Coerced Concessions: : Does Government Mass Killing of Civilians Affect Rebel Groups’ War Aims?

Abstract: A government’s choice to kill civilians on a massive scale in civil wars has long been a puzzling phenomenon. Although the scholarly discussion on the motives behind such actions has been growing in the last decades, the understanding of the impact of mass killings is still limited. This thesis aspires to contribute to the understanding of the consequences of civilian victimization by asking “How does government mass killing of civilians affect military power-sharing in peace agreements?”. The hypothesis predicts that governments can use mass killing of civilians to indirectly pressure rebels to concede on their war aims and sign a peace agreement in order to stop the civilian victimization. The focus is on rebels’ war aims concerning military power-sharing, and to what degree the mass killing can lower the rebels’ demands on this aspect. Eight peace agreements have been selected, where four of them had government mass killing and the other four did not. This is to ensure variation on the independent variable. This thesis uses a structured focus comparison of the eight civil war peace agreements to test the hypothesis. The empirical results do not confirm the hypothesis, as no correlation is seen between the relationship of interest, rather, it contradicts it slightly.