Rudolph Rummel

Who is Rudolph Rummel?

Rudolph Joseph Rummel is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Hawaii. He has spent his career assembling data on collective violence and war with a view toward helping their resolution or elimination. Rummel coined the term democide for murder by government, and his research claims that six times as many people died of democide during the 20th century than in all that century's wars combined. He concludes that democracy is the form of government least likely to kill its citizens and that democracies do not wage war against each other.

Rummel is the author of 24 scholarly books, and published his major results in Understanding Conflict and War. He then spent the next fifteen years refining the underlying theory and testing it empirically on new data, against the empirical results of others, and on case studies. Power Kills sums up Rummel's research. Other works include Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocides and Mass Murders 1917–1987; China's Bloody Century: Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1900; Democide: Nazi Genocide and Mass Murder; Death by Government; and Statistics of Democide. Extracts, figures, and tables from the books, including his sources and details regarding the calculations, are available online on his website. Rummel has also authored Understanding Factor Analysis and Understanding Correlation. He is the author of the Never again series of alternative-history novels, in which a secret society sends two lovers armed with fabulous wealth and modern weapons back to 1906 with orders to create an alternative, peaceful century. These works are available online.