Charles H. Anderton and Jurgen Brauer (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780199378296
- eISBN:
- 9780199378319
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199378296.001.0001
- Subject:
- Economics and Finance, International
Genocide has received extensive scholarly, policy, and practitioner attention. Missing is the contribution of economists to understand and prevent such atrocities. This book—the first of its ...
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Genocide has received extensive scholarly, policy, and practitioner attention. Missing is the contribution of economists to understand and prevent such atrocities. This book—the first of its kind—assembles contributions by forty-one accomplished scholars to examine economic aspects of genocides, other mass atrocities, and their prevention. The book’s twenty-eight chapters include numerous case studies (e.g., California’s Yana people, Australia’s Aborigines peoples, Stalin’s killing of Ukrainians, Belarus, the Holocaust, Rwanda, DR Congo, Indonesia, Pakistan, Colombia, Mexico’s drug wars, and the targeting of suspects during the Vietnam War); probing literature reviews; novel work based on country-specific datasets; and intriguing perspectives on demographic, gendered, and economic-class aspects of genocides. Replete with research- and policy-relevant findings, new insights are derived from microeconomics, macroeconomics, behavioral economics, law and economics, political economy, development economics, industrial organization, and identity economics. Analytical approaches include constrained optimization theory, game theory, and sophisticated statistical work in data mining, econometrics, and forecasting. A foremost finding of the book concerns atrocity architects’ purposeful, strategic use of violence, including how they manipulate nonrational proclivities among ordinary people to sway their participation in mass murder. Further, the book shows how well-intended prevention efforts can backfire and increase violence, wrong postgenocide design can reinforce exclusion of vulnerable peoples, and businesses can become complicit in genocide. Along with the importance of healthy economic opportunities for genocide prevention, the book shows why new genocide prevention laws and institutions must be based on reformulated incentives that consider insights from law and economics, behavioral economics, and collective action economics.Less
Genocide has received extensive scholarly, policy, and practitioner attention. Missing is the contribution of economists to understand and prevent such atrocities. This book—the first of its kind—assembles contributions by forty-one accomplished scholars to examine economic aspects of genocides, other mass atrocities, and their prevention. The book’s twenty-eight chapters include numerous case studies (e.g., California’s Yana people, Australia’s Aborigines peoples, Stalin’s killing of Ukrainians, Belarus, the Holocaust, Rwanda, DR Congo, Indonesia, Pakistan, Colombia, Mexico’s drug wars, and the targeting of suspects during the Vietnam War); probing literature reviews; novel work based on country-specific datasets; and intriguing perspectives on demographic, gendered, and economic-class aspects of genocides. Replete with research- and policy-relevant findings, new insights are derived from microeconomics, macroeconomics, behavioral economics, law and economics, political economy, development economics, industrial organization, and identity economics. Analytical approaches include constrained optimization theory, game theory, and sophisticated statistical work in data mining, econometrics, and forecasting. A foremost finding of the book concerns atrocity architects’ purposeful, strategic use of violence, including how they manipulate nonrational proclivities among ordinary people to sway their participation in mass murder. Further, the book shows how well-intended prevention efforts can backfire and increase violence, wrong postgenocide design can reinforce exclusion of vulnerable peoples, and businesses can become complicit in genocide. Along with the importance of healthy economic opportunities for genocide prevention, the book shows why new genocide prevention laws and institutions must be based on reformulated incentives that consider insights from law and economics, behavioral economics, and collective action economics.
Mark A. Lewis
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- April 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199660285
- eISBN:
- 9780191757716
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199660285.003.0008
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History, Political History
The creation of the U.N. Genocide Convention in 1946–48 was a response to gaps in the Nuremberg Judgment, as well as a way of combining minorities protection from the 1920s with criminological ...
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The creation of the U.N. Genocide Convention in 1946–48 was a response to gaps in the Nuremberg Judgment, as well as a way of combining minorities protection from the 1920s with criminological jurists’ ideas about using prosecution as a means of enforcement. The main drafters of the Genocide Convention—Polish jurist Raphael Lemkin, French jurist Henri Donnedieu de Vabres, and Romanian jurist Vespasien Pella—had all participated in the interwar movement to reform the laws of extradition and draw up new international criminal laws to ensure international security. However, while Lemkin and various non-governmental organizations lobbied for the convention, government negotiators made major changes to weaken the efficacy of the convention. Lemkin and his allies approved these changes, taking the position that passing a convention was better than nothing. However, the governments’ political priorities ultimately created a convention that did not require a permanent international criminal court for prosecution and did not contain specific guidelines for how the U.N. Security Council should conduct a genocide investigation. When the convention was completed in 1948, jurists expressed considerable skepticism about whether it could actually deter the crime.Less
The creation of the U.N. Genocide Convention in 1946–48 was a response to gaps in the Nuremberg Judgment, as well as a way of combining minorities protection from the 1920s with criminological jurists’ ideas about using prosecution as a means of enforcement. The main drafters of the Genocide Convention—Polish jurist Raphael Lemkin, French jurist Henri Donnedieu de Vabres, and Romanian jurist Vespasien Pella—had all participated in the interwar movement to reform the laws of extradition and draw up new international criminal laws to ensure international security. However, while Lemkin and various non-governmental organizations lobbied for the convention, government negotiators made major changes to weaken the efficacy of the convention. Lemkin and his allies approved these changes, taking the position that passing a convention was better than nothing. However, the governments’ political priorities ultimately created a convention that did not require a permanent international criminal court for prosecution and did not contain specific guidelines for how the U.N. Security Council should conduct a genocide investigation. When the convention was completed in 1948, jurists expressed considerable skepticism about whether it could actually deter the crime.
