Toward Empirical Theory of Genocides and Politicides: Identification and Measurement of Cases Since 1945

Abstract

This paper reports on a global survey of cases of massive state repression since World War II. The universe of analysis includes sustained episodes in which the state or its agents impose on a communal or political group “conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or part.” We develop and use a typology which distinguishes between two categories of genocide (in which the victim groups are defined primarily in terms of communal characteristics) and four types of politicide (in which victim groups are defined in terms of their political status or opposition to the state). Forty-four episodes meet the operational guidelines developed here. Analysis of their properties and distribution shows that they occurred in all world regions, but with relatively few European and Latin American cases. Two or more began in each five-year period after 1945, with some clustering in the period of African decolonization; their median duration was five years. Aggregate fatalities were between seven and sixteen million people, at least as many who died in all international and civil wars in the period.