Ethnic Conflict Final Exam

Security Dilemma

Realist concept that every time a a state makes a move to make itself more secure in the international system through grabbing hard power it produces reactions from other states that decrease its security

Why is the security dilemma a “dilemma”?

• There are not any good outcomes

• Everyone ends up less secure

• Even if you are armed to the teeth, so is your neighbor and it leads to misperceptions

Anarchy

• The Absence of world government

• No world police system to enforce international law

Self Help

• States have to help themselves, and if they don’t, they'll be punished and taken advantage of in the international system 

• Misperception

  • It is always better to prepare for the worst as the cost of being wrong in assuming that they are truthful is the lost of their existence

• Prisoner’s Dilemma game

  • ALWAYS DEFECT

What is the cause of the security dilemma in international relations?

• anarchy

• self help

• balance against power

How is the situation of anarchy approximated in intrastate war?

state collapse leads to no higher authority, which leads to self help, which leads to no trust, and then security dilemma

Examples of states that collapsed & approximated anarchy

• Soviet Union

• Former Yugoslavia

• Somalia

• Democratic Republic of the Congo

• Iraq after U.S. invasion

3 Factors likely to heighten the security dilemma

1.  Indistinguishability of the Offense & the Defense

2. Offense is favored over defense

3. Windows of Opportunity

Indistinguishably of offense and defense

• Offensive & defensive military forces are identical & states cannot signal their defensive intent

• All defensive capabilities can usually be put to some offensive capabilities

• Other groups then assume the worst bc the worse is possible

• When technology favors offense, conflict is most likely

• If I have a gun to defend myself, other people will be scared that I will use a gun to harm them with it offensively

• Two criteria to judge offensive intention

  • 1. Group solidarity and histories

  • 2. Worst case assumptions

Offense is favored over the defense → What are certain situations where groups may think that preventative war is beneficial?

• Technology

  • Universal Factor UNLESS one side has nuclear deterrent

  • Nukes are the ultimate defensively tool

• Ethnic Geography

  • ethnic islands

  • interdispersed population

  • these groups may fear being attack by the majority that surrounds them or lives around them

  • ethnic island or interdispersed population may think it is better to attack first and try to avoid that fate

• UN rewards the offensive

  • negotiates ceasefires, which tend to preserve gained territory

Windows of Opportunity

• Attacking before formal groups (UN) can get involved

• attacking when a group thinks they have an advantage that will not be present later and if they think security can be achieved by offensive military action

• When a state is weak

  • After a civil war

  • Transition of power

What factors heightened the security dilemma between Serbs & Croats in 1991?

• Each side has offensive capabilities

• Serbs ethnic islands of Croatia

  • As we know, ethnic islands will act fast to attack if they fear that the majority group will act nasty towards them

• Terrifying oral histories

• Serbs military is stronger

  • Croats are stronger economically & have allies

  • Preventative war incentives

• Small bands of fanatics appear

• Each group signaled malign intent

Ethnic Island

Small minority group within a nation

Ethnic Islands and Offensive War

• Acting fast while on an ethnic island gives you the upper hand against the ethnic majority after a collapse of a state that may impose their will upon you as a part of an ethnic island

• Ethnic group within this island will probably engage in preventive war to break encirclement

Interdispersed Populations and Offensive War

• Ethnic Cleansing

• Majority ethnic group will act fast to get minority group removed to remain pure

Lake & Rothschild “Containing Fear” (1996)

If war is costly, why can’t groups reach agreements to alleviate ethnic fear?

• Information failures

• credible commitments

• security dilemma

• ethnic entrepreneurs

How do information failures lead groups not to be able to alleviate ethnic fear?

• Lake & Rothschild “Containing Fear” (1996)

• Bluffing 

  • Incentives to misrepresent or exaggerate strength

    • Hope to force other side to concede

    • When it will really cause violence as the other group feels scared & attacks now

  • Best bargain

• Downplay aggressiveness

  • International norms frown upon aggressiveness, it looks bad

• Strategies are unknowable

  • Preparing for conflict

How do credible commitments lead groups not to be able to alleviate ethnic fear?

