Review Article
Second-Generation
Comparative Research
on Genocide
By SCOTT STRAUS*
Mark Levene. Genocide in the Age of the Nation State. London: I. B. Tauris, 2005
Vol. 1. The Meaning of Genocide, 266 pp.
Vol. 2. The Rise of the West and the Coming of Genocide, vol. 2, 463 pp.
Michael Mann. The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing. New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2005, 580 pp.
Manus I. Midlarsky. The Killing Trap: Genocide in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005, 463 pp.
Jacques Sémelin. Purifier et détruire: Usages politiques des massacres et génocides.
Paris: Seuil, 2005, 491 pp.
Benjamin A. Valentino. Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the Twentieth
Century. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2004, 317 pp.
Eric D. Weitz. A Century of Genocide: Utopias of Race and Nation. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2003, 360 pp.
I. Introduction
F
OR many years the study of genocide was the purview of a relatively small scholarly community. Several scholars pioneered the
field in the 1970s and 1980s.1 In the early 1990s there followed a num* The author would like to thank Michael Barnett, Mark Beissinger, Cassiano Hacker-Cordon,
Stathis Kalyvas, Meghan Lynch, Betsy Levy Paluck, Naunihal Singh, Dan Stone, Libby Wood, and
three anonymous reviewers for insightful comments on earlier drafts. Versions of the article were
presented at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies of the University of Notre Dame and the
Program on Order, Conflict, and Violence at Yale University, where the author received very helpful
comments and suggestions. Sara Dahill-Brown provided excellent research assistance.
1
Notably, Helen Fein, Accounting for Genocide: National Responses and Jewish Victimization during the Holocaust (New York: Free Press, 1979); Leo Kuper, Genocide: Its Political Use in the Twentieth
Century (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981); Irving Louis Horowitz, Genocide: State Power and
Mass Murder (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1976); Ervin Staub, The Roots of Evil: The
Origins of Genocide and Other Group Violence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Isidor
Wallimann and Michael Dobkowski, eds., Genocide and the Modern Age: Etiology and Case Studies of
Mass Death (New York: Greenwood Press, 1987). For a review of much of this literature, see in particular Helen Fein, “Genocide: A Sociological Perspective,” Current Sociology 38, no. 1 (1990).
World Politics 59 (April 2007), 476–501
s e co n d - g en er at i o n r es e a rc h o n g en o c i d e 477
ber of explicitly comparative volumes.2 Despite the energy of the early
scholars of genocide studies, however, the topic remained largely at the
margins of the social sciences.3 Two major developments changed the
topic’s status. First, the end of the cold war piqued policy and academic
interest in international human rights, of which genocide is a key component. Second, mass violence that many labeled “genocide” occurred
in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda (and most recently is occurring
in Darfur). Genocide thus became a matter of high-profile and often
pressing concern and debate.
The violence in Yugoslavia and Rwanda had the additional effect
of inviting a number of analogies to the Holocaust. Critics faulted a
failure to intervene in Bosnia and Rwanda, thereby betraying the postHolocaust promise of “never again.” The United Nations established
criminal tribunals to prosecute genocide and related crimes, the first
courts of their kind since Nuremberg. Journalists who discovered starving prisoners in detention centers in Bosnia compared the finding to
Nazi concentration camps. These and other implicit and explicit analogies brought forward comparative questions that had previously occupied only the small community of genocide scholars. In particular,
what is genocide? What do genocide cases have in common? And what
drives and sustains genocide?
The net result has been a sharp increase in scholarship on genocide,
ranging from new journals, new scholarly associations, and a raft of academic studies.4 The books under review reflect this surge of interest and
occupy an important and rapidly growing niche of genocide studies,
namely, comparative research on the determinants of genocide. They seek
to identify cases of genocide (or mass killing) and use qualitative, country-case comparisons to isolate commonalities across time and space. Thus
these new works relate to even as they differ from other areas of recent
research on genocide, including studies of individual genocide cases,5
2
In particular, Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn, The History and Sociology of Genocide: Analyses and
Case Studies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990); Robert Melson, Revolution and Genocide: On
the Origins of the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1992); and
Rudolph Rummel, Death by Government (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1994).
3
Fein (fn. 1, 1990), v, 5.
4
Two new journals on genocide have appeared since 2000: Journal of Genocide Research and Genocide Studies and Prevention; an older journal, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, focuses primarily on the
Holocaust. The associations are the International Association of Genocide Scholars (founded in 1994)
and the International Network of Genocide Scholars (founded in 2005). A Library of Congress search
of English-language academic studies with the word “genocide” in the title found 155 books published
between 1945 and 1990; between 1991 and 2006, the number more than doubled to 369.
5
The case study literature is vast and growing—too large to summarize here. Some representative
titles include (by case) V. P. Gagnon, The Myth of Ethnic War: Serbia and Croatia in the 1990s (Ithaca,
N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2004); Mahmood Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism,
478
w o r l d p o li t i c s
region-specific comparisons,6 the psychology of genocide,7 and international responses (or lack thereof ) to genocide.8 The qualitative approach
also distinguishes the books under review from quantitative, cross-national studies of genocide and politicide (mass political violence).9
Taken together, the books register some major accomplishments.
They help make the comparative study of genocide more systematic,
empirical, and theoretical than it has been. And in so doing, they raise
the level of scholarship on the determinants of genocide; further, the
multifaceted explanations developed in the books bring us closer to
understanding a complex and sense-defying phenomenon. The authors
also seek to integrate genocide studies into mainstream research agendas in the social sciences. The aim is to analyze genocide (or mass killing) as one type of outcome and to use the tools of comparative historical analysis to understand why the phenomenon happens. In these
various ways, the books constitute a second generation of research on
the comparative study of genocide, and they announce a major new
topic of study—the origins of systematic, mass violence targeted against
particular civilian populations—to political science, sociology, history,
and related disciplines.10
That said, all is not well with comparative genocide studies. The
books reveal three significant limitations. The first is conceptual. The
concept of genocide is empirically ambiguous and problematic for anchoring a comparative research program. No two authors under review
Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001); Ben Kiernan,
The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975–79 (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1996); and Gérard Prunier, Darfur: The Ambiguous Genocide (Ithaca,
N.Y., and London: Cornell University Press, 2005). Primarily a collection of case studies in this vein
is Robert Gellately and Ben Kiernan, eds., The Specter of Genocide: Mass Murder in Historical Perspective
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
6
Norman Naimark, Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 2001).
7
James Waller, Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing (Oxford
and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002); Bruce Wilshire, Get ’Em All! Kill ’Em!: Genocide, Terrorism, Righteous Communities (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2005)
8
Michael Barnett, Eyewitness to a Genocide: The United Nations and Rwanda (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell
University Press, 2002); Adam LeBor, “Complicity with Evil”: The United Nations in the Age of Modern
Genocide (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006); Samantha Power, “A Problem from Hell”: America
and the Age of Genocide (New York: Basic Books, 2002).
9
Barbara Harff, “No Lessons Learned from the Holocaust? Assessing Risks of Genocide and
Political Mass Murder since 1955,” American Political Science Review 97 (February 2003); and, for an
earlier example, Matthew Krain, “State Sponsored Mass Murder: The Onset and Severity of Genocides and Politicides,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 41 ( June 1997).
