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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Genocide In The Modern Age: State-Society Relations In The Making Of Mass Political Violence, 1900-2015, Zachary Karazsia
Genocide In The Modern Age: State-Society Relations In The Making Of Mass Political Violence, 1900-2015, Zachary Karazsia
FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This dissertation presents a new conceptual framework for understanding genocide and mass political violence. I build upon existing theories of mass violence that take into account motivations for committing mass atrocities, combine these with the task of counting civilian casualties, and propose a new framework based on the perpetrators’ socio-political standing in society. This model develops a four-part typology of perpetrators by examining the level of government participation and societal participation in the process of violence. Four patterns of perpetrators emerge from this deductive assessment of large-scale violence. These mass political violence perpetrator categories are: a) state perpetrators; b) state-society …
Making African Civil Society Work: Assessing Conditions For Democratic State-Society Relations In Rwanda, Fiacre Bienvenu
Making African Civil Society Work: Assessing Conditions For Democratic State-Society Relations In Rwanda, Fiacre Bienvenu
FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This dissertation offers a single case in-depth analysis of factors precluding civil society from democratizing African polities. Synthesizing existing literature on Rwanda, I first undertake an historical search to trace the origins and qualities of civil society in the colonial era. This effort shows, however, that the central authority—commencing before the inception of the Republic in 1962—consistently organized civil society to buttress its activities, not to challenge them. Next, using ethnographic research, I challenge conventional economic and institutional accounts of civil society’s role in democratization. I show that institutional change and the economic clout of organized groups are marginal and …