• Lake & Rothschild “Containing Fear” (1996)

• ethnic contracts must be enforced by the state

• worry that groups won’t hold up to their end of the bargain

• Shifts in balance of power & changing beliefs about intentions & the past

• Ethnic conflicts happen bc groups cannot credibly commit themselves to uphold mutually beneficial agreements they might reach

• To provoke conflict, one group need not believe the other really is aggressive, only fear it might be

How do security dilemmas lead groups not to be able to alleviate ethnic fear?

• Lake & Rothschild “Containing Fear” (1996)

• Anarchy leads to self-help

• Rests upon information failures, credible commitments

• Geography matters - can encourage preemptive strikes

How do ethnic entrepreneurs lead groups not to be able to alleviate ethnic fear?

• Lake & Rothschild “Containing Fear” (1996)

• Accelerate ethnic fear

• Activate political memories, myths, & negative stereotyping

• build on feelings of insecurity & polarize society

• Elicit powerful emotional responses & violence

• Very powerful when elites have control of media & airwaves

What are the policy solutions that flow from the dilemmas & theories of Posen & Lake & Rothschild?

• Third parties

  • Mediate

  • Can help prevent information failures, enforce commitments, & make groups aware of other group’s intentions & capabilities (stop security dilemma)

• Histories

  • Reconstruct the terrifying histories

Containing Fear: The Origins & Management of Ethnic Conflict

By David A. Lake & Donald Rothchild

Argues intense ethnic conflict caused by intense collective fears of the future

Ethnic conflict caused by “fear of the future, lived through the past”

Information Failure

When individuals & groups possess private information & incentives to misrepresent that information, competing group interests can produce actual conflict

What are the incentives for groups to misrepresent (information failures)?

1.  Groups bargaining over issues & believe they can gain by bluffing

   • Ex. exaggerating strengths, minimizing weaknesses, misstating preferences

2. Groups may be truly aggressive but not want to be labeled as such so they seek to minimize internal opposition or insulate themselves from repercussions in international community

3. Groups that are simultaneously negotiating & preparing for ethnic war likely won’t say their battlefield strategies 

   • Don’t want this info used as a disadvantage

The Security Dilemma & Ethnic Conflict

By Barry R. Posen

Why do different ethnic conflicts in Eurasia vary in observable intergroup relations? Security dilemma!

when the state is weak or collapsing, & when there is an outbreak of political violence in a multiethnic state, ethnic groups become responsible for their own security

Each group attempts to cleanse its territory of potentially hostile ethnic groups, which escalates violence in a preemptive war

Killing Neighbors: Webs of Violence in Rwanda

By Lee Ann Fujii

Social ties, not ethnic attachment, causes violence

Group dynamics are a powerful, homogenizing force

Joiners

• Lee Ann Fujii

• continued participation in violence because “working” in groups conferred powerful identity onto them, who then reenacted the specific practices constitutive of the group’s identity

3 Types of Participants in Violence (Fujii)

1. Forced

   1. Many said their leaders would have killed them if they did not participate

2. Joined Willingly

   1. Believed they had to protect their community from threats

3. Joined Unwittingly

   1. Entered into the violence without any clear intention or conscious decision to do so

Group Momentum and Violence (Fujii)

• Groups talk, exchange info, pass rumors, make plans, & coordinate efforts

  • Allow for Joiners to make sense of a threatening situation

• Group momentum helps override doubts that people may have

• Rob actors of agency

• Actors become victims of circumstance rather than masters of their own destiny

• Killing took this form to involve EVERYONE in the killings, whether directly or indirectly

• If ALL were guilty, none could be absolved later if political winds turned

Interahamwe

a Hutu paramilitary organization active during the Rwandan Genocide

What form did the violence in Rwanda take?

