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In the course of history a large number of politicians has been assassinated. Even if

only rulers, such as presidents, prime ministers, and kings and queens are considered,

there are many cases of political murders. They have happened primarily in

authoritarian or dictatorial countries, but democracies have also been affected. A

rational choice analysis following the economics of crime has been used to distinguish

the expected marginal benefits of assassinating a politician, and the marginal cost of

attacking a politician. The comparative analysis of various equilibria helps us to gain

valuable insights into specific historical events in which politicians were assassinated,

and in which there were fewer such attempts.

While an econometric analysis would be desirable, the lack of adequate data prohibits

this approach at least for the time being. Exactly in those countries in which our

model predicts assassinations to occur most frequently – i.e. in authoritarian and

dictatorial countries – the data are either not available at all or of too low quality to

engage in serious time series or cross section estimates.

The analysis allows us to draw policy conclusions going beyond the deterrence

approach presently dominating. Our analysis suggests that an extension of democracy,

a rule by a committee of several politicians, more decentralization via the division of

power and federalism, and a strengthening of civil society significantly reduce the

incentive to assassinate politicians. It is argued that many of these proposals meet

heavy opposition by entrenched rent seeking groups such as the secret service

complex. In contrast, the citizens burdened by the deterrence policy due to free-riding

problems have little incentive to oppose the deterrence policy, and to engage in

bringing about the here suggested policies.

The paper constitutes but a first step towards a more full analysis of political

assassinations. Worthwhile future work could be addressed to carefUL case studies of

political assassinations, the use of “analytic narratives” as a method to empirically

analyze testable propositions, and the collection of data for at least some aspects of

the issues involved.

References

Adler, Freda, Gerhard O.W. Mueller and William S. Laufer (2006). Criminology.

New York: McGraw-Hill.

Alper, Neil O. and Daryl A. Hellman (2006). Economics of Crime: Theory and

Practice. New York: Pearson Custom Publishing.

Barkan, Steven E. (2005). Criminology: A Sociological Understanding. Upper Saddle

River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Bates, Robert H., Avner Greif, Margaret Levi, Jean-Laurent Rosenthal and Barry

Weingast (1998). Analytic Narratives. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Becker, Gary S. (1968). Crime and Punishment: An Economic Approach. Journal of

Political Economy 76: 497-529.

Becker, Gary S. (1974). Essays in the Economics of Crime and Punishment. New

York: National Bureau of Economic Research.

Besley, Tim and Robin Burgess (2002). Land Reform, Poverty Reduction and

Growth: Evidence from India. Quarterly Journal of Economics 115: 389-430.

Beyer, Mark (2003). Secret Service. New York: Children’s Press

IV. Conclusion