POLS 322 Final Exam

Structural Cause

• Deeply rooted problems in society

• Example: (From Tunisia)

  • High levels of inequality

  • Dictatorship with limited political freedom

Proximate Cause

• Significant change in situation

• Example: (From Tunisia)

  • Government stopped subsidizing goods and services in poorer parts of the country

Mobilizing Cause

• Sparks violence

• Example: (From Tunisia)

  • Death of street vendor Bouazizi (set himself on fire after his market stalls were confiscated)

Cognitive Frame

• A mental structure that situates and connects events, people, and groups into a meaningful narrative so the social world makes sense

• Example:

  • A Yugoslav citizen noticing all the different ethnic groups living in Yugoslavia and coexisting without defining their life

Normal Frame

• A mental lens where ethnic relations were cooperative and neighborly, and there was much less emphasis on what ethnic group you were a part of (prevailed during Tito’s Yugoslavia)

• Example:

  • Intermarriage was acceptable during Tito’s Yugoslavia

Crisis Frame

• A mental lens where people of different ethnic groups are seen as threats and blamed for wrongs in the past

• Example:

  • Ethnic groups feared extinction, assimilation, and domination, which eventually leads to hatred and can be further exploited by the media and nationalist politicians

Mass Killing

• The intentional killing of a massive number (50,000+ in five years or less) of non-combatants

• Example:

  • The killings in the Holocaust

Ethnic Cleansing

• Forced removal of an ethnic group from a territory

• Example:

  • Yugoslavia

Genocide

• Deliberate large-scale violence against a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group with an intent to destroy a group in whole or part

• Example:

  • Holocaust

Mass Atrocities

• Violence deliberately inflicted against the civilian population with an element of scale (widespread, systematic, and/or sustained)

• Example:

  • Rwandan Genocide

Crimes Against Humanity

• Acts committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against a civilian population

• Example:

  • Syrian Civil War

War Crimes

• Deliberate violence against protected persons in war

• Example:

  • Russia in Ukraine

Mohammed Bouazizi

• A street vendor in Tunisia who set himself on fire after his market stalls were confiscated

• Significance: Sparked the violence in Tunisia (Mobilizing Cause)

Juvenal Habyarimana

• The president of Rwanda, who allowed the formation of the Interhamwe, and was shot down in a place

• Significance: This mobilized the Hutu to avenge the death of their president

Juan Peron

• The leader of a secret military lodge called the Group of United Officers, who enforced many labor laws, and eventually became the president of Argentina

• Significance: The labor laws and his presidency

Jorge Videla

• The Argentine army general who led the military coup to overthrow Peron’s president and became president during the Dirty War

• Significance: Overthrew Peron

Josip Tito

• The president of Yugoslavia from 1953 to 1980

• Significance: Normal frame during his reign (no ethnic conflict), the 1974 Yugoslav Constitution gives autonomy to federal republics

Slobodan Milosevic

• The president of Serbia from 1989 to 1997

• Significance: He was a Serbian nationalist responsible for ethnic cleansing (removal of other ethnic groups from Serbian) and genocide, wanted to expand Serbia by incorporating Serbs living in multi-ethnic republics (like Bosnia and Herzegovina)

Payasannat

• The land resettlement program that redistributed land from Tutsis to Hutu farmers

Interhamwe

• Communal work parties —> used to incite communal killing

• Youth Party organizations turned death squad

Inyenzi

• Derogatory term meaning “cockroaches” referring to Tutsis, it was used to dehumanize the Tutsis

Argentine proceso

• The military dictatorship that carried out the Dirty War and was responsible for tens of thousands of disappearances

Srebenica

• A town in Bosnia where 30,000+ Bosniaks were forced to flee by the Bosnian Serbs and 6500-8000 were detained, this was the first legally recognized genocide in Europe since WWII

Ad hoc tribunals

• Temporary trial venues set up for the purpose of prosecuting specific crimes related to a single conflict

• Example: ICTR and ICTY

Amnesty

• Legal agreements not to prosecute leaders for crimes committed while in power

• Example: Many amnesties in place in Latin America following transition to democracy to get military out of power

Arms Embargo

• Prohibition on sale of weapons to certain countries

• Examples: Currently a UNSC Resolution banning arms sales to Haiti (since 2022)