• Joiners killed in large groups, not individually

• Victims were usually unarmed & unable to flee

• Sheer size of groups meant many members watched as a handful participated in the physical murder

• Killings were public, in daylight, in full view of onlookers

• Killings were physically intimate, face to face

• Instruments included hammers, spears, hoes, axes, swords, machetes

  • Close range weapons

• Theatrical elements, like chanting

• Rape & torture present

• Killers would “announce” a killing that had just been committed by stopping in front of people’s houses

  • Sometimes intended as warnings or threats

  • Other times meant to recruit others to join

• Some bodies were buried while others were mutilated

Colonization and Rwanda

• German & Belgian colonizers

• Ranked system privileged minority Tutsis

• 85% Hutu, 15% Tutsi

Arusha Accords

• signed August 4, 1993

• Power sharing agreement to end Rwandan civil war

Rwandan Genocide

• April-June 1994

• Approximately 1 million Tutsi minority hunted down & killed

• Genocide ends when RPF takes control of Rwanda

How would theories explain the Rwandan genocide?

• Civil war & weak state – emerging anarchy

  • Who will enforce the new Arusha ethnic power sharing agreement?

• How would primordialists explain the genocide?

  • Ancient hatreds -> lid comes off the pot & it boils over

  • Evidence counter to this

    • The Hutu & Tutsi identities were pretty much constructed by colonizers. Lots of peaceful coexistence for years

• How would instrumentalists or social constructivists explain the violence?

  • Elite manipulation – mobilize populations for political gain

  • Use of the radio

• What is Fuji’s explanation for why the masses follow?

  • Interviewed participants in Ngali & Kimanzi

  • Joiners were “forced”, “willing”, or “unwittingly followed”

  • Why didn’t people resist joining?

    • Group dynamics

    • Violence has a performative quality

    • Public & acts were not related to killing

    • Explains why violence continued

Role of International Community in Rwandan Genocide

• Democratization pressure heightened insecurity

  • Foreign aid tied to Arusha Accords

  • Excluded Hutu extremists

  • Media to provoke fear - emotional response

• Reluctance to declare it a genocide as it was unfolding

  • Why was US reluctant to intervene?

    • “Mogadishu Line” -> when peacekeepers are forced to become combatants, that's when support for a peacekeeping ends 

  • Why was UNSC reluctant to declare it a genocide?

    • Lack of international support for sending troops to Rwanda & calling it a genocide would have made it necessary to send troops 

  • What role did peacekeepers play?

• UN Security Council authorized International Tribunal for Rwanda

  • 93 indicted, 62 sentenced

• National Unity & Reconciliation Commission

Rwandan Genocide and the Democratic Republic of the Congo

• Rwandan genocide triggered next wave of ethnic violence

• Fall 1994 RPF had retaken all of Rwanda

  • Killed hundreds of thousands of Hutus

  • 2 million forced to flee Rwanda – many to neighboring Congo

• 1996 RPF launched incursion into Congo

  • 1st Congo War (1996-1997)

  • 2nd Congo War (1998-2003)

• Violence continues between militias backed foreign powers

MONUSCO

• UN peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

•  world’s largest peacekeeping mission

  • 18,000 uniformed personnel

  • $1.14 billion annual budget

    • ¼ paid by USA

• Mixed reputation in DRC, but does appear to be providing security

Congo’s Slide into Chaos: How a State Fails

By Stuart A. Reid

Congo’s current regime looks unsustainable & yet somehow it is sustained

How is the DRC “collapsing”?

• Stuart A. Reid

• The Democratic Republic of the Congo is neither democratic, nor a republic, nor in control of the Congo

• 77% of people live in extreme poverty

• Vast parts of the country go ungoverned with armed militias vying for territory & resources in ⅓ of its provinces

• Corruption & bribery rampant

• Most threatening opposition has been bribed to join the majority, threatened into silence, jailed, or killed

DRC’s Resources

Under DRC’s soil is trillions of dollars’ worth of copper, cobalt (used for batteries), coltan (used in electronics), tin, diamonds, & gold

Rebel Natural Resource Exploitation & Conflict Duration

• By Conrad et al

• Exploitation of natural resources can strengthen rebels’ power to resist the government

• When rebels smuggle natural resources, civil conflicts last longer

• Conflicts where rebel groups extort natural resources are not significantly more likely to endure

Why does natural resource wealth lead to longer conflicts?

