Insights on Government and Politics

The data and visualizations suggest that countries with Global Freedom Score between 55-70 experience more assassination attempts and that countries with higher quality Political Leadership and Governance can more effectively prevent assassinations.

The graph shows how both a country's Global Freedom Score and level of Government Transparency and Accountability impact its number of assassination attempts. Global Freedom Score is a measurement of the country's level of freedom and status of human rights, with a higher Global Freedom Score being more desirable. It appears that countries with Global Freedom Scores between 55-70 experienced the most assassination attempts. A potential rationale for this is that citizens of highly free countries are less motivated to attempt assassinations because they are more satisfied with their government. Citizens of unfree countries may want to attempt assassinations but they may be more difficult to carry out due to a lack of autonomy. There does not appear to be a clear trend between level of government transparency and accountability and number of assassination attempts.

This scatter plot shows the effect of the quality of Political Leadership and Governance on assassination Prevention Rate. As demonstrated by the line of best fit, there is a slight positive correlation with quality of political leadership and governance and assassination prevention rate. This logically suggests that the more competent a government is, the better they are at preventing impending assassination attempts. This could be attributable to higher quality political leadership having a better understanding of constituents or having more resources to actively combat attacks.

This scatter plot shows the effect of level of Government Integrity on Assassination Attempts per Capita. As demonstrated by the line of best fit, there is a slight positive correlation between level of government integrity and number of assassination attempts. It seems counterintuitive because one would think that a government perceived to have more integrity would experience fewer assassination attempts. However, it is possible that in countries with higher perceived government integrity, fewer citizens are attempting to evoke change in the government. Thus, a rogue actor might think that more drastic efforts—such as an assassination—might be required to create political change.