When does political violence turn into genocide? A comparative analysis

The investigation of the lack of integration between the fields of political violence and genocide studies appears crucial to overcoming the definitional minefield of genocide. Hereupon, this thesis combines the literature on the fields of political violence, genocide studies, and genocide law to discover, if any, potential turning points from political violence to genocide. The thesis explores its research question, "When does political violence turn into genocide?", by analysing the four cases of genocide: the Bosnian Genocide, the Cambodian Genocide, the Darfur Genocide, and the Rwandan Genocide. This case selection, based on the legal definition of genocide in the Genocide Convention and convictions of the crime of genocide, saved this thesis from the struggle of case selection among the already tangled genocide definitions in the literature. The possible factors for the transition of political violence to genocide are classified under three main clusters: Economic Factors, Political Factors, and Socio-cultural Factors. To find if any combination of these factors and their sub-factors result in the transition of political violence to genocide, the pre-genocidal stages of each case are examined. The findings indicate that although all the cases share common factors, there is no particular set of factors that turn political violence into genocide. Further, genocide asserts itself as a unique phenomenon related to but beyond political violence. Taking these findings into consideration, this thesis calls for further research on the under-researched relationship between political violence and genocide.