10
Indeed, several authors come to the study of genocide as leading scholars of other subjects. Sociologist Michael Mann, for example, is a major theorist of social power, political scientist Manus Midlarsky of war. Several books are also quite ambitious. Historian Mark Levene is writing a four-volume
set, of which the first two volumes are reviewed here. Mann, Midlarsky, and French political scientist
Jacques Sémelin all have published books that run 450 pages or longer.
s e co n d - g en er at i o n r es e a rc h o n g en o c i d e 479
share the same definition of the term, and as a result the authors end
up explaining fairly different phenomena—a problem that is endemic
to genocide studies. Moreover, given the definitional problems, it is
unclear what the universe of genocide cases is or should be. The second
limitation is infrequency. Genocide is a rare event. The few cases that
exist have a lot of moving parts between them (industrialized, expansionist World War II Germany was, for example, quite different from
agrarian, landlocked 1990s Rwanda), and the genocide outcomes were,
the books show, contingent. These problems—few cases, unit heterogeneity, and causal contingency—significantly, if not fatally, constrain
the search for a general theory of genocide based on country comparisons of similar cases. The third limitation concerns hypothesis testing. The research designs in the books under review are primarily novariance ones. (Some authors discuss “negative” [nongenocide] cases,
but, with the exception of Manus Midlarsky, only peripherally.) The
no-variance, case-country approach works well for theory development
but less well for explicit theory testing, of which there is relatively little
in the books under review.
The essay proposes some solutions to these problems, but the outstanding analytical and methodological issues should not be underestimated. The recent surge of research on genocide takes the topic to
a new level of understanding and sophistication. But to advance further will require some hard thinking about what genocide is, to what
genocide is analytically related, and how to study genocide. The main
conundrum is that whereas on the one hand the recent scholarship on
genocide establishes a separate topic of study, on the other hand the
inherent conceptual problems and limitations on comparative research
identified here make the study of genocide hard to sustain as a distinct
topic. The literature would thus be best served by breaking out and
building theoretical and methodological bridges to analog topics.
The question is to what literatures genocide studies belong and how
they fit in to those literatures. Given some cumulative findings represented in the works under review and given the most prominent conceptual dimensions of genocide, the most logical (though not the only)
bridge is to the booming literature on political violence, especially the
literature on the uses of violence in war, from which genocide studies
has been isolated to date. Moreover, genocide studies would do well to
take a methodological page from that literature’s playbook, by focusing less on no-variance, country-case comparisons and more on comparisons with increased variance on the outcome of interest. Genocide studies would thus do well to follow what Charles King calls the
480
w o r l d p o li t i c s
“micropolitical turn” or to study genocide cross-nationally but as one
of several possible violence outcomes.11 The change requires a more
disaggregated approach than is the norm in comparative genocide research, but the move promises more precision for determining where,
when, and why genocide is likely to take place, which in turn would
have important theoretical and practical implications.
The remainder of the essay develops these points. In Section II, I
discuss the ways in which the second-generation research on genocide
departs theoretically from the first. In Section III, I summarize the core
arguments in each of the books under review. In Section IV, I discuss
three dominant paradigms in the books under review, as well as some problems with those paradigms. In Section V, I identify some surprising similarities in the books under review, which I interpret as cumulative findings
about the dynamics of genocide. In Section VI, I focus on methodological
obstacles to the comparative study of genocide. In Section VII, I argue for
a different approach. And, finally, Section VIII concludes.
II. From the First to the Second Generation
Although the core argument in each book under review differs, the books
share at least three important claims about what does not in and of itself lead
to genocide. The claims constitute an important divergence from the firstgeneration scholarship on genocide, and I summarize the points here.
A mainstay of first-generation genocide scholarship is that deep social divisions, including cultures of prejudice and entrenched practices of
discrimination, are structural causes of genocide. The idea that genocide
emerges from “deep divisions” between groups in a country is central to
one of the foundational comparative studies of genocide, the work of Leo
Kuper.12 Helen Fein, another pioneer of comparative genocide studies,
argues that a precondition for genocide is systematic exclusion from the
perpetrator’s universe of obligation.13 Other first-generation theorists
propose similar ideas. Israel Charny, for example, focuses on intergroup
dehumanization as the key mechanism leading to genocide.14 Ervin
Staub highlights “difficult life conditions” but argues that aggression
11
On the micropolitical turn, see King, “The Micropolitics of Social Violence,” World Politics
56 (April 2004); and Stathis Kalyvas, “The Ontology of ‘Political Violence’: Action and Identity in
Civil Wars,” Perspectives on Politics 1 (September 2003); on quantitative macrolevel research, see James
Fearon and David Laitin, “Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War,” American Political Science Review 97
(February 2003).
12
Kuper (fn. 1).
13
Fein (fn. 1, 1979).
14
Israel Charny, How Can We Commit the Unthinkable? Genocide, the Human Cancer (Boulder,
Colo.: Westview Press, 1982).
s e co n d - g en er at i o n r es e a rc h o n g en o c i d e 481
arising from them is funneled through prejudice dominant in a particular
society.15 The claims are also among the most well known outside the
academy: racism, prejudice, dehumanization, ancient hatreds, and antiSemitism (in the case of the Holocaust)16 are often the first ideas that
spring to mind when the causes of genocide are considered.
The books under review challenge these related claims or seek to
move beyond them as single causes of genocide. Of the authors under
review, Benjamin Valentino offers the most explicit challenge, arguing
that “unusually deep, preexisting social cleavages are neither sufficient
nor universally necessary conditions for mass killing” (p. 17). The authors make several related claims. First, deep divisions, prejudice, and
discrimination are more frequent occurrences than is genocide. Many
societies are fractured ethnically, racially, culturally, and religiously, but
only in a few does genocide materialize. Second, cultural explanations
cannot explain the timing of genocide. Deep divisions, prejudice, and
discrimination are fairly constant; genocide is not. Third, evidence
from several cases suggests that divisions, prejudice, and discrimination
do not necessarily predate the violence. Rwanda and parts of Bosnia
were fairly integrated, for example, with much interaction and intermarriage across ethnic groups.17 Fourth, authors cite social-psychological experiments and studies of perpetrators showing that individuals do
not necessarily commit violence because of ethnic or religious hatred.
For these reasons, the scholars under review look elsewhere to explain
why and when genocide occurs.
The second-generation scholarship also consistently rejects arguments about a link between authoritarian regime type and genocide.
The hypothesis appears with some prominence in the first-generation
genocide scholarship. Irving Louis Horowitz, for example, argues that
genocide is the “operational handmaiden of a particular social system, the totalitarian system.”18 Similarly, in his analysis of “democide”
—mass killings of civilians by governments, of which genocide is one
type—Rudolph Rummel claims “absolute power” is the key factor.
“Absolute power kills absolutely” is Rummel’s key phrase.19
Staub (fn. 1).
See, for example, Daniel Goldhagen, who argues that a culture of “eliminationist anti-Semitism”
is the root of the Nazi genocide; Goldhagen, Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the
Holocaust (New York: Vintage, 1997).
17
On Bosnia and the fact that much violence happened in the most ethnically intermixed areas of
the former Yugoslavia, see Gagnon (fn. 3); on Rwanda, see Scott Straus, The Order of Genocide: Race,
Power, and War in Rwanda (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2006).
18
Horowitz, Taking Lives: Genocide and State Power, 4th ed. (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction
Books, 1997), 36.
19
Rummel (fn. 2), 1.
15
16
482
w o r l d p o li t i c s
There are several problems with the argument that the authors under
review identify. The problems resemble those with cultural and social
structural arguments about genocide: authoritarian regimes are more
common than genocide is, and an argument about authoritarianism
cannot explain the timing of a genocide. In addition, nonauthoritarian regimes sometimes commit genocide or related violence. Michael
Mann and Valentino go furthest on the latter. Mann argues that what
he calls “murderous ethnic cleansing” is in fact a perversion of democratic ideals and that such violence is especially likely to occur when
weakly institutionalized countries undergo democratic transitions. Valentino argues that democracies sometimes commit “mass killing”—his
broad label for genocide and other violence that kills a large number of
civilians—abroad, including, for example, the U.S. atomic bombing of
Japan. Other authors do not always directly challenge the link between
excessive state power and genocide, but none makes regime type central to the argument.
