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Rwanda’s tragic and shocking violence of 1994 indelibly etched itself on the global conscience. The violence has become a paradigmatic case of genocide and, thanks to a wealth of careful scholarship, we know much already. In the Path to Genocide in Rwanda: Security, Opportunity, and Authority in an Ethnocratic State (Cambridge University Press, 2021), I bring together new and unique field data with some of the best existing evidence to offer what I hope are rigorous answers to two simple questions often asked about the genocide. How and why did it occur? And how and why did many Rwandans come to participate in it?
For those interested in Rwanda specifically, the book offers perspectives on ten other perplexing and troubling questions about the genocide. I have made short video summaries of the book's contributions to each of these debates below.
For those interested in conflict and violence more generally, the book engages with core theoretical debates on the causal role of emotions, ideology, and ethnicity in genocide. It also speaks to specialist topics such as intra-ethnic competition, ex-post radicalization, anti-social capital, extra-lethal violence, perpetrator heterogeneity, and micro-mobilization.
The book won the 2022 International Studies Association ENMISA Distinguished Book Award; the 2022 American Political Science Association's Robert Jervis Best International Security Book by non-tenured Faculty; and was a runner-up for the 2023 Institute for the Study of Genocide's Raphael Lemkin biennial Book Award.
It has also been reviewed in the following journals: African Affairs, Perspectives on Politics, International Affairs, Political Science Quarterly, Review of African Political Economy, African Studies Review, Revue d’Histoire Contemporaine de l’Afrique, and African Studies Quarterly.
For those interested in Rwanda specifically, the book offers perspectives on ten other perplexing and troubling questions about the genocide. I have made short video summaries of the book's contributions to each of these debates below.
For those interested in conflict and violence more generally, the book engages with core theoretical debates on the causal role of emotions, ideology, and ethnicity in genocide. It also speaks to specialist topics such as intra-ethnic competition, ex-post radicalization, anti-social capital, extra-lethal violence, perpetrator heterogeneity, and micro-mobilization.
The book won the 2022 International Studies Association ENMISA Distinguished Book Award; the 2022 American Political Science Association's Robert Jervis Best International Security Book by non-tenured Faculty; and was a runner-up for the 2023 Institute for the Study of Genocide's Raphael Lemkin biennial Book Award.
It has also been reviewed in the following journals: African Affairs, Perspectives on Politics, International Affairs, Political Science Quarterly, Review of African Political Economy, African Studies Review, Revue d’Histoire Contemporaine de l’Afrique, and African Studies Quarterly.
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A short introduction to the book
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Question 1: Was the genocide the product of elite decisions 'at the top' or was there also popular pressure 'from below'?
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Question 2. Were ideologically extreme or racist beliefs widely-held by Rwandans before the genocide?
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Question 3. Why did moderate politicians lose out to extremists for control of the state?
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Question 4. Were the perpetrators all 'ordinary', and if not, what explains why some Rwandans killed but others not?
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Question 5. Why did some Rwandans purposely maximize the pain and suffering of their victims if they were coerced or "just following orders"?
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Question 6. Did Rwanda's exceptionally high population density contribute to a Malthusian ecological crunch?
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Question 7. Why did the violence happen so quickly, in so many places, and involve so many people?
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Question 8. How many Rwandans were killed and how many did the killing?
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Question 9. Was the genocide planned long in advance and meticulously executed?
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Question 10. Did the violence occur so quickly that the international community could do nothing to stop it?
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