• Expulsions,  POLS 844: Governing Difference

    McGarry, J. (1998) ‘‘Demographic engineering’: the state-directed movement of ethnic groups as a technique of conflict regulation’

    McGarry, J. (1998) ‘‘Demographic engineering’: the state-directed movement of ethnic groups as a technique of conflict regulation’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 21 (4), 613-38.

    Introduction

    1. Focus: state-directed movement of Ethnic groups as a technique to manage ethnic diversity: states move agents on behalf of the state and enemies perceived as threats to that state.
    2. Shaped by nationalism – ‘ethnicized’ states and minority-based nationalist movements.
    3. Securitization of minorities.

    Why does the state move ethnic groups?

    1. State agents moved in:
      1. To promote security.
      2. Consolidate state control over a territory
      3. Strategies:
        • Garrison-peoples;
        • Assimilationist strategies (ethnic intermixing);
    2. States ‘enemies’ moved out:
      1. To consolidate control (reducing risk);
      2. To deter others from challenging the state;
      3. To assist in their assimilation;
      4. To break link between ‘enemy group’ and its ‘homeland’.

    How are ethnic groups moved?

    1. States ‘pull’ agents to desired locations
      1. Free or subsidized land, jobs, salaries
      2. New communications infrastructures;
      3. Favorable linguistic environment
      4. Military installations
    2. States ‘push’ agents to move
      1. Soldiers who garrison outposts
      2. Compulsory jobs for graduating students
    3. States often actively move enemy groups
      1. Exchange of minority populations;
      2. Initiating refugee flows;
      3. Direct force;
      4. Indirect coercion;
      5. Use of surrogates to inflict violence on minorities;
      6. Discriminatory measures;
      7. Stripping citizenship.

    When do states move ethnic groups?

    1. Imperial control strategies gave way to ethnically-based nationalisms: key role of nationalist ideologies in determining state agents and state ‘enemy’ groups.
    2. Temporal factors:
      1. State captured by radical elites: importance of political leadership;
      2. State security perceived as threatened by minority groups:
        • Minority leaders reject state authority: The Rebel Threat;
        • Inter-state conflict when minority group is perceived as security risk: The Fifth Column. – movements are both punitive and preventive, based on revenge, radicalization, and instrumental reasons; facilitated and covered up by wars.
        • Neighbouring states dispute a region inhabited by minority group: The Irredentist Threat.
        • State acquires new territory inhabited by minority groups or Ethnonational group acquires statehood (with outside help) in a heterogenous territory: ‘Nationalizing state’: particularly when state is captured by radical nationalist elites who use conflict as opportunity to forcibly expel a minority and replace it with members of dominant group.

    Conclusion

    1. State-directed movement of ethnic groups is a technique of ethnic conflict management.
    2. Main goal: consolidation of control over territory by facilitating control / assimilation of a minority group, or by its removal from a specific territory.
    3. Continuum of tools deployed in particular when state captured by radical nationalist elites.

    By 10 October 2020
  • Expulsions,  POLS 844: Governing Difference

    Jenne, E. (2016) ‘The Causes and Consequences of Ethnic Cleansing’

    Jenne, E. (2016) ‘The Causes and Consequences of Ethnic Cleansing’, in K. Cordell and S. Wolff, eds., The Routledge Handbook of Ethnic Conflict, 2. ed, London, Routledge, 110-18.

