Leader Tenure, Genocide, and Politicide During Civil War

• Author: Gary Uzonyi
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/10659129211058484
• Published date: 01 December 2022
• Date: 01 December 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Political Research Quarterly

2022, Vol. 75(4) 1216–1228

© The Author(s) 2021

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DOI: 10.1177/10659129211058484

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Leader Tenure, Genocide, and Politicide

During Civil War

Gary Uzonyi

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Abstract

Why do some governments engage in genocide or politicide during civil war while others do not ? I argue that leader

tenure inf‌luences bargaining possibilities between the regime and rebels. Rebels face less uncertai nty about a longer-

tenured leader’s willingness to commit to concessions to end the conf‌lict with terms that better the rebels’position. This

narrows the longer-tenured leader’s ability to credibly offer the rebels concessions. Faci ng a constrained bargaining

environment, longer-tenured leaders become more likely to turn to atrocity in an effort to fully defeat the opposition

group and its supporters. Statistical analysis of all genocide and politicide in civil war since 1946 supports this claim.

Evidence from Milosevic’s atrocities in Kosovo help illustrate the mechanisms.

Keywords

genocide, civil war, leadership, uncertainty, bargaining, human rights

Introduction

Why do some governments engage in genocide or po-

liticide during civil war? Consider the various Burmese-

Rohingya conf‌licts. Between the 1940s and 1960s, var-

ious Rohingya groups challenged the Burmese govern-

ment for independence of their Arakan state in the western

region of the country. By the mid-1960s, though, the

Rohingya mujahedeen were losing momentum and the

Burmese government realized a de facto victory in the

Arakan state. At this time, General Ne Win, who had led

Burma for nearly 60% of its post-colonial independence,

began establishing and promoting the idea of taingyintha

(or “national races”) unity. In developing this idea, Ne

Win implemented policies to clarify taingyintha and en-

force Burmese citizenship (Cheesman 2017). Against this

backdrop, Rohingya secessionist desires simmered. As

Rohingya groups came to understand Ne Win’s vision of

taingyintha unity, and reject it, they once more pushed for

independence in 1978. Finding himself out of negotiating

room with the Rohingya regarding taingyintha unity, Ne

Win ordered the military to conduct Operation Dragon

King in which Burmese forces engaged in genocidal

violence, indiscriminately arresting, torturing, and killing

the Rohingya en masse as they sought to destroy the

Rohingya presence in Burma (Smith 1999).

Genocide is the attempted destruction of a communal

group; whereas politicide is the attempted destruction of a

political group (Harff and Gurr 1988).

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Scholars tend to

see these atrocities as following a logic of opportunity (see

Colaresi and Carey 2008). When rebellion presents “big

opportunities”(see Krain 1997), or the regime turns

“desperate”(see Downes 2008), such that the expected

eff‌iciency of genocide or politicide comes to outweigh its

high costs (see Valentino2004), the regim e becomes more

likely to engage in such atrocities against civilian groups

related to the rebel movement. While the balance of power

between the regime and opposition may shift rapidly and

increase threat (see Powell 2012), most indicators of

opportunity used in this literature—wealth, rough terrain,

or democracy—are slow moving or time-invariant during

a given conf‌lict. For example, during Ne Win’s reign

through 1978, Burma was an autocracy, did not alter the

roughness of terrain in the Arakan state, and maintained a

real GDP per capita of roughly $670 with only a standard

deviation of $35 over the years. Furthermore, the severity

of the Rohingya threat was much less in 1978 than it had

been previously in the conf‌lict when the rebels were

1

Department of Political Science, University of Tennessee, Knoxville,

TN, USA

Corresponding Author:

Gary Uzonyi, Department of Political Science, University of Tennessee,

1001 McClung Tower, Knoxville, TN 37996-0410, USA.

Email: guzonyi@utk.edu