Coercive response measure

• “Stick”

• Restriction or Punitive Pressure

• Outright Force for Change

Clinton Apology

Cooperative response measure

• “Carrot”

• Positive incentives for change

• Enable change through facilitation

Electoral Participation Provision

• Clause mandating that rebel groups compete alongside government parties in post-conflict elections

Forced Disappearance

Genocide Convention

International Criminal Court

• Founding treaty: Rome Statute (1998)

• Court created: July 1, 2002

• Location: The Hague, Netherlands

• State parties (as of 2026): 125

• A case can be tried at the ICC if it meets jurisdictional requirement, must relate to ICC’s subject-matter jurisdiction, and must meet the temporal requirement

International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda

• Established 1994

• Legal Basis: UN Security Council Resolution 955 (November 1994)

• Location: Arusha, Tanzania

• Date of operation: 1995-2015

• Temporal Scope of Crimes: January 1-December 1, 1994

• Geographic scope of crimes": “Territory of Rwanda”, “territory of neighboring states” if committed by Rwandans

• Crimes covered: Genocide, crimes against humanity, violations of common article 3 (Geneva conventions)

International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia

• Established: 1993

• Legal Basis: UN Security Council Resolution 827 (May 1993), Article 41 of the UN Charter

• Tribunal location: The Hague, Netherlands

• Dates of operations: 1993-2017

• Temporary scope of crimes: “since 1991”

• Geographic scope of crimes: “in the territory of the former Yugoslavia”

• Crimes covered: Grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949, violations of the laws and customs of war, genocide, and crimes against humanity

Just cause threshold

• Large scale loss of life OR large scale ethnic cleansing

Memorial Museums

• Commemorate the past and educate the public, generally in an experimental way

Prosthetic memory

• A memory that a person did not experience but is created through an emotional journey to experientially re-create the past, and the person comes to feel as if that memory is their own

Reparations

• Symbolic/material, individual/collective way for governments to remedy harm experienced by survivors

Responsibility to Protect (ICISS)

Right to Identity

Right to Truth

Targeted sanctions

• Prohibitions on specific activities with particular people (usually those in power)

• Examples:

  • Limits on Russian banks after Crimea annexation

  • Travel restrictions on Putin and his inner circle

Transitional justice

• The full range of processes and mechanisms associated with a society’s attempts to come to terms with a legacy of large-scale past abuses

• (Think of it as how society moves on after past violence, encompassing the justice, reparations, truth, and institutional reform processes)

Truth commission

• Temporary investigate institutions that focus on understanding past violence and human rights abuse and its causes, including ongoing events

• Investigates patterns of violence that too place over a period of times, and reasons

• Issues a final report with recommendations

• Officially authorized, empowered, or sanctioned by the state

Carlos Menem

CONADEP

Ingando

Leopoldo Galtieri

Muammar Qaddafi

Rual Alfonsin

Describe three issues that arise in measuring the number of deaths recorded in a civil war.

• What level of violence qualifies as a civil war?

  • The 25/year, 100/year, or cumulative arguments

    • 25/year: You’ll definitely catch everything, but it is over-inclusive

    • 100/year: Fewer false positives that with 25, but if the durations is short total deaths might be too low to count as a war

    • 1000 cumulative: generally, everyone agrees there is a war, but poor data might lead to undercounting and might include more cases of civil wars in large countries because threshold is easier to reach if the population is large

• Do we measure violence on an absolute or relative level?

  • Absolute: An easy measure to create (only need to know how many deaths), but privileges civil wars in large countries

  • Relative (take population into account): helps normalize between populations of different sizes

• Should we count battle deaths only, or also count civilian deaths?

  • Battle Deaths only Criterion:

    • More comparable to what occurs in inter-state conflict if you care about both types, but leaves out civilians, who suffer from civil wars too and sometimes hard to distinguish between combatants and non-combatants

  • Battle Deaths and Civilian Deaths Criterion:

    • Civilians are targeted in civil war and disproportionately affected by humanitarian crises created by wars, but also determine them from pre- or post-war massacres and violence against civilians might also count as other types of violence

How can we distinguish genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and ethnic cleansing?