    1. Ethnic cleansing (‘EC’): “expulsion of an ‘undesirable’ population from a given territory”: “deliberate policy of homogenizing the ethnic make-up of a territory” both during war and peace; removal of targeted minorities from a territory and replacement with members of a dominant group: both ethnic expulsion and resettlement, violently or non-violently (110-111).
    2.  EC accompanies almost every deadly conflict.
    3. Some view genocide (extreme) and population transfers (moderate) as subsets of ethnic cleansing (111).
    4. They differ in ethical and legal standing: Genocide is a crime under international law – implies responsibility by international community to halt violence; ethnic cleansing is a war crime / crime against humanity perpetrated by ‘our’ enemies; population transfers are neither – we undertake them to ‘save lives and rebuild peace’ (112).
    5. Ethnic populations mix in Europe became a problem when national self-determination entitled territorialized national minorities to assert self-government rights.
    6. Art 7, Rome Statute of International Criminal Court: population transfers are a crime against humanity. But realists still assert it is in some cases the least violent outcome (Mearsheimer, Kaufmann – 112).
    7. EC use force to force / other intimidation methods to force targeted members of the group to flee; then they resettle abandoned homes with displaced members of dominant group (facts on the ground); then they destroy targeted group’s sites of national significance to “severe both the corporal and symbolic links between the targeted group and the desired territory”. Mass rape and impregnation are also methods of ethno-territorial conquest: “rape as genocide” (113).
    8. Displaced minorities tend not to return, but to resettle where they are in a majority. Old territory becomes effectively ‘rebranded’ for the dominant group.
    9. “As a general rule, ethnic war nearly always involves ethnic cleansing, but ethnic cleansing need not involve ethnic war” (114).
    10. Argument that EC is product of ‘system-level variables’: modernity, state formation, national self-determination (114).
    11. M. Mann: EC is outgrowth of democracy conflating ethnos and demos.
    12. Others argue that nationalism and national self-determination are key drivers.
    13. Essentialist perspective: EC results from past grievances and desires for revenge of ethnic communities.
    14. Grass roots explanations focus on ecological drivers for conflict: deeply divided societies, redistribution of wealth, fear of losing status, mobilization of state institutions to mobilize people to engage in violence. Here, ethnicity is not original motivating force, but an ‘ordering device’ allowing politicians to organise their campaigns (115).
    15. EC as Elite-driven project rooted in leaders’ special interests or ideologies – not product of inter-group dynamics, where monolithic collective actors inform elite preferences (both personal and geo-political): clear difference between responsibility of ‘ordinary people’ and of their ‘elites’ who are the architects of such EC campaigns.
    16. ‘As a rule, programs of ethnic cleansing are designed and executed by aa handful of elites based on perceived strategic or economic imperatives, ideological convictions or personal self-interest” (116).
    17. Negative popular support / compliance is more critical to success of EC campaigns than active support.
    18. Elite and mass-level theories of EC are not incompatible.
    19. EC should encompass both violent expulsions and quiet EC during peace time: implies need for interventions with broader mandate than just ending violence and keeping peace.
    20. International community should “identify and target the architects of ethnic cleansing using a mix of legal and economic (and possibly even military) sanctions” (117).
    21. Changing elite behavior can be more effective in preventing EC than large-scale social engineering: need for an effective early warning system monitoring elite behaviour.
    By 10 October 2020
  • Genocides,  POLS 844: Governing Difference

    Thornberry, P. (1991) ‘The Convention on Genocide and the Protection of Minorities’

    Thornberry, P. (1991) ‘The Convention on Genocide and the Protection of Minorities’, in P. Thornberry, International Law and the Rights of Minorities, Oxford, OUP, 59-85.

    1. CG is first post WWII international document concerned with minorities’ protection.
    2. CG remains a product of its time: concern more for individual than collective rights.
    3. G is a historical phenomenon going back to earliest times, but the term is modern: Lemkin 1933.
    4. G had 2 phases: destruction of national pattern of oppressed group and replacement with that of oppressor.
    5. Criminality of G; Established in 1945 by Nuremberg Trials.
    6. UNGC: 1948 – in effect in 1951.
    7. Establishes G as a crime under international law and ‘a matter of international concern’ whose perpetrators are punishable.
    8. GC Art. II protects national, ethnical, racial or religious groups: ‘stable’ characteristics beyond control of its members.
    9. Political and economic groups not included.
    10. Art. II categories are exhaustive, not illustrative: both physical and biological genocide elements, as well as cultural genocide (II.(e): children).
    11. Is Cultural G minority rights protection under a different guise?
    12. CG does not cover Cultural G except in II(e): G is sui generis & must be differentiated from human & minority rights.
    13. G only applies if dolus specialis – intent to destroy a group in whole or in part – is present.
    14. Art. IV: Responsibility: individual responsibility, but no state responsibility.
    15. Implementation has both national and international aspects: states must implement CG nationally.
    16. Territorial jurisdiction: competent courts those of states where crime took place; universal jurisdiction was retained in theory, but not implemented in practice.
    By 5 October 2020
  • Genocides,  POLS 844: Governing Difference

    Hughes, J. (2016) ‘Genocide’

    Hughes, J. (2016) ‘Genocide’, in K. Cordell and S. Wolff, eds., The Routledge Handbook of Ethnic Conflict, 2. ed, London, Routledge, 122-139.

