Role Expectations as Motivators of Mass Violence Perpetration : A Normative Approach to Understanding Perpetrator Behaviour During the Yugoslav Wars from 1991–1995

Abstract: The enduring question of why apparently ordinary individuals participate in the systemic perpetration of mass violence hallmarks genocide studies, and it arose yet again when the multifarious atrocities faced by civilians in the Yugoslav Wars of 1991–1995 were apparent. With explanations resting on notions of “ancient hatreds” having been denounced in favour of ones that emphasise the role of emotions like fear and resentment, ethnic myths and symbols, and competition on group and individual levels of society, there remains some issues with these approaches; they cannot account for what motivates variations in behaviour by on-the-ground perpetrators nor can they describe the process by which violence develops in tandem on micro- and meso-levels, while still accommodating macro-level causes for conflict. In this thesis, symbolic interactionist and social constructivist theories of social roles and social norms are applied in the search for finding the motives for violent behaviour by perpetrators in the Yugoslav Wars of 1991–1995 to establish a more complete understanding the dynamics of individual decision-making and collective action in the context of violence. A directed qualitative content analysis is conducted of testimony provided by twenty-nine on-the-ground perpetrators and by select witnesses. This testimony was collected from the Hugo Valentin Centre’s database of court transcripts from the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. The research revealed that the (dis-)organisation of the perpetrating groups’ social structures, as well as the presence, or lack thereof, of both role strain and role conflict were deciding factors in motivating violent behaviour.