• Genocide and ethnic cleansing are both group-selective and require sustained violence, but genocide intends to destroy a group in whole or part, while ethnic cleansing focuses on forced removal and doesn’t have criminal prosecution. Crimes against humanity and war crimes are not group-selective, with the main difference being that war crimes only happen during war, while crimes against humanity can occur during peace

How does the Collier-Hoeffler model explain civil war onset?

• Motive + Opportunity = Conflict

  • Motive: Can be greed, grievance, or both

  • Opportunity: Absolutely necessary for conflict

Name and describe the four categories of risk factors for mass atrocities.

• Governance

  • Ways in which authority is exercised

• Conflict History and Impunity

  • (How) has the country dealt with atrocities in the past?

• Economic Conditions

  • Level of poverty, inequality, and instability can fuel grievances and increase the risk of violence

• Social Fragmentation

  • How close are different groups within society?

Identify and explain three risk factors for the Rwandan genocide.

• Macroeconomic Instability:

  • (Economic Conditions) Coffee market crashed in the 1980s, which was 90% of Rwanda’s export earning

• Identity-based political division:

  • (Governance) After Rwanda gained independence, Hutus came to power and implemented discriminatory policies against Tutsis

• Unequal access to goods and services:

  • (Social fragmentation) Ethnic groups are defined by access to resources (cows), environmental scarcity worsened by ethnic discrimination (both groups monopolized resources when they were in power), Payasannat: land resettlement program that redistributed land from the Tutsi to the Hutu farmers

Using the structural/proximate/mobilizing cause framework, explain the onset of war in Yugoslavia in 1991.

• Structural Cause:

  • Yugoslavia is made up of 6 republics, and some of these fall along ethnic lines, but others (like Bosnia and Herzegovina) are multi-ethnic

    • Since the country is divided into ethnic republics, it made it easy for political borders to become battlefronts

• Proximate Causes:

  • Tito’s death in 1980

  • Election of nationalists in 1990

    • His death and the elections removed what was holding the country together

• Mobilizing Cause:

  • Slovenia declares independence in 1991

    • This acted as the spark that forced the military to choose whether or not to get involved

According to Oberschall, how do cognitive frames explain Yugoslavia’s descent into ethnic conflict? Who or what facilitated the transition from one frame to the other?

• Normal Frame:

  • Through the 1980s, ethnic relations were cooperative and neighborly, intermarriage was acceptable, ethnicity is not a salient issue

• Crisis Frame:

  • WWI, WWII; resurrected in the 1980s for Kosovo Serbs, ethnic groups fear extinctions, assimilation, and domination, which eventually leads to hatred, Kosovo changed from 23% Serb to 10% Serb in 1989: heightening fears of domination

• Milosevic and other nationalist elites used state-controlled media to instill fear into the people, transitioning from the normal frame to the crisis frame

What two factors determine what kind of violence is produced in a civil conflict, according to Kalyvas? What kind of violence does each combination of these two factors produce?

• Two Factors:

  • What is the aim of violence/do they intend to govern the population (YES = coercive, NO = destructive)

  • What is the production of violence (Unilateral or Bilateral/Multilateral)

• Unilateral & Coercive:

  • State terror

• Unilateral & Destructive:

  • Genocide and mass deportation

• Bilateral/Mulitlateral & Coercive:

  • Civil War

• Bilateral/Multilateral & Destructive:

  • Reciprocal extermination

Describe the preventative measures that could be taken at the dehumanization, polarization, and extermination stages of genocide.

• Dehumanization:

  • Condemn the use of hate speech and make it culturally unacceptable

  • Punish leaders that incite genocide

  • Ban hate speech, punish hate crimes

• Polarization:

  • Security protection for moderate leaders

  • Targeted sanctions against extremists

• Extermination:

  • “Only rapid and overwhelming armed intervention can stop genocide”

  • Mitigate by establishing safe areas

  • Strong states should provide airlift, equipment, and financial means to regional states to intervene

Name and describe three factors that, according to Valentino et al., make governments more likely to resort to mass killing.

• Mass killings are more likely when the government faces guerrilla opposition

• Mass killing is more likely if regime survival is at stake

• When the government faces a higher level of civilian support, mass killing is more likely

Describe three factors from Humphreys and Weinstein that contributed to participation in both the RUF and the CDF.

