[go: up one dir, main page]

  EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Malthus in Rwanda? Scarcity, Survival and Causes of the Genocide

David Yanagizawa-Drott

No 201, Working Papers in Economics from University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics

Abstract: This paper does two things. First, it develops a game theoretical model over population groups that optimize their survival under resource scarce conditions. The model includes two rather obvious, but in the theoretical literature neglected, strategies - survival by migration and, once a conflict is ignited, survival by taking refuge. Results include determinants of migration and refugee flows, the threshold for violent conflict and its intensity. Second, it derives the necessary and sufficient conditions for a genocide and applies the model in order to analyze the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. It suggests that the extremist regime that seized power on April 6th 1994, while being on a genocide agenda exploited the underlying resource scarce conditions by way of forcefully destroying property rights and massively support appropriative actions, thereby facilitating the killings and persecutions of Tutsis on the scale of a genocide. Finally, key to understanding the scope of the genocide in 1994, is suggested to be that the extremist regime was not only the active support of appropriative actions, but the simultaneous and deliberate destroying of the refugee infrastructure. The difference in the level of refugee infrastucture can possibly explain why earlier violent episodes had lower conflict intensity although sharing some similar characteristics.

Keywords: Genocide; Conflict; Rwanda; Resource Scarcity; Malthus (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D74 N47 Q29 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 29 pages
Date: 2006-03-28, Revised 2006-08-31
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/2077/2716 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:gunwpe:0201

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers in Economics from University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics Department of Economics, School of Business, Economics and Law, University of Gothenburg, Box 640, SE 405 30 GÖTEBORG, Sweden. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jessica Oscarsson ().

 
Page updated 2024-12-23
Handle: RePEc:hhs:gunwpe:0201