Twelfth Global Studies Conference

Abstract

If we view globalization broadly as the decline of traditional societies dependent on local economies and their replacement with highly integrated societies dependent on international markets, it raises the possibility that globalization is directly connected to cross-national crime. In fact, the argument that globalization increases crime is closely related to two of the most important theoretical explanations of cross-national crime rates: social disorganization and economic stress perspectives. Although they have been far less common, there are also two important theoretical perspectives that would lead us to expect that globalization will lead instead to crime declines: Durkheim’s modernization arguments and Elias’s contention that societies are gradually undergoing a civilizing process. With few exceptions researchers have rarely included direct measures of globalization in cross-national comparative studies of crime. Moreover, prior research has been limited by small, unrepresentative samples, and few robustness tests. In this paper we assemble a cross-national homicide database from the World Health Organization (widely regarded as the most valid measure of ordinary crime) which includes 1,766 observations over nearly six decades (1957-2015). We operationalize globalization as trade openness, the measure most commonly used by economists. We provide a robust set of control variables and submit our tests to six different types of multivariate analysis. Contrary to several dominant perspectives in criminology, we conclude that economic globalization during the past half century is associated with significant declines in worldwide homicide rates. We discuss the implications for theory, policy, and future research.