Abstract

By extending the deterrence theory to national level the current study tested the hypothesis that ineffective government is largely responsible for higher homicide rate in a nation The homicide data required for the test were collected from the World Health Organization and the information on governance from the World Bank s World Governance Indicators for 122 nations The results from the regression models supported the deterrence theory An ineffective and dysfunctional government was one of the primary sources for a nation s high homicide rate Also other control variables such as relative poverty and ethnic heterogeneity were positively related to the homicide rate in a nation