IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bpj/pepspp/v18y2012i1n2.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Intensity of the Rwandan Genocide: Measures from the Gacaca Records

Author

Listed:
  • Verpoorten Marijke

    (University of Antwerp)

Abstract

This article illustrates how fine continuous and categorical measures of genocide intensity can be derived from the records of the Rwandan transitional justice system. The data, which include the number of genocide suspects and genocide survivors across 1484 administrative sectors, are highly skewed and contain a non-negligible number of outlying observations. A number of genocide proxies are subjected to Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to obtain a genocide index, and the effect of survival bias on this index is reduced by augmenting the set of genocide proxies subjected to PCA with the distance from an administrative sector to the nearest mass grave. Finally, the administrative sectors are divided into distinct categories of low, moderate and high genocide intensity by means of Local Indicators of Spatial Auto-Correlation (LISA) that allow identifying significant high-high and low-low clusters of genocide intensity.

Suggested Citation

  • Verpoorten Marijke, 2012. "The Intensity of the Rwandan Genocide: Measures from the Gacaca Records," Peace Economics, Peace Science, and Public Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 18(1), pages 1-26, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:bpj:pepspp:v:18:y:2012:i:1:n:2
    DOI: 10.1515/1554-8597.1244
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1515/1554-8597.1244
    Download Restriction: For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1515/1554-8597.1244?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alesina, Alberto & Perotti, Roberto, 1996. "Income distribution, political instability, and investment," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 40(6), pages 1203-1228, June.
    2. Robert J. Barro, 1991. "Economic Growth in a Cross Section of Countries," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 106(2), pages 407-443.
    3. Venieris, Yiannis P & Gupta, Dipak K, 1986. "Income Distribution and Sociopolitical Instability as Determinants of Savings: A Cross-sectional Model," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 94(4), pages 873-883, August.
    4. David Yanagizawa-Drott, 2012. "Propaganda and Conflict: Theory and Evidence from the Rwandan Genocide," CID Working Papers 257, Center for International Development at Harvard University.
    5. Andre, Catherine & Platteau, Jean-Philippe, 1998. "Land relations under unbearable stress: Rwanda caught in the Malthusian trap," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 34(1), pages 1-47, January.
    6. González, María A & Lopez, Rigoberto A, 2007. "Political Violence and Farm Household Efficiency in Colombia," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 55(2), pages 367-392, January.
    7. Ian Timæus & Momodou Jasseh, 2004. "Adult mortality in sub-Saharan Africa: Evidence from demographic and health surveys," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 41(4), pages 757-772, November.
    8. Marijke Verpoorten & Lode Berlage, 2007. "Economic Mobility in Rural Rwanda: A Study of the Effects of War and Genocide at the Household Level," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 16(3), pages 349-392, June.
    9. Ward, Michael D. & Gleditsch, Kristian Skrede, 2002. "Location, Location, Location: An MCMC Approach to Modeling the Spatial Context of War and Peace," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 10(3), pages 244-260, July.
    10. repec:lic:licosd:25410 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Marijke Verpoorten, 2012. "Leave none to claim the land," Journal of Peace Research, Peace Research Institute Oslo, vol. 49(4), pages 547-563, July.
    12. Deon Filmer & Lant Pritchett, 2001. "Estimating Wealth Effects Without Expenditure Data—Or Tears: An Application To Educational Enrollments In States Of India," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 38(1), pages 115-132, February.
    13. repec:cai:poeine:pope_504_0331 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Hubert, Mia & Rousseeuw, Peter & Verdonck, Tim, 2009. "Robust PCA for skewed data and its outlier map," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 53(6), pages 2264-2274, April.
    15. Clionadh Raleigh & rew Linke & HÃ¥vard Hegre & Joakim Karlsen, 2010. "Introducing ACLED: An Armed Conflict Location and Event Dataset," Journal of Peace Research, Peace Research Institute Oslo, vol. 47(5), pages 651-660, September.
    16. Florence Kondylis, 2008. "Agricultural Outputs and Conflict Displacement: Evidence from a Policy Intervention in Rwanda," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 57(1), pages 31-66, October.
    17. Gonzalez, Maria A & Lopez, Rigoberto A, 2007. "Political Violence and Farm Household Efficiency in Colombia," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 55(2), pages 367-392, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Anderton Charles H. & Carter John R., 2015. "A New Look at Weak State Conditions and Genocide Risk," Peace Economics, Peace Science, and Public Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 21(1), pages 1-36, January.
    2. Bonnier, Evelina & Poulsen, Jonas & Rogall, Thorsten & Stryjan, Miri, 2015. "Preparing for Genocide: Community Work in Rwanda," Working Paper Series 2015:1, Uppsala University, Department of Economics.
    3. Giulia La Mattina, 2014. "Civil Conflict, Sex Ratio and Intimate Partner Violence in Rwanda," HiCN Working Papers 175, Households in Conflict Network.
    4. Bonnier, Evelina & Poulsen, Jonas & Rogall, Thorsten & Stryjan, Miri, 2020. "Preparing for genocide: Quasi-experimental evidence from Rwanda," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 147(C).
