Comparative perspectives on crime and violence have paid little attention to the institutional context of the polity with few exceptions. Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature (2011) presents an underlying narrative of institutional change and the evolvement of democratic institutions to the secular process of decreasing violence, between as well as within states. Do democracies have comparative advantages in curbing violence? This paper translates Pinker's diachronic perspective into a synchronic and cross-sectional analysis of violence in contemporary societies between 2005 and 2009. Its largely descriptive exploration ranges from the microfoundations of democracies to the institutional breakdown in processes of state failure, using different descriptive indicators of institutional patterns as diagnostic tools.