Hirad Abtahi and Philippa Webb
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780190272654
- eISBN:
- 9780190272685
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190272654.003.0017
- Subject:
- Law, Public International Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
Drafted from 1946 to 1948, the Genocide Convention is the product of its time: a document reflecting the sociology of immediate post-WWII inter-states relations. This chapter seeks to shed light on ...
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Drafted from 1946 to 1948, the Genocide Convention is the product of its time: a document reflecting the sociology of immediate post-WWII inter-states relations. This chapter seeks to shed light on hidden facts behind the Genocide Convention’s drafting, negotiations, and adoption processes during 1946–1948. There are secrets and surprises in the travaux préparatoires relating to the origins of the Convention, cultural and political genocide, the obligation to prevent, the issue of an international criminal court, and the question of reparations to victims of genocide. William Schabas has repeatedly recognised in his academic writing the value that can be gained from a close study of the travaux.Less
Drafted from 1946 to 1948, the Genocide Convention is the product of its time: a document reflecting the sociology of immediate post-WWII inter-states relations. This chapter seeks to shed light on hidden facts behind the Genocide Convention’s drafting, negotiations, and adoption processes during 1946–1948. There are secrets and surprises in the travaux préparatoires relating to the origins of the Convention, cultural and political genocide, the obligation to prevent, the issue of an international criminal court, and the question of reparations to victims of genocide. William Schabas has repeatedly recognised in his academic writing the value that can be gained from a close study of the travaux.
Elisa Novic
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- December 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780198787167
- eISBN:
- 9780191829253
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198787167.003.0004
- Subject:
- Law, Human Rights and Immigration, Public International Law
In light of the difficulties that arise in reintroducing the concept of cultural genocide in the legal definition of genocide through treaty interpretation, this chapter focuses on the evolution of ...
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In light of the difficulties that arise in reintroducing the concept of cultural genocide in the legal definition of genocide through treaty interpretation, this chapter focuses on the evolution of international law when it comes to group cultural protection. International law has adopted two concomitant approaches in this regard. Firstly, cultural rights have been increasingly recognized and valued, including collective rights for indigenous peoples. Secondly, a specific branch related to the protection of cultural heritage has been progressively developed, starting with the protection of tangible cultural heritage in time of armed conflict and having more recently been recalibrated to cover both the protection of cultural heritage in peace time and intangible cultural heritage. The chapter further draws connections between these two approaches, as well as between these approaches and international criminal law. Other international crimes thus emerge as potential tools to address cultural genocide, beyond the crime of genocide.Less
In light of the difficulties that arise in reintroducing the concept of cultural genocide in the legal definition of genocide through treaty interpretation, this chapter focuses on the evolution of international law when it comes to group cultural protection. International law has adopted two concomitant approaches in this regard. Firstly, cultural rights have been increasingly recognized and valued, including collective rights for indigenous peoples. Secondly, a specific branch related to the protection of cultural heritage has been progressively developed, starting with the protection of tangible cultural heritage in time of armed conflict and having more recently been recalibrated to cover both the protection of cultural heritage in peace time and intangible cultural heritage. The chapter further draws connections between these two approaches, as well as between these approaches and international criminal law. Other international crimes thus emerge as potential tools to address cultural genocide, beyond the crime of genocide.
Elisa Novic
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- December 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780198787167
- eISBN:
- 9780191829253
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198787167.003.0006
- Subject:
- Law, Human Rights and Immigration, Public International Law
Most developments related to the concept of cultural genocide occurred in the field of public international law (international human rights law and international cultural heritage law), thus ...
