that a country was “more likely to see democratization following the assassination of an autocratic leader,” but found no substantial “effect following assassinations—or assassination attempts—on democratic leaders.” They concluded that “on average, successful assassinations of autocrats produce sustained moves toward democracy.” The researchers also found that assassinations have no effect on the inauguration of wars, a result that “suggests that World War I might have begun regardless of whether or not the attempt on the life of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 had succeeded or failed.”
