Discrimination, Genocide, and Politicide

• Date: 01 June 2020
• Published date: 01 June 2020
• DOI: 10.1177/1065912919828827
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/1065912919828827

Political Research Quarterly

2020, Vol. 73(2) 352 –365

© 2019 University of Utah

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DOI: 10.1177/1065912919828827

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Article

Introduction

Genocide—the intended destruction of a communal

group—and politicide—the eradication of political oppo-

sition—are considered the crimes of crimes in interna-

tional law. For this reason, the international community

has dedicated significant resources to crafting instru-

ments to help prevent and punish these atrocities, such as

the Genocide Convention, the International Criminal

Court, the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine, and

the creation of a Special Adviser on the Prevention of

Genocide at the United Nations, among many others.

Scholars have also worked hard toward combating geno-

cide and politicide by dedicating much time and energy to

understanding why such mass violence occurs. Yet, there

are still many unanswered questions and remaining

debates surrounding the use of these atrocities. As Chalk

and Jonassohn (1990) note, for efforts at prevention to be

effective, we must understand the processes that give rise

to government mass murder. It is toward that end that we

seek to help answer a continued debate around a particu-

larly important dimension of genocide and politicide—

the role of discrimination.

Discrimination played a central role in early work on

the causes of genocide and politicide (e.g., Fein 1979;

Horowitz 1976; Kuper 1981; Rubenstein 1975). However,

in more recent research into the causes of these atrocities,

scholars have found that discrimination is not a significant

predictor of government mass murder (e.g., Harff 2003;

Rost 2013; Valentino, Huth, and Balch-Lindsay 2004).

Therefore, this second generation of genocide scholars

tends to focus on the level of threat faced by a regime,

rather than the regime’s view of the in-humanness of a

particular group (e.g., Krain 1997; Melson 1992;

Schneider, Bussman, and Ruhe 2012; Valentino, Huth,

and Balch-Lindsay 2004; Wayman and Tago 2010).1

Although threat faced by the incumbent regime is surely

an important consideration in the government’s calcula-

tion of whether to commit genocide or politicide, we

believe it is also important to consider how discrimination

sets the stage for government mass murder.

Considering the role of discrimination returns us to

older theory on the links between discrimination and the

outbreak of government mass murder. We believe that if

a state discriminates against a large segment of its popu-

lation it is more likely to attempt exterminating the por-

tions of the population that they have come to see as

subhuman. This is because discrimination allows the

regime to cast the targeted population as the “other,”

which prepares its followers for a policy of extermination

and move along the continuum of destruction toward

mass murder (see Cohn 1967; Staub 1989).2 Othering can

be described as

the process of casting a group, an individual or an object into

the role of the “other” and establishing one’s own identity

through opposition to and, frequently, vilification of this

828827PRQXXX10.1177/1065912919828827Political Research QuarterlyUzonyi and Asal

research-article2019

1The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, USA

2University at Albany, State University of New York, USA

Corresponding Author:

Gary Uzonyi, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, 1001 McClung

Tower, Knoxville, TN 37996-0410, USA.

Email: guzonyi@utk.edu

Discrimination, Genocide, and Politicide

Gary Uzonyi1 and Victor Asal2

Abstract

The first generation of genocide scholars emphasized the role of discrimination in the onset of genocide and

politicide. However, second-generation scholars discount such claims and have not found quantitative support for the

discrimination hypothesis. We return to first-generation theories linking discrimination to genocide and politicide. We

argue that while such policies set the stage for genocide, they do not influence the onset of politicide. This is because

genocide is a policy aimed at eradicating the “other” while politicide is a policy designed to eliminate violent threat to

the regime elites. Therefore, we encourage scholars not to conflate the logics of genocide and politicide. Statistical

analysis of discrimination and government mass murder from 1955 to 2005 reveals that while some causes of genocide

and politicide are similar, ethnic discrimination influences genocide but not politicide, as we expect.

Keywords

genocide, discrimination, human rights, mass killing, violence