Toward the study of biopolitics: A cross‐sectional analysis of mortality rates

A new field of inquiry, which might be called biopolitics, would identify the many possible relationships between political and medical‐biological variables in societal systems. One such proposition is that levels of foreign and domestic violence are a function of societal conditions and processes that become manifest in the form of deaths due to psychogenic causes, such as suicides and heart disease. To test this hypothesis, data for all significant causes of death—46 in all—are collected for 72 political units along with deathrates due to foreign and domestic violence. Eight measures of possible error are also included. The year 1960 is chosen, except for the conflict data, which span 1958 to 1960. Factor analysis, smallest space analysis, and cluster analysis are performed on the data. A Q ‐analysis among the 72 sampling units reveals that there are only about three strata. R ‐analysis of all 56 variables, in contrast, is heterogeneous, containing 14 factors with eigenvalues over the conventional 1.0 cutoff level. In the factor analysis, foreign and domestic conflict are independent of all other causes of death, including each other. Smallest space analysis and cluster analysis, however, provide results that approximate second‐order factor analysis: foreign and domestic violence converge as part of an over‐all medical underdevelopment cluster. Psychogenic causes of death, which emerge within the developed cluster, are thus unrelated to political casualties in the mid‐twentieth century. War and civil strife are associated with lower health standards across 72 countries.