• Economic deprivation:

  • RUF Logic: Those who are poorer will want to join to try to escape poverty and make situation better

  • CDF Logic: Those who are better off want to uphold the existing system that benefits them

  • Measurement: Mud walls and lack of education

• Alienated from mainstream political process:

  • RUF Logic: Frustration over inability to participate in political process leads you to join to improve situation

  • CDF Logic: Individuals who are active and engaged in mainstream process will mobilize to defend existing system

  • Measurement: Does not support any party

• Selective incentives from joining group:

  • RUF and CDF Logic: Fighting is costly, so need increases personal benefits to take on the risk of fighting

  • Measurement: Offered money to join (from survey)

Name and describe the three kinds of perpetrators of mass atrocities.

• High-level authorities:

  • Heads of states, military generals, and political leaders who authorize, legitimize, and condone ciolence (Ex. Hitler)

• Mid-level authorities:

  • Government, military, and civil society actors who mobilize and organize violence (Ex: Ferdinand Nahimana)

• Low-level actors:

  • Low-level officials, soldiers, and civilians who identify victims and carry out violence (Ex: 200,000 estimated to have carried out genocide in Rwanda)

Explain what social psychological experiments can teach us about why people commit mass atrocities.

• Milgram’s Experiment:

  • Participants were told to give electric shocks if they got a question wrong, and they were told by an authority figure to do so

  • When individuals believe legitimate authority instructs them to act, they will comply because they faith in authority

• Zimbardo’s Experiment:

  • College students were randomly assigned to be either prisoners or guards in a fake basement jail, resulting in the guards becoming abusive after a few days

  • This experiment shows that social roles and environments are important and that individuals will naturally adopt abusive behaviors if the situation expects it of them (faulty experiment)

Describe two reasons why radio is so important in Rwanda.

• History of oral communication and illiteracy:

  • People are used to getting information orally

  • Limited ability to access other media due to language limitations

  • People are dependent on the radio for information

• Strong traditions of hierarchy and authoritarianism:

  • Government able to “interpret the world” for the people because people believe what they hear on the radio

Describe three rhetorical techniques used by the RTLM to incite violence in the Rwandan Genocide.

• Biblical Appeals:

  • Imagines Habyarimana as Christ

  • Suggests Virgin Mary sanctioned retaliation

• Historical Appeals:

  • Meant to arouse emotion by invoking past revolution against the Tutsis (like 1959)

• Reversal Technique: Focusing on atrocities committed by Tutsis as justification for genocide

  • “I Hate the Hutu” poem/song imagines Tutsis saying bad things about the Hutus

Describe two kinds of violence perpetrated by the Argentinian proceso against civilians.

• The proceso orchestrated the forced disappearance of thousands of civilians who were abducted by security forces and taken to detention centers where they were severely tortured

• They also practiced “death flights,” where they killed people by throwing them off planes into the ocean

Describe three advantages of multilateralism in humanitarian intervention, according to Finnemore.

Name and describe the four general strategies for preventing mass atrocities.

• Dissuade those in power from committing atrocities

  • Make committing atrocities not worth it either by increasing costs to committing them or increasing benefits for not committing them

• Degrade capacity to commit atrocities

  • Take away as much as you can to physically prevent leaders from committing atrocities

• Protect civilian population

  • Increase ability of civilians to either defend themselves or remove themselves from the situation

• Facilitate political or leadership transition

  • Remove the people in power who are committing mass atrocities

Name and describe the six principles of military intervention.

• Just Cause Threshold:

  • Large scale loss of life OR large scale ethnic cleansing

• Right Intentions:

  • Must be done to halt or avert suffering

• Last Resort:

  • Must exhaust all non-military options

• Proportional Means:

  • Minimum necessary to protect life; international humanitarian law must apply

• Reasonable Prospects:

  • Must have reasonable chance of success

• Right Authority:

  • UNSC authorization must be sought in all cases

According to Paris, how do each of the five structural problems with the responsibility to protect doctrine create issues for humanitarian intervention?

Describe three specific ways in which the structural problems identified by Paris are present in the Libyan intervention.