    5. Coutts, Alexander, 2024. "The age of consequences: Unraveling conflict's impact on social preferences, norm enforcement, and risk-taking," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 218(C), pages 48-67.
    6. Bundervoet, Tom & Fransen, Sonja, 2018. "The educational impact of shocks in utero: Evidence from Rwanda," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 88-101.
    7. Giulia La Mattina, 2014. "Civil Conflict, Sex Ratio and Intimate Partner Violence in Rwanda," Working Papers 0114, University of South Florida, Department of Economics.
    8. Willa Friedman, 2013. "Local Economic Conditions and Participation in the Rwandan Genocide," HiCN Working Papers 160, Households in Conflict Network.
    9. La Mattina, Giulia, 2018. "How persistent is the effect of conflict on primary education? Long-run evidence from the Rwandan genocide," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 163(C), pages 32-35.
    10. Hollie Nyseth Nzitatira & Jared F Edgerton & Laura C Frizzell, 2023. "Analyzing Participation in the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda," Journal of Peace Research, Peace Research Institute Oslo, vol. 60(2), pages 291-306, March.
    11. Leander Heldring, 2014. "State Capacity and Violence: Evidence from the Rwandan genocide," CSAE Working Paper Series 2014-08, Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. repec:lic:licosd:25610 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Serneels , Pieter & Verpoorten , Marijke, 2012. "The impact of armed conflict on economic performance. Evidence from Rwanda," NEPS Working Papers 5/2012, Network of European Peace Scientists.
    3. Christopher Blattman & Edward Miguel, 2010. "Civil War," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 48(1), pages 3-57, March.
    4. Christopher Blattman, 2009. "Civil War: A Review of Fifty Years of Research," Working Papers id:2231, eSocialSciences.
    5. Odozi, John Chiwuzulum & Oyelere, Ruth Uwaifo, 2019. "Conflict Exposure and Economic Welfare in Nigeria," GLO Discussion Paper Series 334, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    6. Büttner, Nicolas & Grimm, Michael & Soubeiga, Sidiki, 2022. "Political instability and households’ investment behavior: Evidence from Burkina Faso," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(2), pages 350-368.
    7. Marijke Verpoorten, 2014. "Growth, poverty and inequality in Rwanda: a broad perspective," Working Papers of LICOS - Centre for Institutions and Economic Performance 490896, KU Leuven, Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB), LICOS - Centre for Institutions and Economic Performance.
    8. Chiwuzulum Odozi, John & Uwaifo Oyelere, Ruth, 2019. "Violent Conflict Exposure in Nigeria and Economic Welfare," IZA Discussion Papers 12570, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    9. repec:lic:licosd:25410 is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Grossmann, Volker, 2008. "Risky human capital investment, income distribution, and macroeconomic dynamics," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 30(1), pages 19-42, March.
    11. Demir, Firat, 2006. "Volatility of short term capital flows and socio-political instability in Argentina, Mexico and Turkey," MPRA Paper 1943, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. repec:ehu:dfaeii:6468 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Giesing, Yvonne & Musić, Almedina, 2019. "Household behaviour in times of political change: Evidence from Egypt," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 259-276.
    14. Nguyen, Cuong Viet & Tran, Tuyen Quang & Van Vu, Huong, 2024. "The long-term effects of war on foreign direct investment and economic development: evidence from Vietnam," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 143(C).
    15. Muhammad Qasim & Zahid Pervaiz & Amatul Razzaq Chaudhary, 2020. "Do Poverty and Income Inequality Mediate the Association Between Agricultural Land Inequality and Human Development?," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 151(1), pages 115-134, August.
    16. Samer Matta & Simon Appleton & Michael Bleaney, 2019. "The Impact of the Arab Spring on the Tunisian Economy," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 33(1), pages 231-258.
    17. Sevastianova Daria, 2009. "Impact of War on Country per Capita GDP: A Descriptive Analysis," Peace Economics, Peace Science, and Public Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 15(1), pages 114-139, December.
    18. Alcántar-Toledo, Javier & Venieris, Yannis P., 2014. "Fiscal policy, growth, income distribution and sociopolitical instability," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 315-331.
    19. Andrea Guariso & Marijke Verpoorten, 2018. "Aid, trade and the post-war recovery of the Rwandan coffee sector," Journal of Eastern African Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 12(3), pages 552-574, July.
    20. Sotiris K. Papaioannou, 2020. "Political Instability and Economic Growth at Different Stages of Economic Development: historical evidence from Greece," GreeSE – Hellenic Observatory Papers on Greece and Southeast Europe 151, Hellenic Observatory, LSE.
    21. Posso, Alberto, 2023. "Terrorism, banking, and informal savings: Evidence from Nigeria," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 150(C).
    22. Gupta, Sanjeev & Clements, Benedict & Bhattacharya, Rina & Chakravarti, Shamit, 2004. "Fiscal consequences of armed conflict and terrorism in low- and middle-income countries," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 403-421, June.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bpj:pepspp:v:18:y:2012:i:1:n:2. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Peter Golla (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.degruyter.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.