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The Political Instability Task Force (PITF), formerly known as State Failure Task Force, is a U.S. government-sponsored research project to build a database on major domestic political conflicts leading to state failures. The study analyzed factors to denote the effectiveness of state institutions, population well-being, [1] and found that partial democracies with low involvement in international trade and with high infant mortality are most prone to revolutions. One of the members of the task force resigned on January 20, 2017, in protest of the Trump administration, before Donald Trump was sworn in as U.S. president. [2]
The project began as an unclassified study that was commissioned to a group of academics (particularly active was the Center for Global Policy at George Mason University) by the Central Intelligence Agency's Directorate of Intelligence in response to a request from senior U.S. policy makers. [3] The State Failure Problem Set dataset and spreadsheets were originally prepared in 1994 by researchers at the Center for International Development and Conflict Management (CIDCM) at the University of Maryland under the direction of Ted Robert Gurr and subject to the review of the State Failure Task Force. The Problem Set was subsequently reviewed, revised, and updated on an annual basis through 1999 under the direction of Ted Gurr and, beginning in 1999, Monty G. Marshall at CIDCM. In January 2001, a major review and revision of the Problem Set coding guidelines and dataset, under the direction of Monty G. Marshall, was concluded that substantially altered the case identifications and case parameters recorded in the Problem Set.
The PITF first identified over 100 "problem cases" in the world from 1955 to 2011. [3] [4] Four distinct types of state failure events are included in the dataset: revolutionary wars, ethnic wars, adverse regime changes, and genocides and politicides. The Problem Set data includes the following information on each case: country, month and year of onset, month and year of ending (unless ongoing as of December 31 of the current update year), type of case, and annual codes on magnitude variables. The basic structure of the data is the "case-year," that is, there is a separate case-entry for each additional year of a multi-year episode. Only the first annual record for each event contains a brief narrative description of the event.
The goal was to find factors associated with major political conflicts. [4] Over 400 cases were analyzed, both for global and regional data sets. [4]
The common variables listed in each data version are as follows:
Revolutionary wars are episodes of violent conflict between governments and politically organized groups (political challengers) that seek to overthrow the central government, to replace its leaders, or to seize power in one region. Conflicts must include substantial use of violence by one or both parties to qualify as "wars."
Ethnic wars are episodes of violent conflict between governments and national, ethnic, religious, or other communal minorities (ethnic challengers) in which the challengers seek major changes in their status. Most ethnic wars since 1955 have been guerrilla or civil wars in which the challengers have sought independence or regional autonomy. A few, like the events in South Africa's black townships in 1976–77, involve large-scale demonstrations and riots aimed at sweeping political reform that were violently suppressed by police and military. Rioting and warfare between rival communal groups is not coded as ethnic warfare unless it involves conflict over political power or government policy.
Additional variables specific to the Ethnic and Revolutionary War episodes are as follows:
Adverse Regime Changes are defined by the State Failure Task Force as major, adverse shifts in patterns of governance, including
Abrupt transitions from more authoritarian rule to more open, institutionalized governance systems, defined by the State Failure Task Force as "democratic transitions," are not considered state failures in this sense and, thus, are not included.
Additional variables specific to the Adverse Regime Change episodes are as follows:
Genocide and politicide events involve the promotion, execution, and/or implied consent of sustained policies by governing elites or their agents or in the case of civil war, either of the contending authorities that result in the deaths of a substantial portion of a communal group or politicized non communal group. In genocides the victimized groups are defined primarily in terms of their communal (ethnolinguistic, religious) characteristics. In politicides, by contrast, groups are defined primarily in terms of their political opposition to the regime and dominant groups.
Genocide and politicide are distinguished from state repression and terror. In cases of state terror authorities arrest, persecute or execute a few members of a group in ways designed to terrorize the majority of the group into passivity or acquiescence. In the case of genocide and politicide authorities physically exterminate enough (not necessarily all) members of a target group so that it can no longer pose any conceivable threat to their rule or interests.
