The Differentiation of Security Forces and the Onset of Genocidal Violence

Which factors drive the onset of genocidal violence? While the previous literature identified several important influences, states’ military capabilities for conducting mass-killings and the structure of their security forces have received surprisingly little attention so far. The authors take this shortcoming as a motivation for their research. A theoretical framework is developed, which argues that more differentiated security forces, that is, forces that are composed of a higher number of independent paramilitary and military organizations, are likely to act as a restraint factor in the process leading to state-sponsored mass-killings. Quantitative analyses support the argument for a sample of state-failure years for 1971–2003, and it is also shown that considering a state’s security force structure improves our ability to forecast genocides.