    1. Still no consensual definition of Genocide (‘G’), nor a reason able possibility of plausible prediction.
    2. Controversy as to whether G is a modern phenomenon or recurrent throughout history.

    Definition

    • R. Lemkin: formulated the concept of G in 1933, but coined it in 1944.
    • GC was passed by the UNGA in Dec. 1948 and became international law in 1951.
    • Employed in 1945 Nurnberg Trials.
    • Humanitarian intervention emerged in the 1990s to constrain G (Blair, UK).
    • Ethnic cleaning as a precursor or precipitant of genocide.
    • Rome Statute establishing the International Criminal Court in 1998 incorporated the GC definition and established G as the most serious crime under its jurisdiction.
    • 2004: UN Special Adviser on Prevention of Genocide: Juan E. Mendez (2004-7): Darfur is ‘genocide by attrition’ (127).

    Causes

    1. Charismatic leaders and racist ideologies in a climate of violence.
    2. Structural (functional) approach vs. internationalist approach.
    3. Neumann and Arendt: totalitarian state connected with G – a crime of state (128).
    4. Relationship between G and modern state formation goes back historically to sixteenth century.
    5. Levine: systemic genocide occurs in societies undergoing systemic crisis and with an ideology of radical social transformation (129).
    6. Kuper: G is an ancient crime based on pervasive social cleavages in plural societies that become polarised into dominant and subordinate groups. Mass violence against whole communities can ensue.
    7. Intent must be organised and systematic, around an ideology of racial superiority concerned with ‘identity, purity sand security’ (Semelin 2007) (130): ‘Enemy within’.
    8. Nationalist ideologies stressing organic concept of state, people, culture, territory.
    9. Both structure and agency are important historically.
    10. Different stages: pre-genocide, genocide, post-genocide. When are individuals by-standers or perpetrators?
    11. G has been a recurrent feature of war since Antiquity (Thucydides, Melian Dialogue).
    12. G characterises ‘wars where ‘laws and norms’ of war have been refuted by one or the other party’ (131): relationship between military culture and G.
    13. ‘Threat perception’ by dominant group: ‘security dilemma’ focusing on other groups both within and across countries.
    14. Materialist rationales: land greed, conquest, forced seizure, settler colonialism.
    15. ‘…genocide is not a product of banality, but of extraordinary political, economic and social conditions” (135).
    By 5 October 2020
  • Genocides,  POLS 844: Governing Difference

    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.
    By 5 October 2020
  • Genocides,  POLS 844: Governing Difference

    Chalk, F. (1989) ‘‘Genocide in the Twentieth Century’: Definitions of Genocide and their Implications for Prediction and Prevention’

    Chalk, F. (1989) ‘‘Genocide in the Twentieth Century’: Definitions of Genocide and their Implications for Prediction and Prevention’, Holocaust and Genocide Studies 4 (2), 149-160

    1. Key issues: State as pepetrator – distinctiveness – intentionality – ideological motivation – NOT a continuous variable (Abstract)
    2. Raphael Lemkin, Polish Jewish émigré, first came up with the term ‘genocide’ nad defined it as ‘the coordinated and planned annihilation of a national, religious or racial group by a variety of actions aimed at undermining the foundations essential to the survival of the group as a group’ (150).
    3. RL was key driver behind UN’s Convention on Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. (‘GC’)
    4. Aim of social scientists: protecting political and social groups not covered by the GC.
    5. Research definition: “Genocide is a form of one-sided mass killing in which a state or other authority intends to destroy a group, as that group and membership in it are defined by the perpetrator” (151).
    6. State as perpetrator: acts of omission are not covered by the GC, but should be.
    7. Distinctiveness and intentionality: intentionality is persistence of policies known to lead to annihilation of a group by government and its citizens (154).
    8. For some, intentionality is problematic because of modern structural forces that shape the character of the world (154); ‘relations of destruction’ instead (Tony Barta).
    9. Can forms of social organisation be responsible for genocide?
    10. Seamus Thompson: genocide as a’continuous variable’. No evidence for this. (155)
    11. Structural issues lead to a ‘genocidal society’ argument.
    12. “Systemic variables facilitate genocide, but it is people who kill” (156).
    13. Role of ideology: “urge to purify the world through the annihilation of some category of human beings imagined as agents of corruption and incarnations of evil”. (157)
    14. Key factors: role of state, intentionality, ideology; need to include social and political groups in definition.
    By 5 October 2020
  • Key Concepts,  POLS 844: Governing Difference

    McGarry, J. and O’Leary, B. (1993) ‘Introduction: the macro-political regulation of ethnic conflict’

    McGarry, J. and O’Leary, B. (1993) ‘Introduction: the macro-political regulation of ethnic conflict’, in J. McGarry and B. O’Leary, The Politics of Ethnic Conflict Regulation, London, Routledge, 1-40.