Another first-generation explanation that most books under review
challenge is a link between deprivation and social stress, on the one
hand, and genocide, on the other. An argument linking real and perceived deprivation to violence is long-standing in the study of violence
and aggression.20 Among first-generation genocide theorists, Staub argues that during difficult periods of social stress, such as economic depression or loss after wars, individuals seek to blame others or scapegoat
out-groups to increase their own feelings of self-worth. Scapegoating
is then channeled through dominant cultural frames and prejudices,
such as anti-Semitism in the German case. Other analysts of genocide
make similar arguments,21 and the notion that genocide perpetrators
scapegoat victims in times of deprivation is an idea with some currency
outside the academy.
With the exception of Midlarsky, who argues that territorial loss and
resulting anger are key engines of genocide (more below), the authors
under review do not privilege a link between frustration and aggression
arising from deprivation and stress, on the one hand, and mass violence, on the other. The arguments against the hypothesis are similar
to those above. Acute social crises are more common than is genocide,
and the evidence does not always support the claim. Mann, for example,
For example, Ted Robert Gurr, Why Men Rebel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970).
For an application to Rwanda, see Peter Uvin, Aiding Violence: The Development Enterprise in
Rwanda (West Hartford, Conn.: Kumarian Press, 1998). In her early work, Barbara Harff emphasized “social upheaval” as a key factor leading to genocide: Harff, “The Etiology of Genocides,” in
Isidor Wallimann and Michael Dobkowski, eds., Genocide and the Modern Age: Etiology and Case Studies of Mass Death (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1987).
20
21
s e co n d - g en er at i o n r es e a rc h o n g en o c i d e 483
assembles a data set of more than fifteen hundred German perpetrators. He finds little evidence that his sample came from comparatively
disenfranchised backgrounds or had disproportionately negative life
experiences before becoming Nazi party members or genocidal killers.
Other detailed, perpetrator-oriented research on the German case and
on Rwanda supports Mann’s findings that deprivation and hardship do
not characterize the lives of those who become genocide perpetrators.22
III. Core Arguments
Even if the books under review have common points of divergence
from earlier research, the explanations in the new books are also quite
different from one another. Given the breadth and ambition of most of
them, I focus in this section on the core arguments in each study.
Eric Weitz, a historian whose previous work focuses on Germany, here
produces a comparative study of four genocide cases: the Soviet Union,
Nazi Germany, Cambodia under Pol Pot, and the former Yugoslavia. His
elegant argument pivots on ideational factors, in particular leader-level
quests for utopia. Genocide is the outcome of revolutionary attempts
to create “utopia in the here and now” (p. 14). Genocide happens when
leaders attempt to engineer a “society bereft of difference and marked by
a homogenous population” (p. 14). Weitz argues that race amd nation are
the organizing principles around which such striving for perfection is attempted. Hence the book’s subtitle: “utopias of race and nation.”
Genocide is, for Weitz, rooted in modernity; it is top-down; it
emerges from revolutionary attempts to change societies; and above
all it has ideological origins. Weitz also argues that genocide is more
likely to occur under particular conditions. The first is that genocide
happens during intense social crises, usually wars or internal upheavals. The mechanism here is not frustration-aggression, as per the firstgeneration genocide scholarship, but rather radicalization of leaders
and increased willingness to use violence. Weitz also argues that genocides tend to happen after targeted groups experience discrimination
and exclusion. Here Weitz’s argument resonates with those in the firstgeneration scholarship, but overall his primary analytical pivot is not
prejudice per se but the revolutionary quest to create perfection around
modern racial and national categories.
22
For example, Dick de Mildt, In the Name of the People: Perpetrators of Genocide in the Reflection of
Their Post-War Prosecution in West Germany: The “Euthanasia” and “Aktion Reinhard” Trial Cases (The
Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1996); Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battallion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (New York: HarperCollins, 1991); Goldhagen (fn. 16);
and, on Rwanda, Straus (fn. 17).
484
w o r l d p o li t i c s
Jacques Sémelin, a professor of political science at Sciences Po in
Paris whose previous work dealt with civilian resistance during the Holocaust, focuses in this latest book on three cases: Nazi Germany, Bosnia, and Rwanda. He argues that each represents a case of an attempt
to annihilate a social collectivity from a particular territory. Sémelin
thus operates from a narrower definition of genocide than does Weitz,
who uses the United Nations Genocide Convention as his conceptual
guide. Weitz also includes communist cases, whereas Sémelin does not.
Nonetheless, the authors’ core arguments are the most similar among
the books under review. Both put forward ideological hypotheses: if
“utopia” is the keyword for Weitz, it is “purity” for Sémelin.
Sémelin’s argument is multistaged. Like Weitz, he argues that major
social upheavals and war matter. In them, argues Sémelin, leaders seek
to redefine who belongs to a community and who does not. Leaders in
turn use ideology to unify in-groups and to transform any anxiety they
experience into fear of an identifiable enemy. When leaders seek total
unity of their own groups, that quest leads to efforts to create purity,
which in turn leads to the desire to eliminate out-groups. Furthermore,
in war, when security is threatened, leaders advocate the use of violence
for self-protection. Sémelin also analyzes how genocide happens, in
terms of how intellectuals, religious figures, and media outlets legitimize and promote violence; he discusses the importance of a modern
state, which is needed to coordinate violence on this scale; and he examines perpetrators and their motivations. The book is an impressive,
hugely synthetic comparative account.23
Valentino makes a quite different argument. The pivot of his cogent
and parsimonious analysis is that genocide and mass killing emerge
from the strategic calculations of leaders—that genocide and mass
killing are calculated, instrumental, and deliberate policies that leaders choose to accomplish certain goals. Like Weitz and Sémelin, Valentino’s argument is top-down, but he pushes his argument one step
further, arguing that genocide is the outcome of decisions and actions
taken by a relatively small group of leaders. Mass publics are largely
inconsequential to the outcome. Genocide and mass killing, Valentino
argues, happen with the passive acceptance of the rest of society, and
analysts should not look to particular social structures to understand
when and why genocide happens. Valentino aptly summarizes his claim
in the following way: “I contend that mass killing occurs when power23
The book is scheduled for English-language publication as Jacques Sémelin, Purify and Destroy:
The Political Uses of Massacre and Genocide, trans. Cynthia Schoch and Philippa Bush (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007).
s e co n d - g en er at i o n r es e a rc h o n g en o c i d e 485
ful groups come to believe it is the best available means to accomplish
certain radical goals, counter specific types of threats, or solve difficult
military problems” (p. 66).
Of the books under study, Valentino’s considers the widest array of
cases and examples of mass killing. This derives in part from the author’s
expansive dependent variable: he seeks to explain not just genocide but
also “mass killing,” which he defines as cases where at least fifty thousand civilians are killed during a five-year period. That definition encompasses a relatively large universe of cases. Among them, Valentino
identifies two major types, each with three subtypes. The first major
type is “dispossessive mass killing,” which includes (1) “communist
mass killings” in which leaders seek to transform societies according
to communist principles; (2) “ethnic mass killings,” in which leaders
forcibly remove an ethnic population; and (3) mass killing as leaders
acquire and repopulate land. The second major type of mass killing is
“coercive mass killing,” which includes (1) killing in wars when leaders cannot defeat opponents using conventional means; (2) “terrorist”
mass killing when leaders use violence to force an opposing side to surrender; and (3) killing during the creation of empires when conquering
leaders try to defeat resistance and intimidate future resistance.
