About the project
The project studied the connection between the state and genocide. Among other things, the project examined the role that the bureaucracy, armed forces, paramilitary units, dictators or one-party dominance played in paving the way for genocide. It concluded by criticising the traditional emphasis on the role played by military units and the dictator’s personality. Instead, the analysis of the interaction between central authority and periphery confirms the primacy of the state.
No form of mass violence, least of all genocide, happens spontaneously. It requires planning and forethought, usually by a government with a history that includes serious human rights violations. Genocide is inextricably linked to the idea of the modern state. Non-state players, such as radical political parties or armed militias, are normally incorporated into power structures and therefore rarely act on their own. Although governments do not always highlight the state’s interests in genocide, painstaking reconstruction of the chain of command leads inevitably to the pinnacle of power as the original source of mass violence.
Results
The project concluded as the chapter The State and Genocide in The Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies, edited by Donald Bloxham and Dirk Moses, Oxford University Press, 2010: 81–101.