Journal of Peace Research

This article specifies a simple mechanism - a behavioral norm defined in ethnic terms - to understand the dynamics of mass participation by reluctant Hutu in the 1994 Rwandan genocide. The mechanism, which has not been analyzed systematically in the scholarly literature, is specified using an agent-based model of within-group interaction that captures the role of intra-Hutu coercion in precipitating genocidal violence, yet is general enough to be applied to other group conflicts and contexts. The model highlights the role of individual heterogeneity, within-group punishment, behavioral adaptation, group networks, and ethnic entrepreneurs, and generates a set of results on norm formation and change, a number of which are not intuitive. These findings suggest that (1) norms are not equally likely to form in groups with similar aggregate preference; (2) a violence-promoting norm can emerge in a group dominated by moderates, and violence is not the inevitable outcome in a group dominated by extremists; (3) strong punishments are a prerequisite for the emergence of norms that promote interethnic violence or cooperation; (4) interaction patterns matter - for example, the segregation of an ethnic group clearly inhibits norm formation; and (5) an ethnic entrepreneur can effectively amplify norm formation within a group in the absence of strong punishment.

The literature on political violence has advanced some hypotheses concerning the forms and the causes of state-sanctioned violence and terror: why some governments make more widespread use of violence than others. However, one aspect of this question that has scarcely been considered concerns the conditions under which state violence achieves its goal, that is, to secure citizens’ submission to the state. This article offers an analysis of the conditions of success of a certain form of state violence: random repression by the state. It shows that random repression usually does not prevent a shift in popular support from the regime to the opposition. But under certain circumstances, if the state resorts to random violence but at the same time mimics, to a certain extent, the behaviour of a non-arbitrary repressor, this form of political violence by the state can achieve success. This explanation is illustrated with various cases of random state-sanctioned violence, including occupied Europe during World War II, El Salvador in the 1980s, present-day Israel and, especially, the terror in the Soviet Union during the Stalinist period. The Soviet regime combined random violence, through the imposition of quotas of arrests on each region, with signals about the legality of the arrests both before and during the terror process. These signals included the 1936 Soviet Constitution and the extraction of confessions of imaginary crimes. This strategy was largely successful.

When all else fails, aggrieved groups of society often resort to violence to redress their grievance - either by seeking to overthrow the ruling government or by attempting to secede. The strength of the rebel group relative to the state determines what direction the conflict will take. In institutionally and economically capable countries, any opposition group is likely to be inferior to the government. These groups will see secession as the most viable strategy to improve living conditions. Inconsistent, poor, and resource-dependent regimes are typically quite unstable and should therefore be more likely to attract coups and revolutions. In addition, large and ethnically diverse countries contain a higher number of peripheral and possibly marginalized groups, as well as remote and inaccessible terrain, both of which are expected to favor secessionist insurgency. Smaller countries, in contrast, offer few opportunities for separatist claims but, in such countries, capturing the state might also be a more realistic objective. This article provides a first test of these presumptions by estimating the effect of several popular explanatory factors separately on the risk of territorial and governmental conflict, 1946-99. The analysis offers considerable support and demonstrates that territorial and governmental conflicts are shaped, in large part, by different causal mechanisms. The reputed parabolic relationship between democracy and risk of civil war only pertains to state-centered conflicts, whereas democracy has a positive and near-linear effect on the risk of territorial rebellion. Moreover, the analysis strongly suggests that the puzzling no-finding of ethnicity in several prominent studies is affected by their inability to account for rebel objective in civil war.

The democratic peace literature has focused primarily on militarized conflict; however, aspects of the democratic peace may influence how states use economic sanctions. This article investigates how democracies sanction both each other and other non-democracies. Because economic sanctions are very different from military force, some aspects of the democratic peace, such as the more peaceful nature of democracies, do not apply to the decision to sanction. However, several democratic peace factors should influence the use of economic sanctions, such as institutional constraints, shared values, and quick resolutions often found between two democracies. Using updated economic sanction data from 1978 through 2000, the article employs rare-event logit analysis to show that the democratic peace does influence the use of economic coercion - democracies are less likely to sanction each other. It also shows that democracies employ sanctions more than other regime types, in part because democracies pursue human rights and democratization goals with economic sanctions. The results further reveal that unlike other countries, the United States is not hesitant to sanction its allies.

The study of quasi-states has been marred by an unfortunate terminological confusion. Sometimes, this term is taken to mean recognized states that fail to develop the necessary state structures to function as fully fledged, ‘real’ states. At other times, ‘quasi-states’ is a designation given to regions that secede from another state, gain de facto control over the territory they lay claim to, but fail to achieve international recognition. The author proposes that, in order to clear up this confusion, recognized but ineffectual states ought to be referred as ‘failed states’, while the term ‘quasi-states’ ought to be reserved for unrecognized, de facto states. Since quasi-states are not supported by international recognition, they must be sustained by something else. In contrast to researchers who maintain that the majority of these quasi-states are quite strong, this article argues that their modal tendency is weak economy and weak state structures. The main reasons why these states nevertheless have not collapsed seem to be that they have managed to build up internal support from the local population through propaganda and identity-building; channel a disproportionately large part of their meager resources into military defense; enjoy the support of a strong patron; and, in most cases, have seceded from a state that is itself very weak.

The authors introduce and describe a new variable for interstate conflict research for use in conjunction with the Militarized Interstate Disputes (MID) dataset. This variable, First Use of Violent Force (FUVF), covers the period 1980-2001 and identifies which state involved in a violent militarized interstate dispute was the first to actually use violence rather than threatening or displaying force. This article introduces the variable, which, along with all of the supporting documentation, is now publicly available, describes its creation, discusses its utility, and uses both multivariate regression and measures of association to draw attention to theoretically interesting patterns in first use of violent force that are worthy of further exploration. The authors find that non-democratic states are more likely than democracies to be the first to resort to violent force when involved in a militarized interstate dispute; also, minor powers are more likely to use violent force first, compared with major powers. Measures of association also indicate that states that use violent force first in a MID are much more likely to be revisionist states, but that first users of violent force are unlikely to achieve victory in the dispute as a result.