A key question for Valentino is why leaders would choose the strategy of genocide and mass killing. Valentino argues that ideology, racism, and paranoia can shape why leaders believe that genocide and mass
killing is the right course of action. He also points to the size of targeted populations (small populations are less susceptible to mass killing
because they can be relocated), the policies of neighboring countries
(if other states absorb targeted populations, then mass killing is less
likely), the level of threat posed (the greater the threat to vital interests,
the more likely is mass killing), the physical capacities of perpetrators
(mass killing is more likely when perpetrators have the capacity to inflict it), and other factors.
Like Valentino, Midlarsky focuses on leaders’ decision making, but
the authors’ case selection and theoretical conclusions are different.
Midlarsky has a far narrower definition of his dependent variable, and
he analyzes only three cases of twentieth-century genocide in depth—
the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, and Rwanda. Midlarsky also
disaggregates the Holocaust, seeking to explain variation in levels of
violence across different Nazi-occupied territories as well as different
levels of resistance among Jews in ghettoes. He further presents arguments to explain why individuals comply with leaders, why “politicide” but not genocide happened in Cambodia, and why Greeks in the
486
w o r l d p o li t i c s
Ottoman Empire and Jews in pre–World War II Poland were not targeted for genocide. In the latter, Midlarsky—as Mann and Valentino
also do to a lesser extent—profitably addresses “negative” cases: genocides that did not happen.
The core concept in The Killing Trap is “imprudent realpolitik.” Midlarsky locates the origins of genocide in leaders’ attempts to manage
threats and defend states—what he terms realpolitik. In that, he would
seem to share an analytical thread with Valentino. But Midlarsky does
not focus on regular strategic calculations; ordinary risk management
does not lead to genocide, he argues. Rather, he turns to prospect theory to argue that genocide occurs in the context of loss. For Midlarsky,
loss can be the transfer of territory or the authority over a population
from one state to another; large numbers killed in war; and significant
socioeconomic contraction. Loss, he argues, creates vulnerability, anger,
and a desire for revenge, and over time it increases the probability that
leaders will choose genocide as an “imprudent” method for safeguarding their states. There are at least four other dimensions to Midlarsky’s
overall explanation. First, genocide is likely to occur in war because war
creates uncertainty, which in turn leads leaders to rely on prior experiences to navigate the crises in which they find themselves. If they have
recently experienced loss, they will be more likely to turn to extremism
(p. 369). Second, international context matters; in particular, genocidal
states need some form of international support. Germany was an ally of
the Ottoman Turks in World War I; the Vatican was complicit with the
Nazis during World War II; and France lent crucial support to Rwanda
before and during that country’s genocide. Third, targeted populations
must be simultaneously perceived as threatening and vulnerable to mass
murder, such that potential perpetrators must have the ability to inflict
violence. Fourth, there must have been some prior episode of violence
that went unpunished—some precedent of impunity.
Whereas Valentino and Midlarsky focus primarily on proximate
conditions, Mann, a sociologist, situates genocide in the broad historical development of modern states and modern political ideologies. He
argues that “murderous ethnic cleansing” is a perversion of a democratic
ideal of rule by the people. Cleansing can occur when “the people” (the
“demos” of democracy) is defined as an ethnic group (an “ethnos”) to
the exclusion of other ethnic groups that share the same territory. The
argument thus pivots on ethnic or “organic” nationalism, which Mann
terms the “dark side of democracy.” However, as Mann recognizes,
not all ethnic nationalist movements result in genocide or murderous
cleansing, and hence Mann additionally seeks to identify those sce-
s e co n d - g en er at i o n r es e a rc h o n g en o c i d e 487
narios that make actual killing campaigns more likely. The argument is
multifaceted, but the principal claims are that murderous cleansing is
more likely (1) when an authoritarian regime transitions to democracy in
a context of weak institutions, (2) when two groups compete for sovereignty over the same territory, and (3) when a factionalized regime is engaged in a war. Mann also analyzes and disaggregates perpetrators into
three main categories: radical elites running states, violent paramilitary
bands, and core constituencies. All three provide mass (if not majority)
support and are essential for murderous cleansing to ensue.
The core case study material in Mann’s book consists of ten detailed
chapters on four cases (the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, the Balkans, and Rwanda). Four chapters are devoted to the Holocaust; each
of the other cases has two chapters. Adding to his already ambitious
program, Mann also discusses a number of other historical periods and
events, including premodern cases. He argues that murderous ethnic
cleansing was less likely in those periods because modern nationalism
and democratic ideals had not yet been born. He discusses differences
between early developers and late developers, with early developers
tending to conceive of their states as stratified and thus less prone to
murderous cleansing (except when settling foreign lands) and with late
developers embracing ethnic nationalism and statism to catch up with
the early developers. He further discusses imperial expansion on four
continents. Here Mann argues that murderous cleansing happened
when settlers imagined themselves as unified ethnic populations in
contrast to the indigenous “savages” who inhabited the lands they were
settling. Mann also devotes a chapter to communist cases that considers the Soviet, Chinese, and Cambodian experiences. The book is ambitious and wide ranging, a powerful and synthetic historical analysis.
Like Mann, Levene argues, “Genocide is not so much a series of
isolated, aberrant, and essentially unconnected events but is at the very
heart of modern historical development” (p. 32). The argument is twofold. On the one hand, he highlights long-term, slow-moving global
processes, in particular the rise of the West, modernity, and the nationstate; genocide, he argues, is embedded in the very international system
of nation-states dominant in the world today. Levene emphasizes notions of progress, ordering, and classification associated with modernity; the global extent of Western economies of profit and property;
and the primacy of national states that seek monopolies on violence and
unified population bases. Like Mann, Levene sees a greater likelihood
for genocide among late developers, which seek to manufacture social
cohesion using state power in order to catch up with early developers.
488
w o r l d p o li t i c s
On the other hand, Levene also focuses on short-term factors, arguing that genocide is a contingent outcome, not the inevitable result of
the world historical developments he emphasizes. Several factors matter.
First, like Valentino, he argues that states must perceive a mortal threat,
which is more likely to happen when targeted populations resist. Levene
thus points to what he calls a “perpetrator-victim dynamic” (p. 49). Second, genocide crystallizes in acute crises, usually wars. Third, there is an
element of phobia. Contrary to Valentino and more in line with Midlarsky,
he contends that genocide is not straightforwardly rational or utilitarian
but rather is the product of phobia. Such are the key claims in the perspicacious first volume of Genocide in the Age of the Nation State. Levene
also offers one of the most extensive discussions of the concept of genocide, as well as a long discussion of what he calls a pyramid of perpetrators. Again contrary to Valentino, Levene argues that people make
genocide possible and leaders must have popular support to succeed.
The second volume recounts two millennia of world history from
the perspective of genocide. Levene begins with Roman conquests,
proceeds to European expansion into the Americas and the Antipodes,
and ventures into imperial acquisitions throughout Europe, Africa, and
Asia. His discussion ranges from English campaigns in Scotland and
Ireland, to Chinese extensions westward, to specific massacres of indigenous populations in the Americas, to Germany’s violent repression
of the Herero in Southwest Africa. Levene also produces a detailed
analysis of anti-Semitism in nineteenth-century Germany and of the
violent repression of the Vendée rebellion in revolutionary France.
The theoretical theme running through these disparate events is that
eliminating “savages,” homogenizing cultures, and using violence are
long-standing practices. Levene’s claim is that precursors to genocide
are prevalent and found at the heart of political development, even if
genocide as we know it has been more common in modern states. The
historical range is impressive, but the connections between events and
the sequencing are sometimes hard to follow. Such range also requires
historical cherry-picking among a large range of possible cases. The
second volume thus lacks some of the analytic cogency of the first.