1.  More difficult to reach peace agreements

   • Commitment problems between state & rebels

   • Difficulty for each side to give up control of the resources

2. “Illusions of invulnerability” where rebels believe they do not need to negotiate with the state

3. Sustains rebel group’s ability to fund its operations over longer periods of time

   1. Rebels now have more $ to buy weapons & train soldiers

4. Enhances rebels’ power to resist, allowing them to evade government repression

   • Makes it easier for rebels to negotiate or bribe their way across international borders

Extortion

 demand a share of income generated from natural resources in exchange for refraining from violence against the producers

Extortion and Ethnic Conflict

• Does not enhance rebels’ power to resist

• Lack of mobility & concentration required for extortion exposes them to government attack

• Any benefits to rebels of extorting natural resource production are offset by additional security risks, resulting in a more ambiguous effect on the duration of civil conflict.

Smuggling

Illicit transport of goods within countries & across international borders

Smuggling and Ethnic Conflict

• Usually greater diversification of income, making groups more resistant to price fluctuations & government assaults on funding streams

• Rebel groups funded by smuggling operations engage in longer conflicts but are not more likely to win

What role are resources playing in the DRC conflict?

• Everyone plunders the Congo for profit

• Where rebel groups earn income from resources, wars last longer

  • Allows them to purchase weapons & recruit followers

  • Increases ability to resist government forces

    • Goal is to maintain control over resources for profit

    • Smuggling lootable resources greater impact on duration than extortion

How would an Instrumentalist view conflict in DRC?

• Multiple ceasefires but violence continues

• War continues as long as it is profitable

• Who profits? (Reid 2018)

  • The elites

What are the solutions to the DRC conflict that stem from Instrumentalism?

• Make war less profitable

• UN report named 125 companies

• US companies sold mines under Presidents Obama & Trump

• Chinese companies now owns majority industrial mines

  • Provides weapons & technology

• Name & shame?? Maybe companies change behavior

Definitions of Violence: Narratives of Survivors from the War in Bosnia & Herzegovina

• By Goran Basic

• violence as an interpersonal interaction

• War in northwestern Bosnia & Herzegovina

• Serbian soldiers & police targeted violent force against civilians in northwestern Bosnia

• Serbians aimed to expel Bosniacs & Croats from the area

• Use of mass executions, forced flight, systematic rape, & concentration camps

Genocide

• specific intent to destroy in whole or in part a national, ethnic, racial or religious group by doing any of the following:

  • killing its members

  • causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group

  • deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part

  • imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group

  • forcibly transferring children of the group to another group

Ethnic Nationalism & International Conflict: The Case of Serbia

• By V.P. Gagnon Jr

• war conducted in the name of ethnic solidarity has destroyed the Yugoslav state, leveled entire cities, & resulted in hundreds of thousands of casualties & millions of refugees

• argue that violent conflict along ethnic cleavages is provoked by elites in order to create a domestic political context where ethnicity is the only politically relevant identity

Instrumentalist Explanation for Violence in Serbia

•  purposeful & rational strategy planned by those most threatened by changes to the structure of economic & political power, changes being advocated in particular by reformists within the ruling Serbian communist party

• created a political context where individual interest was defined not in terms of economic well-being, but as the survival of the Serbian people

• conservative coalition moved to destroy the Yugoslav state & create a new, Serbian-majority state. By provoking conflict along ethnic lines, this coalition deflected demands for radical change & allowed the ruling elite to reposition itself & survive in a way that would have been unthinkable in the old Yugoslavia, where only 39 percent of the population was Serb

Causes of Balkan Wars in Bosnia and Herzegovina

• Historical grievances

  • Makes it possible for elites to mobilize along ethnic lines

  • Terrifying oral histories abt one another

• Ethnofederalism

  • Ethnic islands present

  • Instills a sense of ownership for the group

• Economic crisis

  • Croatia & Slovenia are doing better & begin to feel as if they are holding up Yugoslavia economically on their own

• Democratization

  • Republics hold democratic elections… & then war

  • Threatens positions of power held by elites, so elites mobilize

• Nationalist elites

Ethnic Nationalism in Serbia

• Groups start calling for democracy in Serbia

• Threatens Milosovich’s hold on power

• So Milosovich stirs this up to get people to vote for him

• state by and for the Serbian people

• Ethnically PATTERNED but not ethnically caused

Why do the masses follow in Bosnia and Herzegovina conflict?

