I do wonder about a possible confusion. We know that violent crime (all crime, in fact) tends to be committed by a very small number of individuals, as long as the society in question does not revert to more primitive norms as has happened in some of the examples you give.
So was Sweden's success "tougher on crime" per se or more accurately described as "kicking out or imprisoning the few people driving the issue"?
The latter is fully consistent with your observations: in weak states those few people are precisely those whose violence allows them to accumulate enough power to subvert the state!
But it does suggest a potentially more rapid way out than I inferred from your description.
Ironically, it also highlights even more starkly that colonialism was one way to potentially avoid this trap, as it was in German and most English colonies (of course it could also have made it worse as it likely did in Belgium's colonies).
Which ones are you thinking of? Many are not at all! But as a stab in the dark:
1. Arab states: wealth enables a very strong state and to distribute enough of it to minimise incentives for crime: if you are greedy and ambitious you just work within the state structure and (most of) its rules.
2. SE Asian states: first, are they? How would you know?? Second, culture does also matter.
I dont know what Dr. Ambedkar (whose work I do not know) meant when he said “What is a village but a sink of localism, a den of ignorance, narrow mindedness, caste and communalism”, but both the USA and China escaped this through thorough decentralization and widely and deeply federated systems with very strong local governments that have local fiscal primacy, and locally directed legal/regulatory variability and policy variability, and sophisticated locally based governance structures; so then the US and China escaped it by intensive localism? Or did Dr. Ambedkar mean something else by localism"?
I thought this was great, thank you!
I do wonder about a possible confusion. We know that violent crime (all crime, in fact) tends to be committed by a very small number of individuals, as long as the society in question does not revert to more primitive norms as has happened in some of the examples you give.
So was Sweden's success "tougher on crime" per se or more accurately described as "kicking out or imprisoning the few people driving the issue"?
The latter is fully consistent with your observations: in weak states those few people are precisely those whose violence allows them to accumulate enough power to subvert the state!
But it does suggest a potentially more rapid way out than I inferred from your description.
Ironically, it also highlights even more starkly that colonialism was one way to potentially avoid this trap, as it was in German and most English colonies (of course it could also have made it worse as it likely did in Belgium's colonies).
Why are many Islamic states far safer than one might expect given this analysis?
Indonesia and Egypt are far poorer and far less violent than Brazil. They have the similar trends in terms of growth of cities.
Which ones are you thinking of? Many are not at all! But as a stab in the dark:
1. Arab states: wealth enables a very strong state and to distribute enough of it to minimise incentives for crime: if you are greedy and ambitious you just work within the state structure and (most of) its rules.
2. SE Asian states: first, are they? How would you know?? Second, culture does also matter.
I dont know what Dr. Ambedkar (whose work I do not know) meant when he said “What is a village but a sink of localism, a den of ignorance, narrow mindedness, caste and communalism”, but both the USA and China escaped this through thorough decentralization and widely and deeply federated systems with very strong local governments that have local fiscal primacy, and locally directed legal/regulatory variability and policy variability, and sophisticated locally based governance structures; so then the US and China escaped it by intensive localism? Or did Dr. Ambedkar mean something else by localism"?
Good article, the caption for The China Press image should be 1923 though I believe, I can't resist nitpicking!
Egypt and Indonesia are much poorer than Brazil yet have far less violent crime. Cultural, historical factors seem to outweigh “objective” criteria….
Why are many Islamic states far safer than one might expect given thus sbslydis?