IV. Three Paradigms and Their Problems
The arguments in the second-generation books have some obvious differences. Weitz turns on race and utopia; Sémelin on identity and purity;
Valentino on leaders’ strategic goals; Midlarsky on imprudent realpolitik and loss; Mann on democracy and ethnic nationalism; and Levene
s e co n d - g en er at i o n r es e a rc h o n g en o c i d e 489
on the rise of the West and nation-states. Valentino argues against the
importance of perpetrator publics; Mann, Levene, and Sémelin explicitly argue otherwise. Midlarsky and Levene reject a utilitarian calculus
to genocide; Weitz implies the same (with the emphasis on utopia). By
contrast, Valentino argues that genocide is the instrumental choice of
leaders who want to achieve a certain goal. Mann and Levene privilege
the longue durée of modern state formation and nationalism; Midlarsky and Valentino focus more on short-term conditions. There are also
significant conceptual differences (discussed in greater detail below).
Some authors use a narrow definition of genocide; others a broader
one. Some include communist and/or colonial cases; others do not.
These conceptual differences and the concomitant variance in case selection limit comparability of different findings.
That said, three overlapping explanatory paradigms are evident in
the books: idealism, political development, and state interest. The idealism framework roots genocide in specific extreme ideologies, with
Weitz and Sémelin as the main exemplars. Both authors recognize that
genocide emerges from a concatenation of factors, including war and
intense crisis, but at base they see genocide as the product of leaders
who seek to use mass violence to fashion a particular ideal. For Weitz,
that ideal is a revolutionary quest for utopia based on race and nation;
for Sémelin, it is purity based on identity. Ideology matters also for
Mann and Levene. For Mann, the origins of genocide lie with an ethnic or organic conception of the nation; for Levene, genocide is bound
up with the social homogenization in creating a modern nation-state.
Even Valentino, who claims that ideology is insufficient as an explanation, argues that ideology shapes the choice of some leaders to engage
in mass killing (pp. 76, 99). But idealism is especially pronounced in
Weitz and Sémelin, and their paradigmatic claim is that extreme ideologies drive extreme violence.
The idealism framework is consistent with a well-established tradition in Holocaust studies, where a number of scholars move beyond
anti-Semitism to focus on the racial, biological, and fascist ideals in
Nazi Germany.24 And indeed the argument has an instinctive appeal.
Genocide is, after all, extreme, rare, and risky behavior; why states embark on genocide might be traced to leaders’ fantastical, revolutionary
ideals. However, there are two major problems with the paradigm. The
first is fit. An idealism framework clearly works for the Holocaust, as
it does for Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge and arguably for mass
24
For example, Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Wippermann, The Racial State: Germany 1933–
1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
490
w o r l d p o li t i c s
killing under Stalin (if that case is included in the analysis). The argument founders with other central cases, however, in particular the
former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. As Weitz concedes, Serb leaders were
driven more by opportunism than by revolutionary quests for utopia or
purity (p. 230). Indeed, the character and magnitude of Serb nationalism seems quite different from the revolutionary, utopian visions of the
Serbs’ Nazi and Khmer Rouge counterparts. Similarly for Rwanda. If
the core ideological issue is nationalism, then genocide should be more
frequent, but nationalism is common and genocide is not. The second
problem is sequencing and causality. As with any argument about ideology, the difficulty is to show that ideals drive the outcome rather than
the other way around. If the evidence of “purity” or “utopia” is the extreme violence, then the argument descends into tautology.
The political development paradigm has some overlap with the idealism framework, but the implications are quite different. As exemplified by Mann and Levene, the political development framework
suggests that the deep origins of genocide lie with mainstream quests
to establish modern, democratic, and competitive states. Rather than
situating genocide as the outgrowth of radical extremism and leaders
with impractical ideological goals, the political development framework locates genocide as part of common world-historical factors that
many observers take for granted. As Mann argues, “Murderous ethnic
cleansing is not primitive or alien. It belongs to our own civilization
and to us” (p. 3).
As with the idealism framework, the political development paradigm has an analog in the literature on the Holocaust, in particular in
the work of Zygmunt Bauman, who argued that the origins of that case
are to be found in modernity.25 The argument has instinctive appeal
in that modernity, state development, and nationalism are clearly part
of why genocide happens. However, there are problems, and in some
ways they are the reverse of the idealism paradigm. The first problem
is ubiquity and falsifiability. All contemporary states are in the modern nation-state system, so Levene’s contention that the system is at
fault for contemporary cases is impossible to disprove. At the same
time if the nation-state system is so common, then genocide should
also be common. A similar point applies to Mann’s argument about
nationalism and democracy; these are certainly common pursuits. To
compensate for the frequency of the explanatory variables and the infrequency of the outcomes, both Levene and Mann attach a number
25
Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989).
s e co n d - g en er at i o n r es e a rc h o n g en o c i d e 491
of corollary conditions to their core claims, but these in turn give rise
both to fit problems and to a large number of explanatory factors. For
example, Mann emphasizes the importance of biethnic confrontations.
However, several of his principal cases—the Armenian genocide, the
Holocaust, the Balkans, and the communist cases—were not biethnic
duels. Similarly, almost all the cleansing campaigns occurred during
transitions, but not necessarily during democratic ones, as he argues.
Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia fit that bill, but Nazi Germany, the
Armenian genocide, and the communist cases do not.
The third paradigm—what I label the “state interest” framework—
sees genocide as the product of leader-level instrumental planning,
with Valentino and Midlarsky as the exemplars. Midlarsky and Valentino differ as to what frame of mind will prompt leaders to choose
genocide. For Midlarsky, the choice appears to be a more desperate
and angry one, in response to wartime loss. For Valentino, the calculus
appears to be a thought-through, rational response to particular conditions. In both cases, however, it is raisons d’état—the interests of state
leaders to survive, win wars, and implement their fundamental goals—
that prompt them toward mass killing.
The paradigm has clear appeal. Genocide is, by definition, intentional violence, so the notion that leaders pursue genocide for strategic
and other raisons d’état makes intuitive sense. Still, there are two general problems with the paradigm. The first we have seen before: state
interest is common; genocide is not. Wartime loss and international
support are frequent occurrences, but Midlarsky references only three
twentieth-century cases of genocide. A similar point applies to Valentino: strategic considerations are ubiquitous; mass killing is not. Here
again, corollary conditions matter, but Midlarsky’s and Valentino’s arguments point in multiple directions, from ideology, to state capacity, to past atrocities, to vulnerable populations. The second problem
with the paradigm, especially for the more rationalist version, is that
genocide is highly costly behavior that usually fails. Consider four major cases: the Armenians in the late Ottoman Empire, Nazi Germany,
Bosnia, and Rwanda. In each case, the perpetrators lost their war or,
in the case of Bosnian Serbs, failed to win and the leaders went into
hiding or were arrested as indicted war criminals. Elites may perceive
mass violence as a strategy for survival, but phobia, desperation, anger,
and even fantasy—as per Midlarsky and Levene, as well as Weitz and
Sémelin—would seem to explain why.
Taken together, each of the three paradigms is provocative and persuasive, but only up to a point. Each illuminates particular dimensions
492
w o r l d p o li t i c s
of genocide. However, the discussion here points to two major limiting
factors to the comparative study of genocide, as represented in these
second-generation books. First, genocide is relatively rare and, second,
the cases of genocide are heterogeneous. From a normative point of
view, any genocide is one too many, but as a political outcome, genocide is so infrequent and the cases so different that a general theory
based on case-country comparisons will almost certainly overpredict
onset or fit poorly—as these books show. Some authors compensate
by suggesting corollary conditions, but the tertiary arguments point in
multiple directions and tend to add in more variables than cases. The
net result is an emerging literature that is theoretically rich but resistant to synthesis and consensus.
