Quantify world peace.

• Author: Sanchez, Julian
• Position: Human Security Report 2005 - Brief Article

The Human Security Report 2005, produced by the Human Security Centre at the University of British Columbia, offers some welcome news: Since the end of the Cold War, the frequency of wars, genocides, and other forms of mass slaughter has dropped steeply. So have the death rates in those conflicts that did occur.

One favorite explanation for the trend is the increase in the number of democracies. It was at the start of the 19905s, after all, that full democracies first began to outnumber autocracies, and the gap has grown steadily ever since. But this benefit has probably been offset by the increase in "anocracies"--regimes that aren't quite democracies or despotisms and are more unstable than either.

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