• Narratives of war violence in Northwestern Bosnia & Herzegovina 

  • Ethnography & interviews with victims & perpetrators

  • Violence is personal

• How do explanations for the violence relate to theories of conflict?

  • Social identity theory

    • Categorization & negative stereotyping

  • Violence is ritualized & performed (Fuji)

    • Serbian national songs

    • Audience

    • Normalized during the war

What role did the international community play in the war in Bosnia & Herzegovina?

• NATO bombing campaign got Serbia to sit at the peace table

• Dayton Peace Accord

  • 51% of territory for Muslim-Croat Federation

  • 49% of territory to Rpublika Srpska

  • Power sharing between Central Government & Entities

  • 60,000 NATO implementation force (IFOR)

• The Hague War Crimes Tribunal

  • Sentenced 93 people for war crimes

  • Established that Srebrenica was a genocide

• Important role in POST conflict situation

Srebrenica

• Muslim town in eastern Bosnia

• Had been designated a UN safe area, yet became subject to a massacre

• More than 7,000 men & boys missing after Srebrenica massacre

• Now, Srebrenica has been ethnically cleaned & is a Serb town

Protestants

Pro United Kingdom group in Northern Ireland

also called Loyalists

historically dominant group

Catholics

Pro secession group in Northern Ireland

also called Unionists as they favor union with Republic of Ireland

historically minority group

The Troubles

an ethno-nationalist conflict in Northern Ireland between Catholics and Protestants that lasted for about 30 years from the late 1960s to 1998

What has driven the conflict in Northern Ireland?

• Started in late 1960s & lasted more than 3 decades

• Started as a civil rights movement

  • Catholics protesting what they saw as discrimination by Northern Ireland’s Protestant-dominated government

  • Deteriorated into violence with paramilitary groups on both sides & the arrival of the British Army in 1969

• Mostly involved Protestant loyalists who wanted to remain part of the UK & Catholic republicans who wished to unite with Republic of Ireland

Good Friday Agreement

• Reached in 1998

• Power-sharing between unionists & nationalists

• Signed by British & Irish governments as well as 4 major political parties in Northern Ireland

• Confirms that Northern Ireland is a part of the UK but stipulates that Ireland could be united if that was supported in a vote by majorities in both Northern Ireland & Republic of Ireland

• Paved way for paramilitary groups to abandon weapons & join political process

What challenges remain in Northern Ireland?

• struggles to provide basic services & address sectarian divisions

• Health services crisis during pandemic

• High costs of living

• Rising energy & food insecurity

• Loss of EU funding due to Brexit has slashed funding for many important social programs

• Less than 10% of students in Northern Ireland attend religiously integrated schools or those not associated with a single faith

• Social interaction between religious communities is limited & peace walls divide Protestant & Catholic neighborhoods

• Parades & marches held largely by Protestant groups & have sectarian undertones

How has Brexit affected Northern Ireland?

• Most of Northern Ireland (56%) voted for UK to remain in EU

• Issue of Northern Ireland’s border with Republic of Ireland

  • Militarized during conflict but has now become invisible with people & goods crossing freely

  • This possible bc Ireland & UK both part of EU’s single market that allowed for free movement

  • With leaving of EU everyone wanted to avoid a hard border

    • Feared checkpoints could complicate trade, revive community tensions, & open the door to renewed violence

    • Some border checks are inevitable

How does the border between Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland, and the United Kingdom work after Brexit?

• To avoid a hard border with Republic of Ireland, checks now take place between Northern Ireland & Great Britain

• Effectively creates a sea border 

• Unionists see this as driving a wedge between Northern Ireland & UK

Windsor Framework

“2-lane” system where good staying in Northern Ireland are exempted from checks at sea while those destined for Ireland required to undergo inspection

What region of the world has the most UN peacekeeping missions?