Additional variables specific to the Genocide/Politicide episodes are as follows:
Fairly consistent findings were produced, suggesting that there are three statistically significant variables most often associated with political upheavals:
Thus partial democracies with low involvement in international trade and with high infant mortality are most prone to revolutions. [4]
Quantitative models developed during the study would have accurately predicted over 85% of major state crises events occurring in 1990–1997. [4] However while the models can predict state crises, they cannot predict their magnitude and eventual outcome. [4]
There are four versions of the Political Instability (State Failure) Problem Set data; each are downloadable from the PITF Problem Set page in Microsoft Excel format. [3] This format was chosen because it is readily importable to most spreadsheet and statistical software applications. The four versions are as follows:
80 cases; 16 ongoing
65 cases; 4 ongoing
115 cases; 2 ongoing
41 cases; 1 ongoing
Average magnitude over all years: 2.4
Genocides/politicides occurred most frequently in 1975 and 1978. Frequency of occurrence increased beginning in 1962 until 1980, when frequency dropped slightly. The frequency of genocides/politicides plateaued from 1980 to 1987. In 1988 the world saw a slight increase of genocides/politicides, which then quickly turned into a steady decrease in events through 2011.
An example of a typical event: Uganda, 1980–1986. Average magnitude: 3.3.
Democide refers to "the intentional killing of an unarmed or disarmed person by government agents acting in their authoritative capacity and pursuant to government policy or high command." The term was first coined by Holocaust historian and statistics expert, R.J. Rummel in his book Death by Government, but has also been described as a better term than genocide to refer to certain types of mass killings, by renowned Holocaust historian Yehuda Bauer. According to Rummel, this definition covers a wide range of deaths, including forced labor and concentration camp victims, extrajudicial summary killings, and mass deaths due to governmental acts of criminal omission and neglect, such as in deliberate famines like the Holodomor, as well as killings by de facto governments, for example, killings during a civil war. This definition covers any murder of any number of persons by any government.
Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people, either in whole or in part.
In political science, a revolution is a rapid, fundamental transformation of a society's class, state, ethnic or religious structures. According to sociologist Jack Goldstone, all revolutions contain "a common set of elements at their core: (a) efforts to change the political regime that draw on a competing vision of a just order, (b) a notable degree of informal or formal mass mobilization, and (c) efforts to force change through noninstitutionalized actions such as mass demonstrations, protests, strikes, or violence."
Ethnic cleansing is the systematic forced removal of ethnic, racial, or religious groups from a given area, with the intent of making the society ethnically homogeneous. Along with direct removal such as deportation or population transfer, it also includes indirect methods aimed at forced migration by coercing the victim group to flee and preventing its return, such as murder, rape, and property destruction. Both the definition and charge of ethnic cleansing is often disputed, with some researchers including and others excluding coercive assimilation or mass killings as a means of depopulating an area of a particular group.
Mass killing is a concept which has been proposed by genocide scholars who wish to define incidents of non-combat killing which are perpetrated by a government or a state. A mass killing is commonly defined as the killing of group members without the intention to eliminate the whole group, or otherwise the killing of large numbers of people without a clear group membership.
Rudolph Joseph Rummel was an American political scientist, a statistician and professor at Indiana University, Yale University, and University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. He spent his career studying data on collective violence and war with a view toward helping their resolution or elimination. Contrasting genocide, Rummel coined the term democide for murder by government, such as the genocide of indigenous peoples and colonialism, Nazi Germany, the Stalinist purges, Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution, and other authoritarian, totalitarian, or undemocratic regimes, coming to the conclusion that democratic regimes result in the least democides.
Rebellion is a violent uprising against one's government. A rebel is a person who engages in a rebellion. A rebel group is a consciously coordinated group that seeks to gain political control over an entire state or a portion of a state.
Ethnic violence is a form of political violence which is expressly motivated by ethnic hatred and ethnic conflict. Forms of ethnic violence which can be argued to have the characteristics of terrorism may be known as ethnic terrorism or ethnically motivated terrorism. "Racist terrorism" is a form of ethnic violence which is dominated by overt racism and xenophobic reactionism.
The Polity data series is a data series in political science research. Along with the V-Dem Democracy indices project and Democracy Index, Polity is among prominent datasets that measure democracy and autocracy.
