No Lessons Learned from the Holocaust? Assessing Risks of Genocide and Political Mass Murder since 1955

This article reports a test of a structural model of the antecedents of genocide and politicide (political mass murder). A case–control research design is used to test alternative specifications of a multivariate model that identifies preconditions of geno-/politicide. The universe of analysis consists of 126 instances of internal war and regime collapse that began between 1955 and 1997, as identified by the State Failure project. Geno-/politicides began during 35 of these episodes of state failure. The analytic question is which factors distinguish the 35 episodes that led to geno-/politicides from those that did not. The case–control method is used to estimate the effects of theoretically specified domestic…