Africa

Three Principles UN Follows with Peacekeepers

1. Main parties to conflict should consent to the mission

2. Peacekeepers remain impartial but not neutral

3. Cannot use force except for self-defense & defense of the mandate

How is a UN peacekeeping mission authorized?

• Security Council can authorize an operation with an affirmative vote of at least 9 of 15 members & w/o a veto from 1 of 5 permanent members

• Security Council likewise votes to renew peacekeeping operations when mandates are set to expire, typically a year

What are some of the things peacekeepers do?

• Protect civilians in armed conflict

• Prevent or contain fighting

• Stabilize post conflict zones

• Implement peace accords

• Assist democratic transitions

• Disarm, demobilize, & reintegrate ex-combatants

• Landmine removal

• Restore rule of law

• Protect & promote human rights

• Electoral assistance

What is the disconnect between countries that fund and countries that staff UN peacekeeping operations?

• As of the end of 2023, Bangladesh, Rwanda, & Nepal top contributors of military & police forces for UN missions in Africa

• USA, China, & Japan top donors to UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations

  • Total budget of $6.5 billion

• Wealthy nations spend most on peacekeeping, yet they send relatively few troops

• meanwhile, countries that either send troops or whose citizens are directly affected by peacekeeping missions often have less say in how they are designed & mandated

Major Criticisms of Peacekeeping Operations

• Mismanagement

• Failure to act when civilians are under threat

  • 2014 report by UN internal investigators found peacekeepers globally only responded to ⅕ cases where civilians were threatened & they failed to use force in deadly attacks

• Rights abuses by peacekeepers

  • Ex. sexual abuse & exploitation allegations, where few lead to prosecution

• Financing troubles

  • Peacekeeping operations very costly given mixed success

  • Too reliant on funding from a few major donors

What's in a Line? Is Partition a Solution to Civil War?

• By Nicholas Sambanis and Jonah Schulhofer-Wohl

• Empirical evidence in favor of partition is weak

De jure partition

• a new internationally recognized state as a result of a successful secession

• Ex. Pakistan being partitioned into Pakistan & Bangladesh, Eritrea seceding from Ethiopia and becoming a new internationally recognized state

De facto partition

• divided sovereignty over the territory of a single internationally recognized state

• Ex. Abkhazia & South Ossetia in Georgia

Why is it hard to assess the emprical results of partition?

too few cases and huge differences between them, difficulty coding variables

What are some of the challenges to reaching a lasting peace after ethnic conflict?

• Disarming groups - reverse security dilemma

  • Getting groups to set down weapons & stop killing each other is easier said than done

  • Each group gets LESS secure as they disarm

    • Groups do NOT trust each other after fighting a bloody war against each other

  • “Impartial” 3rd party can come in, monitor the disarmament process, & ensure the groups can trust each other (Posen)

  • Challenge of 3rd parties -> making sure they are ACTUALLY impartial

• Get to the negotiating table & build new power-sharing institutions

  • New government at the center

  • Every group has to feel represented in new government & structures of the state

  • Security, police forces, nation army

  • Challenges here:

    • Groups may not like the power-sharing agreement & resume fighting

      • Ex. Arusha Peace Accords in Rwanda that created an agreement between Hutus & Tutsis

• Constructing a common national identity

  • Getting every group to buy into the state

Partition

territorial separation of groups

What are the arguments in favor of partition? (Kaufman)

• Makes negotiation simpler

• Easier to manage hardened identities 

• Ends the security dilemma

  • If groups don’t trust each other, separate them & give them their own sovereign control

• Success cases?

  • De facto partition of Cyprus in 1974 ended violence between Greek & Turkish soldiers

  • Pakistan partitioned into Pakistan & Bangladesh in 1971 & do not go to war again

What are the arguments against partition?

• The success cases have pretty particular circumstances & may not be applicable everywhere else

• Population transfers & human rights

  • You have to forcibly pick people up & move them

  • People will lose their property & land

  • You could be separating families & friends

  • Ethnic cleansing under a different name

  • If you are going to take this human cost, you have to be pretty sure it is going to work. We aren't. 

