Interstate rivalry, genocide, and politicide

Abstract

Interstate rivalry not only influences a country’s international behavior, but also its domestic conduct. Here, I focus on the connection between interstate rivalry and domestic government mass killing, specifically genocide and politicide. I argue that interstate rivalry has both direct and indirect influences on a government’s decision to use mass violence against its civilian population. Directly, countries engaged in rivalry experience a heightened state of military tension, which increases the likelihood that the country will resort to political mass killing when handling domestic dissent. Indirectly, rivalry increases the likelihood of both inter- and intrastate conflict, which also increases the likelihood of genocide and politicide. Statistical analysis of all country-years from 1955 to 2011 reveals that interstate rivals are more likely to engage in genocide and politicide than are other states. This research illustrates the way in which interstate rivalry influences a state’s domestic politics and shapes the interactions between government and population. It also highlights the importance of how the international threat environment affects a state’s willingness to engage in domestic political mass murder. These findings indicate that rivals do not only engage in the most violent interstate behavior, but also some of the deadliest domestic politics, as well.

Violence Against Civilians During Armed Conflict: Moving Beyond the Macro- and Micro-Level Divide

“…External military intervention may also impact government violence against civilians-for example, by exacerbating government perceptions of threat and therefore increasing government incentives to engage in mass killing (Wood & Kathman 2011). This aligns with research showing that the broader international strategic environment shapes government threat perceptions; research indicates that external threats and rivalry create incentives for governments to engage in violence against out-groups within domestic society-for example, to prevent out-groups from becoming a fifth column for external enemies (e.g., Mylonas 2012, Uzonyi 2018.…”

How do external territorial threats affect mass killing?

“…However, previous studies fail to find a significant relationship between interstate wars and mass killing onset (e.g. Uzonyi, 2018;Wayman & Tago, 2010). Furthermore, ongoing international conflict or war will not make leaders more likely to commit mass killing since perpetrating mass killing interferes with effectively fighting the enemy state by diverting scarce manpower and resources away from military campaigns against it.…”

“…While a recently published paper by Uzonyi (2018) similarly argues that interstate rivalry increases the likelihood of mass killing, our argument is distinct from his argument; we emphasize that not all external threats are equally salient and that external threats do not by themselves lead to the onset of mass killing, requiring ideological frameworks as we have discussed above. Empirically, like other existing studies, Uzonyi (2018) fails to model dynamics in mass killing and examine mass killing incidence, which tends to produce substantial bias (Esteban, Morelli & Rohner, 2015;McGrath, 2015). This article explicitly accounts for the dynamics by focusing on a mass killing onset and coding ongoing mass killings as missing.…”

“…Consistent with the studies on war and mass killing, we argue that territorial disputes, serious and salient to the public, can engender in-group/out-group dynamics at home in which ruling elites cast certain domestic groups as threatening enemies who may support or collude with the enemy (Midlarsky, 2005; Tir & Jasinski, 2008; Wright, 2014). Elites seek to impose internal unity, silence oppositional groups, and extract resources from domestic audiences, all of which may increase the likelihood of mass killing (Bak, Rider & Chavez, 2017; Uzonyi, 2018). Yet territorial threats alone cannot sufficiently explain why a state chooses mass killing over other alternative strategies, given the extremely high cost of mass killing.…”

Interstate rivals’ intervention in third-party civil wars: The comparative case of Saudi Arabia and Iran in Yemen (2004-2018)

“…How interstate rivalry impacts domestic affairs has a relatively small and fragmented literature. Uzonyi (2018) examines the impact of rivalries on genocide and politicide; Salehyan, Gleditsch & Cunningham (2011) find that rivals are more likely to support insurgents; or terrorists that are fighting against their rivals (Findley, Piazza & Young, 2012). Maoz and San-Akca (2012) examine the conditions under which strategic rivals choose to support non-state armed groups that target their rivals and find that rivalry makes cooperation between the state and non-state actors more likely and this cooperation in turn increases the likelihood of rivalry escalation.…”