Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress

10. K. Eichenwald, “Right-Wing Extremists Are a Bigger Threat to America Than ISIS,” Newsweek, Feb. 4, 2016. Using the United States Extremis Crime Database (Freilich et al. 2014), which tracks right-wing extremist violence, the security analyst Robert Muggah (personal communication) estimates that from 1990 through May 2017, and excluding 9/11 and Oklahoma, there have been 272 deaths from right-wing extremism and 136 from Islamist terrorist attacks.

11. Terrorism as a by-product of global media: Payne 2004.

12. Greater impact of homicide: Slovic 1987; Slovic, Fischof, & Lichtenstein 1982.

13. Rational fear of murderers: Duntley & Buss 2011.

14. Motives of suicide terrorists and rampage killers: Lankford 2013.

15. Delusion that ISIS is an “existential threat” to America: See chapter 4, note 14; also J. Mueller & M. Stewart, “ISIS Isn’t an Existential Threat to America,” Reason, May 27, 2016.

16. Y. N. Harari, “The Theatre of Terror,” The Guardian, Jan. 31, 2015.

17. Terrorism doesn’t work: Abrahms 2006; Brandwen 2016; Cronin 2009; Fortna 2015.

18. Jervis 2011.

19. Y. N. Harari, “The Theatre of Terror,” The Guardian, Jan. 31, 2015.

20. Don’t Name Them, Don’t Show Them: Lankford & Madfis 2018; see also the projects called No Notoriety (https://nonotoriety.com/) and Don’t Name Them (http://www.dontnamethem.org/).

21. How terrorism ends: Abrahms 2006; Cronin 2009; Fortna 2015.

CHAPTER 14: DEMOCRACY

1. High rates of violence in nonstate societies: Pinker 2011, chap. 2. For more recent estimates confirming this difference, see Gat 2015; Gómez et al. 2016; Wrangham & Glowacki 2012.

2. Despotic early governments: Betzig 1986; Otterbein 2004. Biblical tyranny: Pinker 2011, chap. 1.

3. White 2011, p. xvii.

4. Democracies have faster-growing economies: Radelet 2015, pp. 125–29. Note that this can be obscured by the fact that poor countries can grow at faster rates than rich countries, and poor countries tend to be less democratic. Democracies are less likely to go to war: Hegre 2014; Russett 2010; Russett & Oneal 2001. Democracies have less severe (though not necessarily fewer) civil wars: Gleditsch 2008; Lacina 2006. Democracies have fewer genocides: Rummel 1994, pp. 2, 15; Rummel 1997, pp. 6–10, 367; Harff 2003, 2005. Democracies never have famines: Sen 1984; see also Devereux 2000, for a slight qualification. Citizens in democracies are healthier: Besley 2006. Citizens in democracies are better educated: Roser 2016b.

5. Three waves of democratization: Huntington 1991.

6. Democracy in retreat: Mueller 1999, p. 214.

7. Democracy is obsolete: quotes from Mueller 1999, p. 214.

8. “The end of history”: Fukuyama 1989.

9. For quotations, see Levitsky & Way 2015.

10. Not getting the concept of democracy: Welzel 2013, p. 66, n. 11.

11. This is a problem for the annual counts by the democracy-tracking organization Freedom House; see Levitsky & Way 2015; Munck & Verkuilen 2002; Roser 2016b.

12. This is another problem with the Freedom House data.

13. Polity IV Project: Center for Systemic Peace 2015; Marshall & Gurr 2014; Marshall, Gurr, & Jaggers 2016.

14. Color revolutions: Bunce 2017.

15. Democracies: Marshall, Gurr, & Jaggers 2016; Roser 2016b. “Democracies” are countries rated by the Polity IV Project as having a democracy score of 6 or greater, “Autocracies” as those having an autocracy score of 6 or greater. Countries that are neither democratic nor autocratic are called anocracies, defined as an “incoherent mix of democratic and autocratic traits and practices.” In an “open anocracy,” leaders are not restricted to an elite. For 2015, Roser divides the world’s population up as follows: 55.8 percent in democracies, 10.8 percent in open anocracies, 6.0 percent in closed anocracies, 23.2 percent in autocracies, and 4 percent in transition or with no data.

16. For a recent defense of the Fukuyama thesis, see Mueller 2014. Refuting the “democratic recession”: Levitsky & Way 2015.

17. Prosperity and democracy: Norberg 2016; Roser 2016b; Porter, Stern, & Green 2016, p. 19. Prosperity and human rights: Fariss 2014; Land, Michalos, & Sirgy 2012. Education and democracy: Rindermann 2008; see also Roser 2016i.

18. Diversity of democracy: Mueller 1999; Norberg 2016; Radelet 2015; for data, see the Polity IV Annual Time-Series, http://www.systemicpeace.org/polityproject.html; Center for Systemic Peace 2015; Marshall, Gurr, & Jaggers 2016.

19. Prospects for democracy in Russia: Bunce 2017.

20. Norberg 2016, p. 158.

21. Democratic dimwits: Achens & Bartels 2016; Caplan 2007; Somin 2016.

22. Latest fashion in dictatorship: Bunce 2017.

23. Popper 1945/2013.

24. Democracy = the right to complain: Mueller 1999, 2014. Quotation from Mueller 1999, p. 247.

25. Mueller 1999, p. 140.

26. Mueller 1999, p. 171.

27. Levitsky & Way 2015, p. 50.

28. Democracy and education: Rindermann 2008; Roser 2016b; Thyne 2006. Democracy, Western influence, and violent revolution: Levitsky & Way 2015, p. 54.