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Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations and Acronyms -- 1 Introduction: Three Dilemmas for UN Peacekeeping Missions -- 2 Conflict Externalities and the Incentive to Keep the Peace -- 3 Analyzing the Argument -- 4 Conclusion: Managing Incentives and Disincentives to Keep the Peace -- References -- About the Author.

Why do some governments engage in genocide or politicide during civil war while others do not? I argue that leader tenure influences bargaining possibilities between the regime and rebels. Rebels face less uncertainty about a longer-tenured leader's willingness to commit to concessions to end the conflict with terms that better the rebels' position. This narrows the longer-tenured leader's ability to credibly offer the rebels concessions. Facing a constrained bargaining environment, longer-tenured leaders become more likely to turn to atrocity in an effort to fully defeat the opposition group and its supporters. Statistical analysis of all genocide and politicide in civil war since 1946 supports this claim. Evidence from Milosevic's atrocities in Kosovo help illustrate the mechanisms.

Why do some governments engage in genocide or politicide against their civilian population during civil war? Scholarship on this important question views such brutality as a strategic tool the government can use to maintain power through military victory. Returning to the logic of conflict bargaining, I re-conceptualize genocide and politicide as a means to extract information about one's opponent. I argue that a government is more likely to employ these atrocities during conflict when it is more uncertain about its probability of victory to reveal better information more quickly from the battlefield. I test this argument on all civil wars since 1945 and find support for this claim. These dynamics are more pronounced when the rebels rely on the civilian population to mobilize fighters. My argument helps bridge significant works in the genocide and conflict-bargaining literatures.

State failure is highly threatening to incumbent elites, providing them motive to engage in genocide or politicide. The destruction of formal institutions may also remove political barriers to employing such atrocities. Thus, previous scholars expect state failure to increase the likelihood of genocide and politicide. However, such logic overlooks that these atrocities are government policy, which require planning and implementation. Since government institutions collapse during state failure, regime elites will possess little physical ability to commit widespread and systematic killing of their enemies. Therefore, I expect state failure to be associated with a lower likelihood of genocide and politicide. Using bivariate probit regression to handle the endogeneity between state failure and these atrocities, I find strong support for my argument in all country-years since 1946.

Episodes of genocide and politicide show remarkable variation in how long they last. Some end within months; others continue for decades. Why do some persist while others end soon after they start? I argue that uncertainty influences the duration of killing. When a government has difficulty identifying members of a target group, it is less certain that it has accomplished its violent goals vis-à-vis the group. Therefore, the more uncertain the government is about the source of the threat it faces, the longer its killing will last. Statistical analysis of all episodes of genocide and politicide from 1955 to 2011 supports these claims.

Interstate rivalry not only influences a country's international behavior, but also its domestic conduct. Here, I focus on the connection between interstate rivalry and domestic government mass killing, specifically genocide and politicide. I argue that interstate rivalry has both direct and indirect influences on a government's decision to use mass violence against its civilian population. Directly, countries engaged in rivalry experience a heightened state of military tension, which increases the likelihood that the country will resort to political mass killing when handling domestic dissent. Indirectly, rivalry increases the likelihood of both inter- and intrastate conflict, which also increases the likelihood of genocide and politicide. Statistical analysis of all country-years from 1955 to 2011 reveals that interstate rivals are more likely to engage in genocide and politicide than are other states. This research illustrates the way in which interstate rivalry influences a state's domestic politics and shapes the interactions between government and population. It also highlights the importance of how the international threat environment affects a state's willingness to engage in domestic political mass murder. These findings indicate that rivals do not only engage in the most violent interstate behavior, but also some of the deadliest domestic politics, as well.

Why do states participate in United Nations peacekeeping missions? Extant theory revolves around two benefits states derive from participation: the financial benefits participants receive for their contributions and the ability to further liberal norms abroad. Yet, these theories have received limited empirical support. In addition, they cannot explain where and when leaders send troops. To rectify these limitations, I focus on a more straightforward benefit states receive from limiting conflict and providing stability to war-torn regions. Namely, stabilizing conflict areas helps stem the externalities caused from ongoing conflicts, such as refugees. This explanation of participation in peacekeeping predicts who is most likely to send support (those fearing refugee inflows), the size of contribution (increasing relative to the inflows), and where they send assistance (to the specific conflict area producing the externalities). Statistical analysis of all UN peacekeeping missions since 1990 provides support for this argument and reveals that refugee flows better predict who is likely to contribute troops, and to what conflict, than the size of those contributions. While other realpolitik considerations strongly influence which states participate in UN peacekeeping, neither democracy nor state need is a statistically significant explanator of who contributes. However, state need does predict the size of contribution.

Why do some governments engage in genocide and/or politicide? A common explanation for such government-sponsored mass killing is that civil war provides governments both the incentive and opportunity to eradicate their enemies during the fighting. However, many episodes of genocide and politicide begin once the fighting has ended. I argue that when the civil war ends with a clear victor the winning party is more likely to engage in mass killing than if the conflict ends through negotiated settlement or other inconclusive manners, since the victorious party does not fear armed resistance while they eliminate dissidents throughout the country. Moreover, I posit that the government will be more likely to engage in politicide rather than genocide, as politicide eradicates the leader's political enemies across cross-cutting segments of the population, whereas genocide only destroys certain communal groups. Statistical examination of all post-civil war periods between 1955 and 2009 supports my argument. (International Interactions (London)/FUB)

Why do some state leaders engage in genocide and politicide while others do not? Extant theory focuses on how large openings in the domestic political structure of a country, such as civil or interstate war, increase the likelihood that a government will respond with violence against its civilian population. This article builds from this previous theory to argue that smaller crises can provide governments with the same incentives and opportunities to engage in political mass murder. Statistical tests of all cases of genocide and politicide since 1955 support this argument. In addition to civil wars, assassinations, coups and strikes increase the likelihood of political mass murder, especially genocide. These findings are important as they caution the international community against fixating on large-scale crises as the impetus for genocide and politicide.