When do Civil Wars Breed Ethnic Cleansing? The Cases of Lebanon and Yugoslavia

Abstract

Civil wars are episodes when ethnic violence is likely to be observed. However, while some civil wars lead to extreme forms of violence such as ethnic cleansing, this is not always the case for every civil war. Then why do some civil wars breed ethnic cleansing and not others? What sort of factors that are related to the context of the civil war and the involved actors shape the likelihood of an ethnic cleansing? Which theories of political conflict explain these diverging outcomes better? Based on two prominent civil wars of the last century, the Lebanese Civil War and the Yugoslav Wars, this article tests the hypotheses on political opportunities and grievances in order to explain why the latter led to an ethnic cleansing while the former did not. Based on the systematic tests of these theories in comparative case studies, the study finds that factors related to political opportunities such as regime change and political and military dominance are more useful in explaining the variation between the two cases whereas the factors that correspond with grievances such as economic dominance and hatred do not explain the outcomes.