Predicting violence within genocides: meso-level evidence from Rwanda

Can we predict when and where violence will break out within cases of genocide? Given often weak political will to respond, knowing where to strategically prioritize limited resources is valuable information for international decision makers contemplating intervention. I develop a theoretical model to help identify areas vulnerable to violence during genocide. I argue vulnerability is a function of the state’s coercive power and the ruling elite’s control of this power from above, mediated by the strength of society’s cohesion below. Violence will be delayed in areas where political and military resistance to the center is high as it takes time for extremists to exert control at the periphery. Violence will also be delayed in well-integrated communities as it takes time to break existing social bonds and destroy social capital. I draw on the case of Rwanda’s 1994 genocide and examine sub-national variation in the onset of violence across the country’s 145 administrative communes using survival analysis and within-case analyses comparing early and late onset in two communes. The findings have implications for international policy makers responding to ongoing genocides

Rwanda’s ordinary killers: interpreting popular participation in the Rwandan genocide

This paper examines the question of why so many ordinary Hutu participated in genocidal killing of Tutsi in Rwanda in 1994. I find that mass mobilisation was contingent on the fulfilment of two main conditions. Firstly it required a mindset – the internalisation of a set of historical and ideological beliefs – within the Hutu population. These were predominantly beliefs in a historical Hutu oppression at the hands of Tutsi and in an ideological definition of the ongoing civil war as an ethnic one, a Tutsi attempt to reinstate this historical order. Secondly, it required the commitment of State institutions to the genocidal project. This commitment provided the initial trigger, legitimacy and impunity for civilian participation in an anti-Tutsi programme. However, once triggered the degeneration into genocidal violence was the product of a complex interaction of other motives ranging from coercion, opportunism, habituation, conformity, racism, and ideological indoctrination

Horizontal inequality, status optimization, and interethnic marriage in a conflict-affected society

Although several theories of interethnic conflict emphasize ties across group boundaries as conducive to ethnic coexistence, little is known about how such ties are formed. Given their integrative potential, I examine the establishment of cross-ethnic marital ties in a deeply divided society and ask what drives individuals to defy powerful social norms and sanctions and to choose life-partners from across the divide. I theorize such choices as the outcome of a struggle between social forces and individual autonomy in society. I identify two channels through which social forces weaken and individual autonomy increases to allow ethnic group members to establish ties independently of group pressures: elite autonomy and status equalization. I find, first, that as an individual’s educational status increases, and second, as between-group inequality declines, individuals enjoy greater freedom in the choice of their social ties. However, I also find that in an ethnically ranked society this enhanced autonomy is exercised by members of high-ranked and low-ranked groups differently. Members from high-ranked groups become more likely to inmarry; low-ranked group members to outmarry. I suggest a status-optimization logic lies behind this divergent behaviour. Ethnic elites from high-ranked groups cannot improve their status through outmarriage and their coethnics, threatened by the rising status of the lower-ranked group, seek to maintain the distinctiveness of their status superiority through inmarriage. In contrast, as their own individual status or their group’s relative status improves, members of low-ranked groups take advantage of the opportunity to upmarry into the higher-ranked group. I establish these findings in the context of Mindanao, a conflict-affected society in the Philippines, using a combination of census micro-data on over two million marriages and in-depth interview data with inmarried and outmarried couples

Are the criticisms of the #Kony2012 campaign justified?