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Most developments related to the concept of cultural genocide occurred in the field of public international law (international human rights law and international cultural heritage law), thus involving state responsibility. If international law does not recognize state criminal responsibility, states can still be held responsible for the crime of genocide and serious violations of cultural rights. This chapter builds upon this context to inquire whether state responsibility could be articulated in order to cover some specific features of cultural genocide. The current state of international law indicates that its intentional character could be addressed through a principle of aggravated state responsibility. However, international law still seems to lack mechanisms of genocide prevention, in which context attacks against groups’ cultures may stand as an early warning of potential further escalation.Less
Most developments related to the concept of cultural genocide occurred in the field of public international law (international human rights law and international cultural heritage law), thus involving state responsibility. If international law does not recognize state criminal responsibility, states can still be held responsible for the crime of genocide and serious violations of cultural rights. This chapter builds upon this context to inquire whether state responsibility could be articulated in order to cover some specific features of cultural genocide. The current state of international law indicates that its intentional character could be addressed through a principle of aggravated state responsibility. However, international law still seems to lack mechanisms of genocide prevention, in which context attacks against groups’ cultures may stand as an early warning of potential further escalation.
Augustine Brannigan
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199674626
- eISBN:
- 9780191766893
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199674626.001.0001
- Subject:
- Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
This book is premised on the idea that genocide is a crime, and that it can be comprehended by sound criminological theories and methods. However, in contemporary social science, the first important ...
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This book is premised on the idea that genocide is a crime, and that it can be comprehended by sound criminological theories and methods. However, in contemporary social science, the first important contribution to genocide studies originated with Stanley Milgram and his experimental studies of obedience to authority in the 1960s. There has been considerable re-evaluation of original obedience paradigm since then, and a need to develop an approach that is better grounded intellectually. The book describes three paradoxes of genocide for criminology: the inauspicious motivation of the ordinary perpetrator, the frequent conventionalization of atrocities which often put them beyond the rule of law, and the enormous dark figure of victimization that resulted from this synergy. The book outlines the problems by which events are labelled, or failed to be labelled, as genocide, and proposes an explanation of them based on Elias’s theories of civilizing and de-civilizing processes. Where Elias attributes the Holocaust to the reversion to barbarism, it is suggested instead that the evidence is more consistent with the development of an ethic of over-control, akin to pathological altruism, as described in Durkheim’s typology of suicide. This perspective is applied to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, and illustrates over-control through the concepts of administrative and ethnic ‘closure’. The balance of the book describes the three legal responses to genocide and analogous behaviours: criminal indictment, civil reparations and truth commissions. Finally, it is proposed that the key to genocide prevention is a renegotiation of the unbridled power of sovereigns.Less
This book is premised on the idea that genocide is a crime, and that it can be comprehended by sound criminological theories and methods. However, in contemporary social science, the first important contribution to genocide studies originated with Stanley Milgram and his experimental studies of obedience to authority in the 1960s. There has been considerable re-evaluation of original obedience paradigm since then, and a need to develop an approach that is better grounded intellectually. The book describes three paradoxes of genocide for criminology: the inauspicious motivation of the ordinary perpetrator, the frequent conventionalization of atrocities which often put them beyond the rule of law, and the enormous dark figure of victimization that resulted from this synergy. The book outlines the problems by which events are labelled, or failed to be labelled, as genocide, and proposes an explanation of them based on Elias’s theories of civilizing and de-civilizing processes. Where Elias attributes the Holocaust to the reversion to barbarism, it is suggested instead that the evidence is more consistent with the development of an ethic of over-control, akin to pathological altruism, as described in Durkheim’s typology of suicide. This perspective is applied to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, and illustrates over-control through the concepts of administrative and ethnic ‘closure’. The balance of the book describes the three legal responses to genocide and analogous behaviours: criminal indictment, civil reparations and truth commissions. Finally, it is proposed that the key to genocide prevention is a renegotiation of the unbridled power of sovereigns.
Paul Slovic, Daniel Västfjäll, Robin Gregory, and Kimberly G. Olson
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780199378296
- eISBN:
- 9780199378319
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199378296.003.0026
- Subject:
- Economics and Finance, International
Why do governments fail to intervene to prevent genocide and other mass atrocities? We examine this question with reference to prospect theory, one of the foundations of behavioral economics. When ...
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Why do governments fail to intervene to prevent genocide and other mass atrocities? We examine this question with reference to prospect theory, one of the foundations of behavioral economics. When people rely on their moral intuitions, they behave according to prospect theory’s value function, which implies that the importance of protecting an individual life diminishes as the number of lives at risk increases. In some cases, intuitive valuation of the collective threat may actually decrease as the number of lives at risk increases, which undoubtedly contributes to failures to respond aggressively to mass atrocities. Understanding this failing of moral intuition should help to inform the development of new institutional mechanisms concerned with atrocity prevention. Such new mechanisms are necessary to force us to pursue the hard measures needed to combat massive human rights abuses. Accordingly, we propose several policy recommendations and institutional designs to improve international decision-making in this arena.Less
Why do governments fail to intervene to prevent genocide and other mass atrocities? We examine this question with reference to prospect theory, one of the foundations of behavioral economics. When people rely on their moral intuitions, they behave according to prospect theory’s value function, which implies that the importance of protecting an individual life diminishes as the number of lives at risk increases. In some cases, intuitive valuation of the collective threat may actually decrease as the number of lives at risk increases, which undoubtedly contributes to failures to respond aggressively to mass atrocities. Understanding this failing of moral intuition should help to inform the development of new institutional mechanisms concerned with atrocity prevention. Such new mechanisms are necessary to force us to pursue the hard measures needed to combat massive human rights abuses. Accordingly, we propose several policy recommendations and institutional designs to improve international decision-making in this arena.