Ted Robert Gurr was an American author and professor of political science who most notably wrote about political conflict and instability. His widely translated book Why Men Rebel (1970) emphasized the importance of social psychological factors and ideology as root sources of political violence. He was Distinguished University Professor emeritus at the University of Maryland and consulted on projects he established there. He died in November 2017.
Political cleansing of a population is the elimination of categories of people in specific areas for political reasons. The means may vary and include forced migration, ethnic cleansing and population transfers.
Mass killings under communist regimes occurred through a variety of means during the 20th century, including executions, famine, deaths through forced labour, deportation, starvation, and imprisonment. Some of these events have been classified as genocides or crimes against humanity. Other terms have been used to describe these events, including classicide, democide, red holocaust, and politicide. The mass killings have been studied by authors and academics and several of them have postulated the potential causes of these killings along with the factors which were associated with them. Some authors have tabulated a total death toll, consisting of all of the excess deaths which cumulatively occurred under the rule of communist states, but these death toll estimates have been criticized. Most frequently, the states and events which are studied and included in death toll estimates are the Holodomor and the Great Purge in the Soviet Union, the Great Chinese Famine and the Cultural Revolution in the People's Republic of China, and the Cambodian genocide in Democratic Kampuchea.
Barbara Harff is professor of political science emerita at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. In 2003 and again in 2005 she was a distinguished visiting professor at the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University. Her research focuses on the causes, risks, and prevention of genocidal violence.
Political violence is violence which is perpetrated in order to achieve political goals. It can include violence which is used by a state against other states (war), violence which is used by a state against civilians and non-state actors, and violence which is used by violent non-state actors against states and civilians. It can also describe politically motivated violence which is used by violent non-state actors against a state or it can describe violence which is used against other non-state actors and/or civilians. Non-action on the part of a government can also be characterized as a form of political violence, such as refusing to alleviate famine or otherwise denying resources to politically identifiable groups within their territory.
Anocracy, or semi-democracy, is a form of government that is loosely defined as part democracy and part dictatorship, or as a "regime that mixes democratic with autocratic features". Another definition classifies anocracy as "a regime that permits some means of participation through opposition group behavior but that has incomplete development of mechanisms to redress grievances." The term "semi-democratic" is reserved for stable regimes that combine democratic and authoritarian elements. Scholars distinguish anocracies from autocracies and democracies in their capability to maintain authority, political dynamics, and policy agendas. Anocratic regimes have democratic institutions that allow for nominal amounts of competition. Such regimes are particularly susceptible to outbreaks of armed conflict and unexpected or adverse changes in leadership.
Jay Ulfelder is an American political scientist who is best known for his work on political forecasting, specifically on anticipating various forms of political instability around the world. From 2001 to 2010, he served as research director of the Political Instability Task Force (PITF), which is funded by the Central Intelligence Agency. He is also the author of a book and several journal articles on democratization, democratic backsliding, and contentious politics.
Rare or extreme events are events that occur with low frequency, and often refers to infrequent events that have a widespread effect and which might destabilize systems. Rare events encompass natural phenomena, anthropogenic hazards, as well as phenomena for which natural and anthropogenic factors interact in complex ways.
The assessment of risk factors for genocide is an upstream mechanism for genocide prevention. The goal is to apply an assessment of risk factors to improve the predictive capability of the international community before the killing begins, and prevent it. There may be many warning signs that a country may be leaning in the direction of a future genocide. If signs are presented, the international community takes notes of them and watches over the countries that have a higher risk. Many different scholars, and international groups, have come up with different factors that they think should be considered while examining whether a nation is at risk or not. One predominant scholar in the field James Waller came up with his own four categories of risk factors: governance, conflict history, economic conditions, and social fragmentation.
War and genocide studies is an interdisciplinary subject that identifies and analyzes the relationship between war and genocide, as well as the structural foundations of associated conflicts. Disciplines involved may include political science, geography, economics, sociology, international relations, and history.
Below is an outline of articles on the academic field of genocide studies and subjects closely and directly related to the field of genocide studies; this is not an outline of acts or events related to genocide or topics loosely or sometimes related to the field of genocide studies. The Event outlines section contains links to outlines of acts of genocide.
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