LSE’s Omar McDoom assesses the fairness of the criticisms of the Kony 2012 campaign

Inequality, ethnicity, and social cohesion

How do changes in socio-economic inequality between ethnic groups affect interethnic ties in a divided society? I analyse the evolution of cross-ethnic marriages in a society affected by violence along ethnic boundaries and make three principal findings. First, as inequality between ethnic groups increases, the prospects of interethnic marriages decline. Status equalization between ethnic groups promotes cross-ethnic ties. Insofar as intermarriage indicates social cohesion, reducing ethnic inequality in multiethnic societies may facilitate ethnic integration. Second, the effect of ethnic inequality is not uniform across ethnic groups. Endogamy remains high among certain groups even when socio-economic disparities diminish. I suggest this is because the ethnic norms and sanctions proscribing outmarriage are particularly powerful within these groups. Third, the social and political salience of ethnic boundaries may be distinct. Intermarriages can increase even as civil war violence intensifies. Ethnic divisions risk being overstated by assuming political attitudes also drive choices in the social sphere. I establish these findings in the deeply-divided society of Mindanao in the southern Philippines by analysing over 6.2 million marriages and comparing individual-level census data for the years 2000 and 2010. Mindanao is home to a longstanding insurgency, waged by rebels drawn from the native Muslim Moro population resentful of their minoritization and dispossession by Christian settler

The kleptocrat's accomplice? Incentives, values, and networks in the professional enabling of corrupt capital

The movement of monies out of mainland China and into jurisdictions such as Hong Kong and increasingly Singapore – especially since the enactment of the National Security law in Hong Kong – is significant. As an increasingly assertive China has seen an increase in the level of geopolitical tension between itself and Western nations, regulators in two of Asia’s most prominent financial hubs will find themselves increasingly in the difficult position of having to decide how to respond to pressures from these competing actors on the international stage, writes Omar Shahabudin McDoo

What political science can tell us about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

More than two weeks ago, Russia invaded Ukraine prompting international consternation at this violation of the liberal international order. Omar Shahabudin McDoom looks at how we can use political science to better understand the conflict. He writes on what it may mean for the liberal international order, the responsibility of the international community to intervene in such conflicts to stop civilian atrocities, how Russia may define ‘victory’ in Ukraine and what this may mean for Vladimir Putin, and the treatment of Ukrainian refugees compared to victims of other conflicts

Antisocial capital: a profile of Rwandan genocide perpetrators’ social networks

Although popularly perceived as a positive force, social capital may also produce socially undesirable outcomes. Drawing on Rwanda’s 1994 genocide, this article shows that participation in its violence was partly determined by the features of individuals’ social networks. Perpetrators possessed larger networks in general and more connections to other perpetrators in particular. The quality as well as quantity of connections also mattered. Strong ties generally, and kinship and neighborly ties specifically, were strong predictors of participation. In contrast, possession of countervailing ties to nonparticipants was not significant. In explaining these findings, I suggest participants’ networks fulfilled functions of information diffusion, social influence, and behavioral regulation. The findings point to the importance of social structure and suggest that relational data should complement individual attribute data in predicting participation in collective violence

LSE Research: the psychology of security threats: evidence from Rwanda

Dr Omar McDoom belongs to LSE’s Department of Government. In his latest research, Dr McDoom examines the psychological mechanisms that can trigger security threats using Rwanda as a case study

Securocratic state-building: the rationales, rebuttals, and risks behind the extraordinary rise of Rwanda after the genocide

Both popular perspectives and theoretical characterizations of Rwanda’s remarkable trajectory following the genocide remain polarized more than a generation after the violence. The country has been hailed as a developmental state and denounced as an authoritarian ‘ethnocracy’. I introduce the concept of securocratic state-building in response to this polarization. The construct is intended to capture, first, the regime’s developmental but non-doctrinaire ambitions, synthesizing liberal and illiberal precepts; and second its prioritization of security over liberty, favouring stability over peace. I then draw on a set of interviews with key Rwandan opinion-makers drawn from across the country’s principal political and social divides to elicit the competing rationales given for each of three grand strategic choices made by the regime: why it eschewed competitive politics; why it sought to re-engineer society and efface ethnicity; and why it moved to modernize the state and the economy. The juxtaposition of these opposing opinions exposes a fundamental tension at the heart of the securocratic state-building model: the regime’s aspiration for unity is at odds with its preoccupation with security. This strategic contradiction, I argue, places a question mark over the long-term sustainability of the Rwanda model