• Inconsistency Problem:

  • Did not respond the same way in Syria

• End-State Problem:

  • Libya destablizes and falls back into civil war by 2014

  • No good exit options for NATO

• Mixed Motives Problem:

  • Arguments about whether the primary objective was regime change or to help Libyan civilians

  • US/UK/France are accused of wanting regime changed from the start

Why did the US avoid getting involved in the Rwandan genocide?

• Intervention in Rwanda was perceived as not in the US national interest

  • No strategic interests: seen as “humanitarian issue” only

  • No economic interests: Rwanda accounted for 0% of our imports and 0.01% of exports in 1994

  • No spillover effects: refugees likely to head to neighboring countries in Africa, not the US

How did the US intervene in the conflict in Yugoslavia in 1955 and under whose authority?

How did they intervene in Kosovo in 199 and under whose authority?

How did the failed invasion of the Malvinas/Falkland Islands lead to the fall of dictatorship in Argentina?

• After the failed invasion fo the islands, Galtieri was forced to resign as president and was replaced by Bignone

• Under Bignone’s rule, the junta passed the self-amnesty law in September 1983

• In October 1983, Raul Alfonsin defeated the Personist opposition in the election, which led to civilian rule being restored in December 1983

Name and describe the four processes associated with transitional justice.

Justice Process:

• Bring perpetrators of mass atrocities to justice and punish them for the crimes committed

Reparations Process:

• Redress victims of atrocities for harms suffered

Truth Process:

• Fully investigate atrocities so that society discovers what happened

Institutional Reform Process:

• Reform state institutions involved in mass atrocities

Describe two critiques of the ICTR and ICTY

• Very expensive — about $2 billion per tribunal

• Distance between courts and those whom they are meant to bring justice

Name and describe the three requirements that must be met for a case to be tried at the International Criminal Court.

• Must meet jurisdictional requirement

  • Either territorial or national jurisdiction as in Article 12 or UNSC creates jurisdiction

• Must relate to ICC’s subject-matter jurisdiction

  • Limited to the most serious crimes: Genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, or the crime of aggression

• Must meet the temporal requirement

  • Cannot try crimes that occurred prior to the ICC establishment or crimes committed before ratification of the Rome Statute

Name and describe the five objectives that truth commissions may put in their mandates.

• Support subsequent prosecution:

  • Want to learn what happened ot be able to prosecute those responsible

• Reconciliation:

  • Truth-telling has therapeutic effect allowing victims to heal and gain closure

• Reforms:

  • Identify institutional pathologies that precipitated conflict to eliminate possibility of it happening again

• Reparations:

  • Symbolic/material, individual/collective way for governments to remedy harm experienced by survivors

• Historical clarification:

  • Truth-telling process can reveal causes and consequences of conflict or abusive period

Name and describe the five capabilities that truth commissions may possess.

• Subpoena power:

  • Want to be able to hear from all relevant witnesses and compel testimony if necessary

• Search and seizure power:

  • Ability of truth commission to collect evidence

• Public hearings:

  • Want to know how public the findings will be

• Attribute individual responsibility:

  • Call out the individuals who committed crimes (“names names”)

• Recommend conditional amnesty:

  • Amnesty might make certain perpetrators more likely to testify

Describe four exhibitionary strategies of memorial museums, including one example for each.

• Controlled circulation path:

  • Visitor moves through the exhibition according to designer’s intent

    • Example: USHMM entrance hall

• Interactive elements:

  • Let visitor create own experience within the scripted narrative

  • Example: Touchscreens at 9/11 memorial

• Emphasis on individual victims:

  • Encourage identification and empathy, making individual victims real and present

  • Example: The Shoes athe USHMM

• Affect — light, architecture, sound:

  • Create spaces of claustrophobia and exposure; add ambiance

  • Example: Hall of Witness

Describe how the nature of atrocities, politics, security, and economy influence rebuilding and lasting peace after conflict.

• Nature of atrocities:

  • If scale/duration of atrocities is large, level of social distrust is likely higher, making restoring trust more challengins

  • Harder to reconcile if identity-based violence is cause of atrocities; harder to reconstruct society/rebuild trust

  • If you have more perpetrators, harder to hold perpetrators to account because there are so many of them