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Understanding Cross-National Variation

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Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice

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Cross-national inquiry can make several distinctive contributions to the understanding of criminal violence. One, it permits an assessment of variability in levels and patterns of violent crime. In his classic discussion of the “normality of crime,” Durkheim (1964:66) argued that crime is “closely connected with the conditions of all social life,” leading him to conclude that a society without crime is inconceivable. The same may very well hold true for violent crime in contemporary nations. Coercive action has intrinsic utility for obtaining compliance from others, and thus a certain degree of violence may be an inevitable feature of complex forms of social organization. Nevertheless, cross-national research elucidates the range of possibilities for minimizing levels of criminal violence.

Two, cross-national inquiry is indispensable for establishing the generality of theories of violence and the need for any scope conditions (Kohn 1987). As Lilly et al. (1989:11) observe,...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, Arts, and Sciences, University at Albany, State University of New York, 1400 Washington Avenue, Albany, NY, 12222, USA

    Steven F. Messner

  2. School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Northeastern University, 360 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA, 02115, USA

    Gregory M. Zimmerman

Authors
  1. Steven F. Messner
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  2. Gregory M. Zimmerman
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Correspondence to Steven F. Messner .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement (NSCR), Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Gerben Bruinsma

  2. VU University Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Gerben Bruinsma

  3. Department of Criminology, Law and Society, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA

    David Weisburd

  4. Faculty of Law, The Hebrew University, Mt. Scopus, Jerusalem, Israel

    David Weisburd

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Messner, S.F., Zimmerman, G.M. (2014). Understanding Cross-National Variation. In: Bruinsma, G., Weisburd, D. (eds) Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5690-2_675

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5690-2_675

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