V. Some Surprising Similarities: Contingency and War
Before moving on, there are some surprising similarities in the books
that should be noted. The first is that genocide emerges from a process of escalation and contingency. Valentino, for example, argues that
mass killing and genocide are “final solutions” that leaders choose after
previous plans have failed. Nazi leaders chose extermination only after deportation schemes proved impossible; Rwandan radicals chose
genocide only after Tutsis who had been deported a generation earlier
returned to wage war. Mann similarly argues that genocide is rarely the
initial intent of perpetrators and is usually the product of unforeseen
decisions. Mann categorizes the process of escalation as plans A, B, C,
D, and E, each implying a different level of radicalization on the part
of perpetrating states. Levene also argues that genocide is not a preordained outcome but rather is the result of “a concatenation or matrix of
ingredients and contingencies” (vol. 1, pp. 49–50). Midlarsky similarly
emphasizes that genocide is contingent, the product of an “essentially
dynamic circumstance” (pp. 5–6). Though less focused on the matter,
Sémelin and Weitz make similar points. The former argues that genocide always has an “element of improvisation” (p. 234), while the latter
contends that genocide is never “predetermined or inevitable” (p. 14).
The issue matters for two reasons. First, the finding that genocide
is the product of contingency casts further doubt on the prospects of a
general theory. Genocide may be too rare and, these authors suggest, its
conditions too random to support a theory of the phenomenon per se.
Second, the finding implies that the current emphasis on planning
found in most discussions of genocide is misplaced. Genocide is defined in international law as an intentional act. That in turn leads many
s e co n d - g en er at i o n r es e a rc h o n g en o c i d e 493
observers to focus on the planned nature of genocide, with “planning”
thus becoming the litmus test for whether genocide occurred. Evidence abounds, for example, in the treatment of the Rwandan genocide, which a UN tribunal has investigated for the past thirteen years.
Prosecutors and other observers reify elements that ultimately were
used in the genocide—such as weapons, militias, radio broadcasts, and
so forth—as evidence of careful, even meticulous planning before the
genocide occurred.26 Taken together, however, the second-generation
books strongly caution against reifying the planning before genocide.
That in turn has implications for questions of international intervention. If genocide is not highly preplanned, then there should be opportunities for outside actors to shape outcomes.
A theoretical analog is found in a debate that roiled Holocaust scholarship in the 1970s and 1980s. On the one hand, intentionalists argued
the Holocaust was principally the outcome of Hitler’s vision and that
the German leader planned genocide for many years prior to its occurrence. On the other hand, functionalists argued a process of “cumulative radicalization” characterized Nazi policy. The Holocaust emerged
from changing circumstances and local officials’ improvised attempts
at implementing Nazi goals.27 Recent literature on the Holocaust has
found some middle ground between these two positions, recognizing
both a strong element of contingency and the importance of top-level
ideology.28 Most authors under review take the middle-ground view—
emphasizing “cumulative radicalization” and contingent, unforeseen
decisions while also acknowledging the importance of leaders’ decision
making and ideology.
The books have a second, related common finding: genocide usually
occurs during war. That was an argument put forward in some of the
first-generation scholarship on genocide,29 but many analysts drew a
bright line between the two. The reason again stems from definitions.
A distinguishing characteristic of genocide is that states direct violence
against civilian populations, against noncombatants. By contrast, war
is, at least under international law, fighting between combatants. Ob26
See various judgments and indictments available on the Web site of the International Criminal
Tribunal for Rwanda, www.ictr.org.
27
For a review of this debate, see Ian Kershaw, The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of
Interpretation, 4th ed. (London: Arnold, 2000).
28
For example, see Christopher Browning, “The Decision-Making Process,” in Dan Stone, ed.,
The Historiography of the Holocaust (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2004).
29
Melson (fn. 2); and Eric Markusen, “Genocide and Warfare,” in Charles Strozier and Michael
Flynn, eds., Genocide, War, and Human Survival (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1996); for
a more recent treatment, see Martin Shaw, War and Genocide: Organized Killing in Modern Society
(Cambridge: Polity, 2003).
494
w o r l d p o li t i c s
servers who are keen to show that genocide occurred often emphasize
that the violence they are describing is not war. By contrast, observers
who are keen to deny that genocide occurred often emphasize that the
violence they are describing is war.
Some examples help clarify the point. Turkish government officials
in contemporary times strongly deny that genocide took place against
the Armenian population in 1915. Armenian diasporic communities,
however, strenuously argue otherwise, and they have pressured a number of Western governments to pass legislation recognizing that genocide took place. The matter is of some diplomatic import, surfacing,
for example, as an obstacle to Turkey’s recent bid to join the European
Union. Turkish officials argue a number of points, but focus on one in
particular: in 1915, there was a war (World War I) and the violence
that happened was part of that war. Rwanda produced an analogous
argument in 1994—government officials argued that the violence was
not genocide but rather was a civil war, and hence they were not to be
blamed and no international military intervention to halt genocide was
necessary. The books under review suggest that the “war versus genocide” debate is misplaced. Genocides tend to occur in times of war. The
Armenian genocide took place during World War I, the Holocaust
during World War II, and Rwanda during a civil war, but that fact does
not contradict the claim that a genocide had occurred. To the contrary,
the authors under review see war as an important reason for when and
why genocide occurs.
VI. Problems of Methodology: Concepts, Case Selection, and
Hypothesis Testing
Contingency and war, however, do not add up to a theory of genocide.
Moreover, as argued above, genocide is so rare and the cases so different that a search for a general theory based on country-case comparisons may be misguided. In this section, I extend the claim, arguing that
problems with the comparative study of genocide run deep. In particular, I highlight three methodological limitations that the books under
review lay bare: concepts, case selection, and hypothesis testing.
The comparative study of genocide is research driven by the dependent variable. What nominally brings together temporally, geographically, and empirically heterogeneous cases is that they share a particular outcome. Thus, the conceptualization of the dependent variable
is absolutely central to the comparative endeavor. Moreover, conceptual
consistency matters more for comparative genocide studies than it
s e co n d - g en er at i o n r es e a rc h o n g en o c i d e 495
might for broader topics, such as research on the state, democracy,
power, and regimes (for which conceptual disagreement is also common), precisely because comparative genocide studies is dependentvariable-driven research and because the cases are so few. Yet, despite
the significance of conceptualization, genocide is a complex, contested,
and ambiguous concept, and comparative research on the topic suffers
as a result.
A Polish jurist, Raphael Lemkin, coined the term “genocide” in
1944 by combining the Greek “genos” and the Latin “cide” to describe
“a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of
essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of
annihilating the groups completely.”30 Four years later the United Nations codified the concept in the Genocide Convention as the “intent
to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious
group, as such.” There is much ambiguity in and between these two
foundational definitions, and genocide scholars have spent much time
during the past sixty years debating the meaning of the term. The key
questions are: what constitutes “intent to destroy” (since intent is difficult to discern empirically); what is the threshold for “group destruction” (since no group is ever completely annihilated and the Genocide
Convention refers to group destruction “in part”); who commits genocide (is the state the only agent of genocide or not); and which groups
are the objects of genocide (does genocide apply to violence against
ethnic, racial, national and religious groups, as the convention states, or
to political, class, and other types of groups)? 31
The conceptual issues are not easily resolved, but they matter. In
the books under review, no two authors under review use the same
specification of their dependent variable. Valentino analyzes “mass killing”—the intentional murder of at least fifty thousand noncombatants
in a five-year window. Mann discusses “murderous ethnic cleansing,”
which includes not just genocide, but also “politicide,” “classicide,”
“ethnocide,” widespread deportation, and other forms of mass violence
directed against a particular population. The other authors use “genocide,” but each in different ways. Weitz uses the Genocide Convention
definition. Midlarsky, Levene, and Sémelin favor narrower definitions
that center on the physical annihilation of particular populations. For
Midlarsky, genocide is the “systematic mass murder of innocent and
30
Raphael Lemkin, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation, Analysis of Government, Proposals for Redress (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1944), 79.
