The Dynamics of Mass Killings: Testing Time-Series Models of One-Sided Violence in the Bosnian Civil War

Schneider, Gerald; Bussmann, Margit; Ruhe, Constantin

doi:10.1080/03050629.2012.697048

Cited by 32 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 30 publications

(23 reference statements)

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“…This result is somewhat surprising, since peacekeepers can limit civilian victimization during fighting . However, it does fit with recent microlevel analysis that indicates that international actions have little effect on the decision calculus of the domestic actors (for example, Schneider et al 2012).…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 75%

“…While mass killing during the conflict may provide the parties incentive for retributive killing after the war, such incentive does not appear to drive postconflict genocide. It may be that retributive motives are acted upon during the war in the form of reciprocal attacks against the enemy's civil population (for example, Schneider et al 2012).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Some parties may engage in genocide and/or politicide as retribution for attacks against their civilian supporters during the conflict (for example, Balcells 2010;Schneider, Bussman, and Ruhe 2012;Wood 2010). To control for the possibility of a retributive motive, I include an indicator variable of 1 for all postconflict periods that followed a civil war in which one of the parties engaged in genocide or politicide during the fighting; 0 for all others (Marshall et al 2009).…”

Section: Mass Killing During Conflictmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Civil War Victory and the Onset of Genocide and Politicide

Uzonyi

2015

International Interactions

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Why do some governments engage in genocide and/or politicide? A common explanation for such government-sponsored mass killing is that civil war provides governments both the incentive and opportunity to eradicate their enemies during the fighting. However, many episodes of genocide and politicide begin once the fighting has ended. I argue that when the civil war ends with a clear victor the winning party is more likely to engage in mass killing than if the conflict ends through negotiated settlement or other inconclusive manners, since the victorious party does not fear armed resistance while they eliminate dissidents throughout the country. Moreover, I posit that the government will be more likely to engage in politicide rather than genocide, as politicide eradicates the leader's political enemies across cross-cutting segments of the population, whereas genocide only destroys certain communal groups. Statistical examination of all post-civil war periods between 1955 and 2009 supports my argument.

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 75%

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Mass Killing During Conflictmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Civil War Victory and the Onset of Genocide and Politicide

Uzonyi

2015

International Interactions

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“…Thereafter, and up to the end of the war, the location of violence against civilians more closely correlates with the front lines, which shifted in 1993 (with the new front between the Croatians and the Bosnian government) and in 1995. 68 Three key factors contributed to the decrease in campaigns of violence against civilians by the end of the summer of 1992. First is the success of the Bosnian BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC AND ALEX DE WAAL Serbs' plans; by summer's end they had achieved many of their war aims.…”

Section: Military Defeat Of Main Aggressorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Setting the agenda for evidence-based research on ending mass atrocities

Conley-Zilkic¹,

Waal²

2014

Journal of Genocide Research

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The question of how mass atrocities end has been dominated by a normative approach regarding how they ought to end. Arguing that an evidence-based approach to terminate mass atrocities might offer profound insights into theories of mass atrocities as well as policies designed to prevent or end their occurrence, this article outlines the key questions and approaches needed for an evidence-based study of atrocity endings. It draws on theories of genocide, political violence and civil war termination, and presents initial insights from case studies, including the killing of civilians in colonial German Southwest Africa, the Soviet Union, the Nigerian civil war, the Guatemalan civil war, the Nuba Mountains of Sudan and Bosnia-Herzegovina. IntroductionThe field of genocide and mass atrocities studies has produced significant contributions to knowledge of where, when and why campaigns of large-scale, one-sided violence occur, but offers relatively few explicit examinations of the political, social and military dynamics of the de-escalation of violence. This simple question remains unexplored: how do mass atrocities end?Answering this question will require study of the dynamics of endings in multiple cases and will not likely produce a single theory of termination. 1 This article serves a more modest role; it sketches out the starting point for an evidence-based study of endings. It begins with a brief overview of why both 'mass atrocities' and 'endings' need to be problematized and explores how various theories of genocide and civil war might inform a study of atrocity endings. The second half draws on short case studies to introduce three broad scenarios for endings. (1) Perpetrators change their policies because of outside influence, rise of moderates or resistance. (2) Perpetrators carry their plans to fruition; leaders decrease use of lethal violence in order to normalize conditions for a range of reasons. (3) The most rare ending is that perpetrators are defeated by interested parties or so-called humanitarian interventions.

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“…Information on the protests is based on a content analysis of LexisNexis in French and English Fig. 1 The log-transformed number of killed and harmed civilians per 'week during the civil war in Bosnia' (Schneider et al 2012) and the timing of ICRC protests. Note The number of civilians who have fallen victim to one-sided violence is taken from the KOSVED Data Set; for coding details see Schneider and Bussmann (2013).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

A porous humanitarian shield: The laws of war, the red cross, and the killing of civilians

Bussmann

Schneider

2015

Rev Int Organ

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An important literature examines the attempts by the international community in inducing or coercing conflict parties in civil wars to refrain from committing atrocities against the civilian population. We examine in this article whether a nongovernmental actor, the distinctively neutral and independent International Committee of the Red Cross, whose mission includes the promotion of humanitarian law and the protection of the civilian population, has such a restraining effect on the conflict parties. Our results suggest that the more time has passed since the ratification of the relevant Geneva Conventions and Protocols, the larger is the risk of civilian victimization. We cannot find evidence that the ICRC's presence in conflict zones and the seminars it conducts to spread humanitarian law make a crucial difference. Case studies of Bosnia and Darfur indicate that shaming strategies and thus a relatively unusual instrument for the traditionally neutral actor did not abate the killings; the statistical evidence in the form of Granger causality tests rather show that the killing and harming precedes the naming and shaming.

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The Dynamics of Mass Killings: Testing Time-Series Models of One-Sided Violence in the Bosnian Civil War

Cited by 32 publications

References 30 publications

Civil War Victory and the Onset of Genocide and Politicide

Civil War Victory and the Onset of Genocide and Politicide

Setting the agenda for evidence-based research on ending mass atrocities

A porous humanitarian shield: The laws of war, the red cross, and the killing of civilians

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