Elisa Novic
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- December 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780198787167
- eISBN:
- 9780191829253
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198787167.001.0001
- Subject:
- Law, Human Rights and Immigration, Public International Law
Cultural genocide remains a recurrent topic, appearing not only in the form of wide-ranging claims about the commission of cultural genocide in diverse contexts but also in the legal sphere, with ...
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Cultural genocide remains a recurrent topic, appearing not only in the form of wide-ranging claims about the commission of cultural genocide in diverse contexts but also in the legal sphere, with recent discussions before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and in the drafting of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. These discussions have however displayed the lack of a uniform understanding of the concept of cultural genocide and, consequently, of the role that international law is expected to fulfil in this regard. This book therefore intends to present an exhaustive review of how international law has been approaching the core idea underlying the concept of cultural genocide, i.e. the intentional destruction of group cultures, and how this framework can be strengthened and fostered. It therefore traces developments, from the early conceptualization of cultural genocide to the contemporary question of its reparation. Through this journey, it discusses the evolution of various branches of international law in relation to both cultural protection and cultural destruction, in light of a number of legal cases in which either the concept of cultural genocide or the idea of cultural destruction has been discussed. Such cases include the destruction of cultural and religious heritage in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the forced removals of Aboriginal children in Australia and Canada, and the case law of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in relation to Indigenous and tribal groups’ cultural destruction.Less
Cultural genocide remains a recurrent topic, appearing not only in the form of wide-ranging claims about the commission of cultural genocide in diverse contexts but also in the legal sphere, with recent discussions before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and in the drafting of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. These discussions have however displayed the lack of a uniform understanding of the concept of cultural genocide and, consequently, of the role that international law is expected to fulfil in this regard. This book therefore intends to present an exhaustive review of how international law has been approaching the core idea underlying the concept of cultural genocide, i.e. the intentional destruction of group cultures, and how this framework can be strengthened and fostered. It therefore traces developments, from the early conceptualization of cultural genocide to the contemporary question of its reparation. Through this journey, it discusses the evolution of various branches of international law in relation to both cultural protection and cultural destruction, in light of a number of legal cases in which either the concept of cultural genocide or the idea of cultural destruction has been discussed. Such cases include the destruction of cultural and religious heritage in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the forced removals of Aboriginal children in Australia and Canada, and the case law of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in relation to Indigenous and tribal groups’ cultural destruction.
Augustine Brannigan
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199674626
- eISBN:
- 9780191766893
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199674626.003.0010
- Subject:
- Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
In an anarchical international order mediated by the current UN, the world does not have a reliable capacity to prevent genocide. However, there is an increasing appeal of evolving norms regarding ...
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In an anarchical international order mediated by the current UN, the world does not have a reliable capacity to prevent genocide. However, there is an increasing appeal of evolving norms regarding the international responsibility to protect (R2P) vulnerable communities worldwide, and hence to renegotiate the scope of sovereignty. This supersedes the earlier doctrine of humanitarian intervention. There is also a greater sense of national responsibility to prosecute génocidaires in national courts. The clues to genocide management in the age of globalization are obvious: they consist of checks on the otherwise unbridled exercise of power of sovereigns. These checks—a free press, a culture of political negotiation, autonomous civil and religious sectors, a responsive international community, gender justice and the embrace of cosmopolitan norms in respect of human rights—are among the keys to a future free of genocide.Less
In an anarchical international order mediated by the current UN, the world does not have a reliable capacity to prevent genocide. However, there is an increasing appeal of evolving norms regarding the international responsibility to protect (R2P) vulnerable communities worldwide, and hence to renegotiate the scope of sovereignty. This supersedes the earlier doctrine of humanitarian intervention. There is also a greater sense of national responsibility to prosecute génocidaires in national courts. The clues to genocide management in the age of globalization are obvious: they consist of checks on the otherwise unbridled exercise of power of sovereigns. These checks—a free press, a culture of political negotiation, autonomous civil and religious sectors, a responsive international community, gender justice and the embrace of cosmopolitan norms in respect of human rights—are among the keys to a future free of genocide.