| The main source of inspiration for this thesis is Hannah Arendt's insight that power and violence are not only not the same, but that they are opposites, as well as the stark contrast of that insight with the popular belief that the causes of violence against minorities are rooted in unchecked power. I develop Arendt's insight systematically in the context of interaction between states, minorities, and third parties, and demonstrate that curtailing or threatening states' ability to coerce minorities may indeed generate incentives for violence, or escalation of ongoing violence. The argument I make is organized as a sequence of three models, which describe three different, but logically related settings of interaction between states, minorities and third parties. All three models demonstrate potential for escalated violence against the minority as a result of certain actions or threats of actions by third parties. Each model is then empirically illustrated with a qualitative study of a case of escalation, which include the cases of attempted ethnic cleansing in Kosovo and Abkhazia, as well as the genocide in Rwanda. |