    1. Ethnic consciousness and conflict resurgent after the end of the Cold War.
    2. Focus on causes of ethnic conflict, but above all on “methods used to manage, control or terminate ethnic conflict” (2): work of classification.
    3. Taxonomy of eight modes of ethnic conflict resolution mapping out empirical forms of  macro-political ethnic conflict regulation (ie both termination and management): aim to examine effectiveness and merits of these methods.
      1. Eliminating differences:
        • Genocide;
        • Forced mass population transfers;
        • Partition / secession (self-determination);
        • Integration / assimilation.
      2. Managing differences:
        • Hegemonic control;
        • Arbitration;
        • Cantonisation / federation;
        • Consociationalism / power-sharing.
    4. Genocide
      1. Victims share ascriptive traits (#politicide)
      2. “Systematic mass-killing of an ethnic collectivity” (6)
      3. Still practiced today
      4. One-sided – intended to terminate ethnic conflict.
      5. Conducive factors:
        • Empire-building
        • Lack of geopolitical resources
        • Vulnerable ethnic group in disintegrating polities
        • Economic superiority & cultural identifiability, but no military & political power.
        • Frontier genocide: settlers, not directly state.
        • Presence of racial ideology
    5. Forced mass-population transfers
      1. One ethnic community forcefully removed & compelled to live elsewhere.
      2. Imperial consolidation tragedy.
    6. Partition/secession (self-determination)
      1. Compatible with liberal democratic institutions and values;
      2. Rare between 1948 and 1991; ubiquitous since.
      3. Driven by the principle of self-determination; but key questions remain:
        • Who are the people?
        • What is the territory?
        • Which majority is relevant?
        • Where do we stop with fragmentation?
      4. Population movements, violence and civil wars are often the consequence.
      5. Ivor Jennings: “Let the people decide… [But] the people cannot decide until somebody decides who are the people”.
      6. There is no accepted ‘right of secession’, but globalization has destabilized borders.
      7. Three factors affect secession:
        • Nature of inter-state system (permissive / restrictive);
        • Aftermath of wars;
        • Disintegration of empires.
      8. Sovereignty also results from desire for power, prestige and perks among nationalist elites.
      9. Global democratization favors secession movements. It pits civic nationalists (statists) vs. ethnic nationalists (communitarianists). Most often these two don’t coincide in practice.
      10. Democratisation demands defining the ‘people’:
        • Citizenship
        • Franchise
        • Boundaries
        • Institutions
      11. Political entrepreneurs use these issues to create political parties based on ethnic cleavages and redefine rules of the game of existing states based on zero-sum conflicts of identity, nationality, language, territory (TIRN).
      12. Destabilization can be contained if state affected in part of a liberal democratic community of states and if internal factors are favorable).
    7. Integration / assimilation
      1. Objective: creating a civic nation – patriotism, but ultimately ‘to create a common ethnic identity through the merging of differences’ (17)
      2. Liberal integrationism and ‘big-tent’ political parties.
      3. Policies usually targeted at migrants and assume they are willing to adapt to their new country’s culture and accept a new civic identity.
      4. Also used to unite different communities against a common foe,
      5. Ethnic communities living in their homelands are much less responsive.
      6. Can result in ethnocide: ‘the destruction of a people’s culture as opposed to physical liquidation of its members’ (19).
      7. Often, multicultural policies make more sense than integration / assimilation.
      8. Division between liberal integrationists and liberal multi-culturalists.
      9. Political engineers advocate ‘electoral integration’ (21): “…the belief that one can generate parties with such effects through heroic acts of will is fundamentally utopian, especially if the relevant ethnic communities have already been mobilized behind different conceptions of nationalism”.
      10. Backlash against integration / assimilation from less advantaged majority members also possible.
    8. Hegemonic control:
      1. First developed by Lustick (1979).
      2. Coercive domination and elite co-option through control of relevant coercive apparatuses (23): “authoritarian containment” (Lemarchand) makes “unworkable an ethnic challenge to the state order”.
      3. Aim is either to eradicate ethnic differences or, more likely, their politicization.
      4. Less feasible in liberal democracies, unless a minority controls the state.
      5. However, “‘majority rule’ can become an instrument of hegemonic control” (25) (ex: N. Ireland, US ‘Deep South c. 1870-1964).
      6. Majoritarian system of government in liberal democracies is no guarantee of liberty for ethnic minorities.
      7. Lustick: hegemonic control is normatively defensible if it’s the only alterenative to continuous civil war. Very controversial argument.
    9. Arbitration (third-party intervention)
      1. Three methods:
        • Internal and external aarbitration;
        • O’Leary (1989) ‘cooperative internationalisation’;
        • Forceful intervention by self-appointed umpire to bring stability to a region.
      2. Usually means ‘intervention of a disinterested ‘neutral’, bi-partisan or multi-partisan authority’, capable of gaining trust and support of parties involved (27) and making relevant decisions.
      3. Can establish conditions for long-term conflict-resolution.
    10.  Cantonisation / federalization
      1. Fully compatible with liberal democratic norms.
      2. Cantonisation: “devolution organized on an ethno-territorial basis” (31): recognition of ethnic differences and asymmetric relations: subsidiarity.
      3. Federalism: central and provincial governments enjoy separate domains of power. Requires geographic clustering of ethnic communities to be successful.
      4. No example of successful dyadic federations except Belgium.
    11. Consociation (power-sharing)
      1. State-wide or regional (Holland and Lebanon); theorized by Lijphart (1977).
        • Grand coalition government;
        • Proportional representation, employment, expenditure rules;
        • Community autonomy;
        • Constitutional vetoes.
      2. Acceptance of ethnic pluralism: aims to secure rights, identities, freedoms and opportunities of all ethnic communities and create corresponding political institutions: equality without assimilation (36).
      3. Easily destabilized unless three conditions present:
        • No commitment to internal assimilation or secession by ethnic segments;
        • Successive generations of politicians must remain committed to this model;
        • Leaders of ethnic communities must enjoy political autonomy to make appropriate decisions and compromises without being accused of treachery – danger of ‘outflanking’ (37)
      4. Only practicable in moderately divided societies where separate national identities do not dominate political discourse.
    12. Task: classification and comparative evaluation of morality, feasibility, consequences: “hard-headed but ethnical analyses of ways of resolving ethnic conflict” (38).
    By 5 October 2020
  • Key Concepts,  POLS 844: Governing Difference

