Governments, Citizens, and Genocide: A Comparative and Interdisciplinary Approach

More people have been killed in 20th-century genocides than in all wars and revolutions in the same period. Events in countries such as Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia have drawn attention to the fact that genocide is a pressing contemporary problem, one that has involved the United States in varying negotiating and peace-keeping roles. Genocide is increasingly recognized as a threat to national and international security, as well as a source of tremendous human suffering and social devastation. Governments, Citizens, and Genocide views the crime of genocide through the lens of social science. It discusses the problem of defining genocide and then examines it from the levels of the state, the organization, and the individual. Alex Alvarez offers both a synthesis of the existing literature on genocide and important later insights developed from the study of criminal behaviour. He shows that governmental policies and institutions in genocidal states a redesigned to suppress the moral inhibitions of ordinary individuals. By linking different levels of analysis, and comparing a variety of cases, the study aims to provide a much more complex understanding of genocide than have prior studies. Based on lessons drawn from his analysis, Alvarez offers a discussion of the ways in which genocide might be anticipated and prevented.