Theory and Empirics of Democracy and Crime Revisited: .x000d.How Much Further Can We Go With Existing Data and Methodologies?

The vast empirical work on the criminogenic nature of democracies has produced strong â€" albeit suspiciously wide-ranging- claims. This paper reviews existing evidence and methodologies that link crime and democracies. It asks three questions: do theories generate separable and exclusionary predictions enabling their identification and testing? Could results be more conclusive given existing data limitations and the current methodologies state of the art? How far we are for obtaining such results? We conclude that there are far too many arguments with blurry lines predicting just about any result. Data is more likely to constitute the binding constraint rather than methodology issues, despite some caveats in the estimation of causality. Finally, it is a rationalization of scattered sources what is prioritary, which will require overcoming the externalities of a global public good as information is. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]