Why do states or state-like actors choose some groups as targets of ethnic cleansing but not others? Why do patterns of violence within the same ethnic cleansing episode vary across micro-units such as villages?The paper argues that these questions can be answered by studying the patterns of territorial conflict between states or state-like actors within a given conflict. In particular, it shows that actors competing for territory target groups that ally with their rivals for ethnic cleansing. The variation at the micro-level is a result of the fact that local actors have better information about the alliance patterns of their neighbors and hence can better distinguish between villages that ally with their rivals from those that do not.
The paper tests these theories against those that argue that interethnic relations have an exogenous impact on the patterns of ethnic cleansing by using municipal and village level data from Bosnia-Herzegovina. The results suggest that the nature of territorial conflict at the national level and patterns of alliance between local and national actors provide a better explanation for episodes of ethnic cleansing than interethnic relations.
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