31
Scott Straus, “Contested Meanings and Conflicting Imperatives: A Conceptual Analysis of
Genocide,” Journal of Genocide Research 3 (November 2001).
496
w o r l d p o li t i c s
helpless men, women, and children, denoted by a particular ethnoreligious identity, having the purpose of eradicating this group from a particular territory” (p. 10). For Levene, “Genocide occurs when a state,
perceiving the integrity of its agenda to be threatened by an aggregate
population—defined by the state as an organic collectivity, or series
of collectivities—seeks to remedy the situation by the systematic, en
masse physical elimination of that aggregate, in toto, or until it is no
longer perceived to represent a threat” (p. 35). For Sémelin, genocide is
the “destruction of civilians that aims at the total eradication of a collectivity” (p. 406).
One consequence is that, even though most authors use a small-N
case study research design, no two authors have the same case selection,
as Table 1 shows. There is, in fact, only one case that all six authors
treat as genocide (or a related term): Nazi Germany and its attempt
to exterminate European Jewry. Even then, as Midlarsky and Mann
discuss, the case itself involves a number of different countries, with
some important variation between them, as well as violence targeting
more than one group. At the same time, absent from the books under
review are substantive discussions of several cases that would seem to
fit some authors’ definitions. Examples include mass violence in Indonesia in 1965, in Burundi in 1972, and in India at the time of partition.
In short, even though the comparative study of genocide itself is tightly
focused around a specific and rare outcome, there is no consensus on
what the outcome is or on what the universe of cases should be.
To be sure, no topic of study is likely to achieve perfect consensus
on core concepts. But the issue is especially salient in this literature for
at least two reasons. First, the conceptual range is broad. Some authors
such as Valentino employ a concept that includes dozens of twentiethcentury cases. Other authors, such as Midlarsky, use a narrower definition, with only three twentieth-century cases. Some authors, such
as Weitz, Valentino, Mann, and Levene, incorporate communist cases,
which generally involve targeting class groups (not ethnic or racial
ones). Other authors exclude communist cases. Some authors such as
Mann, Levene, and Valentino include colonial cases; the other authors
do not. In short, there is considerable range in the kind of violence being
examined. Second, most authors seek to find common empirical patterns
among a very small number of cases. That being so, even small variations in the concept of genocide yield different universes of cases, different case selections, and ultimately different findings and theories.
A related methodological problem is hypothesis testing. With one
exception—Mann’s data set and analysis of fifteen hundred Holocaust
s e co n d - g en er at i o n r es e a rc h o n g en o c i d e 497
Table 1
Core Cases in Second-Generation Genocide Research
(discussed or not discussed in books under review)
Cases/Authors
Weitz
Sémelin
Mann Midlarsky Levene a Valentino b
Nazi Germany
X
X
X
X
X
Armenians
X
X
X
Rwanda
X
X
X
X
Bosnia (or former
Yugoslavia)
X
X
X
Khmer Rouge in
Cambodiac
X
X
X
Former Soviet
Union (Kulaks)
X
X
X
FSU (Other)
X
X
China Cultural
Revolution
X
Guatemala Civil War
Afghanistan Civil War
Colonial genocide
in Americas
X
X
Colonial genocide
in Antipodes
X
X
Herero Southwest
Africa
X
X
Indonesia (1965)
Burundi (1972)
India (partition)
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
a
Levene makes reference to numerous twentieth-century cases; the coding in the table is based on
the five key cases he identifies in vol. 1, pp. 66–67, 161, as well as colonial cases discussed in vol. 2.
b
Valentino establishes a large universe of mass killing cases (pp. 75–90); the coding here is based on
the core cases selected for substantive analysis in chaps 4,5, and 6 of his book.
c
Midlarsky discusses Cambodia at some length, but he considers the case one of politicide, not
genocide.
perpetrators—the books’ principal forms of developing explanations
are process tracing and the comparative method of agreement. The operative question in the books is, what do cases of genocide (or related
violence) have in common? The answers, we have seen, are quite different. This stems in part from the different case selection in each book
(as noted above). Even so, several key cases overlap in the books, such as
the Armenian genocide, Bosnia, Rwanda, and the Holocaust (see Table
1). Yet even in these recurring cases the authors find different causal dynamics. Some point to extreme ideology, others to democracy and nation-building, and still others to the instrumental interests of leaders.
498
w o r l d p o li t i c s
There are several reasons for the discrepant findings. First, some authors cover as many as one hundred years of a particular case. It is thus
easy for the various authors to focus on different dynamics, processes,
and moments in the same case. Second, as noted above, the cases are
quite different, in terms of both explanatory and outcome variables. To
find commonalities across the heterogeneous cases in the comparative
analysis, authors stretch concepts—“utopia” and “purity” being good
examples—or selectively choose themes from huge sweeps of history.
Third, genocide does not lend itself easily to cross-national statistical analysis. Three authors (Sémelin, Levene, and Midlarsky) identify
seven or fewer core cases of genocide in the twentieth century. Weitz
does not specify a universe of cases but examines only four. With so
few cases, meaningful quantitative analysis is hard to imagine. One exception is Valentino’s work, which uses a broader dependent variable
and is more amenable to cross-national statistics. He and coauthors
already have begun such work.32 However, the study raises concern
because it treats fairly disparate cases—such as the Salvadoran civil
war, the Chinese Cultural Revolution, and the Rwandan genocide—
as having the same outcome value.
VII. An Alternative Approach
To sum up, the comparative study of genocide and the books under review represent an exciting new scholarly démarche. However, the new
literature also points to some common problems. Comparisons can feel
unwieldy and forced; theories either overpredict onset or have fit problems across cases; and explanations are discrepant. The issue, I have
argued, is not the authors and their arguments per se but is rather the
quest for a general theory of genocide based on no-variance, countrycase comparisons. The phenomenon may be too infrequent, the cases
too heterogeneous, the outcomes too contingent, and the organizing
concept too fraught with ambiguity to isolate the key causal mechanisms by focusing on similarities among genocide cases. A different
approach is needed.
A starting point for an alternative approach is to reframe the research question. If the main question in the existing literature concerns
the commonalities shared by the cases of genocide, then, taking a page
from recent literature on political violence, the question should shift to
32
Benjamin Valentino, Paul Huth, and Dylan Balch-Lindsay, “‘Draining the Sea’: Mass Killing
and Guerrilla Warfare,” International Organization 58 (April 2004).
s e co n d - g en er at i o n r es e a rc h o n g en o c i d e 499
what explains variance.33 That is, why does genocide occur, rather than
some other outcome? Doing so requires disaggregating “genocide” and
establishing a broader conceptual baseline around which to structure
comparisons. What then is the relevant baseline? At base, genocide is
top-down, organized violence against civilians identified with a particular group and violence aimed at that group’s destruction. Genocide,
I propose, should then be conceptualized as belonging to a universe of
cases of state-directed organized violence against civilians. The proposition is consistent with Valentino’s use of “mass killing.” But rather
than treating all mass killing events as having the same value, as Valentino seems to, the idea is to disaggregate the concept of genocide in
order to explain variation.