    W. Kymlicka (1995), ‘The politics of Multiculturalism’

    Kymlicka, W. (1995) ‘The Politics of Multiculturalism’, in W. Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship, Oxford, OUP, 10-33.

    1. Two broad patterns of diversity: national minorities: aim for autonomy, ie. survival as distinct societies and (immigrant) ethnic groups: aim for accommodation, ie wish to integrate into the larger society.
    2. Patriotism: sense of allegiance to a state, # from nationalism: sense of belonging to a national group.
    3. Immigrants have no ‘specific homelands’ in host state: they reject assimilation but do not want to build a parallel society, as many national minorities do.
    4. Colonization is different from immigration: goal is to create ‘an institutionally complete society’ (15).
    5. Cultural pluralism: multinational and polyethnic. Canada recognizes it is both.
    6. National membership is not racial, but cultural – should be open in theory to anyone wishing to integrate and participate in it.
    7. Universal protection of individual civil and political rights (liberal) vs. group-specific rights: ‘differentiated citizenship’ (I. Young, 1989)
    8. Three forms of group-differentiated rights:
      1. Self-government rights: limited recognition in international law; federalism is an accommodation option: challenge of asymmetrical federalism’ (Canada/Quebec); non-territorial autonomy (NTA) is more complex.
      2. Polyethnic rights: aim to toot out discrimination and prejudice – public funding for cultural activities, exemption from some laws on religious grounds, as well as promote integration into larger society.
      3. Special representation rights: democratic representative institutions are unrepresentative: fail to reflect diversity of population: reserved seats, quotas.
    9. These are ideal types: in reality, they often overlap.

    By 4 October 2020