Harff, B. (2003) ‘No Lessons Learned from the Holocaust?’ Assessing Risks of Genocide and Political Mass Murder since 1955’

Harff, B. (2003) ‘No Lessons Learned from the Holocaust?’ Assessing Risks of Genocide and Political Mass Murder since 1955’, The American Political Science Review 97 (1), 57-73.

1. Empirical definition: ‘genocides and politicides are the promotion, execution, and / or implied consent of sustained policies by governing elites or their agents – or, in the case of civil war, either of the contending authorities – that are intend ed to destroy, in whole or in part, a communal, political, or politicizied ethnic group.” (58)
2. Genocides: groups defined by perpetrator; politicides: groups defined in terms of political opposition to the regime; carried out “at the explicit or tacit direction of state authorities” (59).
3.  37 cases examined between 1995 and 1998: “deliberate and sustained efforts by authorities aimed at destroying a collectivity in whole or in part” (61).
4. Six Key Preconditions.
   1. Political Upheaval: structural social crisis. All but 1 of the 37 exhibited it. Magnitude of upheaval is critical.
   2. Prior Genocides: more than four years prior considered a different episode.
   3. Political systems exhibiting exclusionary ideologies and autocratic rule. Democratic systems have checks and balances constraining elites from engaging in such acts.
   4. Ethnic and religious cleavages: differential treatment of ethnic groups, dominant elite ethnicity.
   5. Low Economic Development.
   6. International Context of economic and political interdependence does not favor occurrence of genocides.
5. Structural Model developed: best-fit 6-variable model: correctly classifies 74% of all cases as genocides or non-genocides.
6. Model can generate a global ‘Watch List’ with countries susceptible of genocide in the future. 25 are listed. Risk assessments also highlight violations of human rights and need for policy-makers to engage proactively in prevention in such high-risk situations before killings have actually begun.