| Abstract: | Genocide was the scourge of the twentieth century, a modern-day plague of human agents causing death and suffering in the name of a higher,utopic ideology. This article proposes a theoretical account of genocide which identifies five causal factors: a profoundly segmented society with distinct political cleavages; rapid and profound social change; an exclusivist political ideology that gives prominence to these political cleavages; state capacity to organize and carry out, or at the very least emphatically encourage, mass murder; and an international component which affects the scope and length of the genocidal process. The article shows the importance of these factors through a discussion of three case studies: Armenia (1915), Cambodia (1975-79) and Rwanda (1994). |
