The state of the field and debates on ethnic cleansing^†

† The term “ethnic cleansing” refers to deportations or killings conducted by a state, or a non-state actor that controls territory, that victimize a substantial segment of an ethnic group on the state’s or non-state actor’s territory (for more detail on this definition, see Bulutgil 2016). According to this definition, “genocide” is a subcategory of ethnic cleansing in which the victimization primarily takes the form of killings rather than deportations. I use the terms “ethnic cleansing” and “mass ethnic violence” interchangeably throughout the article.

Abstract

This review article outlines the progress that the literature on the causes of ethnic cleansing has made in the last 10–15 years. The article specifically focuses on two lines of research that have expanded our understanding of ethnic cleansing: (a) the studies that focus on the role of wars (this literature can in turn be divided into those works that treat “wars as strategic environments” and those that treat “wars as transformational forces”); (b) the studies that focus on the pre-war domestic or international conditions that hinder or promote ethnic cleansing. The last section of the article suggests several future avenues of research that could further refine the study of ethnic cleansing and its relationship to other types of mass violence.

Keywords:

• ethnic cleansing
• mass violence
• genocide
• ethnic conflict
• expulsion

Notes

† The term “ethnic cleansing” refers to deportations or killings conducted by a state, or a non-state actor that controls territory, that victimize a substantial segment of an ethnic group on the state’s or non-state actor’s territory (for more detail on this definition, see Bulutgil 2016). According to this definition, “genocide” is a subcategory of ethnic cleansing in which the victimization primarily takes the form of killings rather than deportations. I use the terms “ethnic cleansing” and “mass ethnic violence” interchangeably throughout the article.

1. Also, see Wimmer (2006) for a similar point.

2. For an empirical evaluation of these two types of causal story, see Bulutgil (2015).

3. For a pioneering study that takes into account domestic institutional factors, see Rummel (1995).

4. For an earlier study that makes a similar point, see Martin (1998).

5. For a potential explanation that focuses on pre-war educational policies of multi-national empires, see Darden forthcoming.

6. For a potential explanation that focuses on the specific territorial characteristics of ethnicity, see Bulutgil (2016).

7. For examples on the broader literature on non-ethnic and ethnic cleavages, see Lipset and Rokkan ([1967] 1990), Rothschild (1974), Lijphart (1977), and Chandra (2005).

8. For a study that provides micro-level evidence from Bosnia during WWII, see Bergholz (2016, 191–196).

9. One example for this type of set-up was inter-war Czechoslovakia up to mid-1930s (Luza 1964).

10. One example was the relationship between the left-wing parties and minorities in inter-war Poland (Groth 1968).

11. A potentially relevant case is the ethnic cleansing of Germans in Hungary after World War II, which took place despite significant resistance from domestic Hungarian institutions and under Soviet pressure, see Angi (2003).