The Politics of Never Again: Analytically Quantifying and Politically Qualifying Genocide in International Politics

Despite a broadly accepted and relatively clear international law definition, genocide has nevertheless proven to be a complex phenomenon for the global policymaking community. Many such challenges are rooted in broader international relations complexities and decision-making constraints. While acknowledging the role of shifting global power structures, domestic political limitations, and a lack of consensus regarding competing international norms (e.g., state sovereignty and national interest), this paper argues that analytic ambiguities are also fueling ineffective international responses to genocide. This paper explores the intersections of analytically quantifying and politically qualifying genocide to illustrate how current assessment efforts are fraught not only with political landmines but with definitional confusion as well. Specifically, genocide is increasingly becoming conflated with mass atrocities in international human rights spheres, a trend that limits robust analytic assessments of these two separate types of civilian-focused violence. This paper argues against numeric classifications of genocide and mass atrocities, such as Bellamy’s 5,000 civilian deaths threshold (2011), and instead urges the adoption of dynamic classifications. To illuminate the distinctions between genocides and mass atrocities, this paper also presents a proposed violence typological framework that separates the two categories through the criteria of intended target, intended purpose, and special violence characteristics. To establish the utility of the proposed framework, this paper then presents a comparative analysis of several well-known instances of mass political violence in the twentieth century, including the Nazi Holocaust, Stalinist Ukraine, and the Bosnian war, according to the framework criteria established above. Finally, the paper details how such improved analysis would directly impact international responses to severe civilian-focused political violence, before concluding with a proposed research agenda for continued academic investigations.