• Unsuccessful cases like Croatia, Eritrea, Palestine, Pakistan/India

  • Yeah there may be successful cases but there are a LOT of unsuccessful ones

• Coding matters

  • It depends on how we code/define a return to violence to determine if partition is successful

  • How are we defining “partition”? Just de jure? Both de facto & de jure?

  • Partition just doesn’t hold up against historical & statistical evidence

What are the ideal conditions for partition to work?

• New internationally recognized states (de jure)

• Ethnically homogenous states

• Ensure no regional destabilization 

  • Ex. other states in the region don’t have a vested interest

• Ensure other minority groups in each state don’t start fighting for independence

Federalism

Strong, central government with real power devolved to sub-states

Homogenous Sub-States

• Groups are territorial separate

• Generous power should be granted to federal states in this case

• Ethnic groups will fight amongst themselves for power 

• Horowitz

Heterogeneous Sub-States

• Intra-ethnic party competition

  • Have to work together

• Less power should be devolved to the states in this case

  • More power to the central government

• If violence breaks out it will be local

• Horowitz

What is the trouble with federalism?

risk of secessionist movements

Electoral System

how votes in elections are counted

Single Member Districts/First-past-the-post Electoral System

• USA uses this

• Divide whole country up into districts & whoever wins the most votes in the district (plurality) wins that seat in the government

Where do single member districts/first past the post electoral systems work?

• Ethnically homogenous districts

  • Works pretty well here bc every group will be able to win some seats somewhere

  • Then, ethnic groups will collaborate at the national level

• NOT Ethnically heterogeneous districts

  • Worse here bc ethnic groups would have to compete within their own districts & the group with a majority, no matter how small, will get represented

  • Ex. Group A has 51% majority in every district while Group B has 49%. Group A will win every seat & Group B gets none

  • Better off using proportional representation

Types of electoral systems

• Single Member Districts/First-past-the-post

• Proportional representation

• Model of the 2nd Nigerian Republic

Proportional representation electoral system

• The % of population of a group should approximate the % of seats they have at the national level

• Helps all groups, even minorities, win seats in the government

Where does proportional representation electoral system work best?

heterogeneous districts/states

2nd Nigerian Republic electoral system

• Designed to produce a small number of parties with broad multiethnic support at the federal level

• Intragroup competition at the local level

  • You had to win 25% of the support in ⅔ of the states

• Current violence in middle belt state

International Criminal Court

• Created in 1998 by the Rome Statute

• Opened in 2003

• Jurisdiction over genocide, war crimes, & crimes against humanity

• Universal jurisdiction

Ways that an ICC proceeding can begin

• 1. State party can initiate

• 2. ICC special prosecutor can begin a trial if state is a party

• 3. UNSC can begin proceedings in non-signatory states

Challenge of the ICC

Actually getting people to The Hague to stand trial, as ICC has no police force to arrest people and must rely on states to extradite suspects

What national strategies has Rwanda used to heal society?

• Justice: Rwanda National Unity & Reconciliation Commission

  • Commission authorized release of all prisoners to local judges

  • Included masterminds, those who killed in hundreds, those who killed in dozens, those who provided information on location of Tutsis

  • Punishment not meant to fit the crime – why?

    • Blood stained EVERYONE’S hands, it is not possible to imprison everybody

    • However, we still have to do something & allow perpetrators to take responsibility for what they have done

• Remembrance

  • Commemoration

  • 100 days commemoration begins every year on April 7

• Community dialog groups & economic cooperatives

  • Ex. churches getting people together to speak abt the violence 

• Civic education

  • Try to construct a postethnic identity of Rwandanness

• Economic Development

  • Socioeconomic inequality was a key driver of genocide 

  • Government embarked on a development program focused on rural areas

  • Rural Hutus starting to think the government helps them as much as it helps Tutsis

Truth and Reconciliation Commission

an official body tasked with discovering and revealing past wrongdoing by a government, in the hope of resolving conflict left over from the past

Crimes against Humanity

• serious violations committed as part of a large-scale attack against any civilian population

• 15 kinds listed

• Ex. murder, rape, imprisonment, enforced disappearances, enslavement, sexual slavery, torture, apartheid, deportation

• ICC has jurisdiction over these