Anger and injustice. Assessing legitimacy through homicide rates in Hungary in 1867–1918

This article examines dynamics of killings among civilians in Hungary from 1867 to 1918, while it was an autonomous part of the dualist Austro-Hungarian Empire. Drawing on a new dataset of legal convictions and recorded murders, the study calculates Hungary’s homicide rates per population and interprets them as a proxy indicator for generalized trust towards state authorities (according to the LaFree theory of losing legitimacy). This study finds out that Hungary’s homicide rate decreased in long-term, but saw many short-term fluctuations. During the dualist period violence dynamic ressembled a M-curve with two peaks in the mid-1880s (amid the wave of rural and urban crime) and in 1904-10 (during the constitutional crisis). During the First World War, the number of murders among civilians plummeted but then surged in 1919, when the Hungarian state failed and disintegrated. The peaks in fatal assaults, reaching over 10 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 1886 and 1919 (as well as in 1946) were the most violent episodes in Hungary’s history for the last 150 years. These and smaller booms in violence occurred at the times of political instability, suggesting losing legitimacy in those moments.