The approach has several advantages. First, the move increases the
number of cases, given that state-directed organized violence against
civilians is relatively frequent. Increasing the number of cases will facilitate finer-grained distinctions between cases, and that in turn will
allow for alternative research designs and greater hypothesis testing.
For example, the current approach results in comparing cases with significant heterogeneity on both explanatory and outcome variables. Instead, to test a specific hypothesis, researchers might select cases that
have much in common but that also vary along a key explanatory dimension or that vary in terms of the level and character of organized
violence. Similarly, expanding the conceptual baseline and increasing
the number of country cases create more propitious conditions for
quantitative, cross-national analysis. Both options—narrower comparisons and quantitative, cross-national analysis—will lead to more
focused hypothesis testing than is currently found in the literature.
Second, the move expands the questions researchers can ask. One
key axis of variance becomes level of violence. For example, the question can become: why in some cases is there more or less organized
violence against civilians? Or why in some cases does violence result
in physical elimination of groups rather than forcible removal, massacring, assassinations, or some other outcome? Why in some cases is
violence national rather than regional? Another dimension of variance
is time. Why is violence episodic or short in some cases but more sustained in others? Or what causes a regime to escalate violence against
civilians, to shift from limited massacring to extermination? Each of
33
See Stathis Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War (New York: Cambridge University Press,
2006); Ashutosh Varshney, “Ethnic Conflict and Civil Society: India and Beyond,” World Politics 53
(April 2001); Jeremy Weinstein, Inside Rebellion: The Politics of Insurgent Violence (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Steven Wilkinson, Votes and Violence: Electoral Competition and Ethnic
Riots in India (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004);
500
w o r l d p o li t i c s
these questions—and others are possible, too—addresses key dimensions of genocide. And answering the questions promises greater analytical leverage and more possibilities for cumulative findings than the
standard no-variance, case-country comparative approach.
Third, the move integrates the study of genocide into analog literatures, in particular the booming literature on political violence, from
which the study of genocide has been isolated to date. The secondgeneration literature on genocide has a common finding that genocide
tends to occur in war. That finding suggests genocide is substantively
related to violence in war. In keeping with the above, a key question
is, what explains the variance of violence in civil war, with genocide as
one possible outcome? The literature on violence already has moved in
these directions—toward a focus on variance, on narrow and microcomparisons, and on focused hypothesis testing34—and there is every
reason to expect that the literature on genocide would reap many of
the same analytic rewards while also being part of a broader research
agenda.
Fourth, the move allows for recognition of the distinctiveness of
genocide. “Genocide” may be a contested concept, but the term usually
has normative implications. For many observers, genocide refers to a
specific type of human wrong—the attempt to eliminate a category of
people. To compensate, researchers have two options. One is to downplay the normative dimensions of the concept.35 The other is to jettison
the concept for a more neutral one, such as “violence” or “mass killing.”
Both possibilities promise to be losing propositions. On the one hand,
for some “genocide” will always mean one of the most terrible horrors
that humans can commit against other humans. On the other hand,
genocide is a real-world outcome: we have empirical examples of attempts to annihilate particular populations. The proposition here is to
treat genocide as part of a range of possible outcomes of violence. The
move has the methodological advantage of increasing variance and increasing the number of potential observations while having the substantive advantage of allowing genocide to be recognized as a distinct
phenomenon that social scientists can and should study, if so inclined.
VIII. Conclusion
The second-generation literature on the comparative study of genocide
deepens existing theories of genocide and makes the comparative study
34
35
See fn. 33.
As suggested in Straus (fn. 31).
s e co n d - g en er at i o n r es e a rc h o n g en o c i d e 501
of the phenomenon more systematic and sophisticated. The secondgeneration literature also brings the study of genocide into mainstream
debates in the social sciences and history. However, the research area
lacks consensus on the core concept, on the appropriate universe of
cases, and on the specific factors that drive genocide. Moreover, because genocide is rare, because the existing cases are heterogeneous,
and because of a consistent finding that contingency is central to the
outcome, the problems with any comparative research program focused
only on genocide run deep. I have contended that the way forward is
to embed the study of genocide within a broader inquiry into the study
of organized violence against civilians and to find alternative ways, beyond case-country comparison, to study the phenomenon.
Therein lies a trade-off. On the one hand, the surge of interest, including the books under review, helps establish the study of genocide
as an important and serious scholarly endeavor. On the other hand, a
research topic anchored around a contested and ambiguous concept
and around a rare and contingent phenomenon will have inevitable
limits. For research on genocide to continue to mature, I have argued
that scholars should focus on variation, with genocide as one possible
outcome. Given the finding that genocide tends to occur in wartime,
the key question is what explains different levels and kinds of statedirected violence against civilians in war. The approach is counterintuitive, but freeing genocide studies from only studying genocide offers the best path to understanding and explaining a phenomenon that
continues to shock and disturb the world.
THE CONTRIBU TORS
Giovanni Capoccia is a professor of comparative politics in the Department of Politics and
IR, and Fellow of Corpus Christi College at Oxford University. He is the author of Defending Democracy: Reactions to Extremism in Interwar Europe (2005). He is currently completing a
comparative project on extremism and fundamental freedoms in Western Europe. He can be
reached at [email protected].
R. Daniel Kelemen is an associate professor of political science at Rutgers University and is a
visiting member of the Institute for Advanced Study (2007–8). He is author of The Rules of Federalism: Institutions and Regulatory Politics in the EU and Beyond (2004) and coeditor (with Keith
Whittington and Gregory Caldeira) of The Oxford Handbook of Law and Politics (2007). He is
currently writing a book on the judicialization of public policy in the European Union. He can
be reached at [email protected].
Patrick J. McDonald is an assistant professor in the department of government at the University
of Texas at Austin. He is completing a book manuscript that examines how liberal market institutions constrain war in the international system. He can be reached at [email protected].
Kevin Sweeney works for the United States Department of Defense. His areas of interest are
international conflict and cooperation and political methodology, and he has published a number of scholarly articles on these topics.  He can be reached at [email protected].
Steven E. Finkel is the Daniel Wallace Professor of Political Science at the University of Pittsburgh and, jointly during 2005–8, professor of applied methods at the Hertie School of Governance (Berlin). He has published widely in the areas of political participation, democratic
attitudes, and voting behavior. Since 1997 he has conducted numerous evaluations of the effectiveness of U.S. and other donors’ civic education programs in developing democracies. He can be
reached at [email protected].
Aníbal Pérez-Liñán is an associate professor of political science at the University of Pittsburgh. He is the author of Presidential Impeachment and the New Political Instability in Latin
America (2007). He is currently working on a book (coauthored with Scott Mainwaring) on the
waves of democratization in Latin America. He can be reached at [email protected].
Mitchell A. Seligson is the Centennial Professor of Political Science and a fellow of the Center for the Americas at Vanderbilt University. He is the director of the Latin American Public
Opinion Project (lapop), which conducts the Americas Barometer surveys. He can be reached
at [email protected].
Wendy Hunter is an associate professor in the department of government at the University
of Texas at Austin. She is the author of Eroding Military Influence in Brazil: Politicians against
Soldiers (1997) and several more recent articles on social policy issues in Latin America. She is
currently writing a book on the evolution of the Workers’ Party in Brazil. She can be reached at
[email protected].
Scott Straus is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. His book, The Order of Genocide: Race, Power, and War (2006) won the Award for Excellence
in Government and Political Science from the Association of American Publishers in 2006. He
can be reached a [email protected].
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.