Abstract:
This thesis examines the occurrence of mass atrocities during civil conflict. It investigates the current research on violence during conflict and addresses the inability of this research to account for variability within and between conflicts. Five hypotheses, drawing on the work of several conflict studies scholars, were developed to account for this gap in the literature. The first hypothesis focuses on the symmetry of power during conflict and accounts for the lack of variation in forms of violence during conflict. The remaining hypotheses address when variation is likely to occur by examining the impact of characteristics unique to separatist, ideological, and internationalized conflicts. These hypotheses are tested against an original dataset that was created for this thesis. The dataset documents the different forms of atrocities and the actors perpetrating them in civil conflicts from 1975 to 2015. The hypotheses are further tested against four case studies: El Salvador, Mozambique, Syria, and Timor-l’Este. The results of these analyses suggest strong support for each of the presented hypotheses. The paper concludes with an examination of the impact of these findings on the field of conflict studies and recommendations for future research.
