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Mass killing is the term defined by a genocide scholar Ervin Staub as "killing members of a group without the intention to eliminate the whole group or killing large numbers of people without a precise definition of group membership."^[1]^{[nb 1]} This term is used by a number of genocide scholars because the term "genocide" (its strict definition) does not cover mass killing events when no specific ethnic or religious group is targeted, and when perpetrators are not intended to eliminate of the whole group or its significant part. This article primarily discusses different models used by genocide scholars to explain and predict the onset of mass killing events.

Terminology

No generally accepted terminology exists to describe killing of large numbers of noncombatants.^[3] Below are listed the terms used by genocide scholars to describe mass killings.

Mass killing Referencing earlier definitions^{[nb 2]}, Joan Esteban, Massimo Morelli and Dominic Rohner have defined mass killings as "the killings of substantial numbers of human beings, when not in the course of military action against the military forces of an avowed enemy, under the conditions of the essential defenselessness and helplessness of the victims".^[6] The term has been defined by Benjamin Valentino as "the intentional killing of a massive number of noncombatants", where a "massive number" is defined as at least 50,000 intentional deaths over the course of five years or less.^[7] This is the most accepted quantitative minimum threshold for the term.^[6] ^[8] "^[9]^{[nb 3]}
Genocide – under the Genocide Convention, the crime of genocide generally applies to mass murder of ethnic rather than political or social groups. Protection of political groups was eliminated from the UN resolution after a second vote, because many states^[10] anticipated that clause to apply unneeded limitations to their right to suppress internal disturbances.^[11] Genocide is also a popular term for mass political killing, which is studied academically as democide and politicide.^[9]
Politicide – the term "politicide" is used to describe the killing of groups that would not otherwise be covered by the Genocide Convention.^[12] Barbara Harff studies "genocide and politicide", sometimes shortened as geno-politicide, to include the mass killing of political, economic, ethnic and cultural groups.^[9]
Democide – R. J. Rummel defines democide as "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".^[13] According to him, this definition covers a wide range of deaths, including forced labor and concentration camp victims; killings by "unofficial" private groups; extrajudicial summary killings; and mass deaths in deliberate famines, as well as killings by de facto governments, i.e. civil war killings.^[13]^[14]

Rummel's "democide" concept is very similar to "geno-politicide", however there are two important differences. First, an important prerequisite for geno-politicide is government's intent to destroy a specific group.^[15] In contrast, "democide" deals with wider range of cases, including the cases when governments are engaged in random killing either directly or due to the acts of criminal omission and neglect.^[13]

Second, whereas some lower threshold exists for a killing event to be considered "geno-politicide" (Valentino uses 50,000/five years, other authors use lower threshold), there is no low threshold for democide, which covers any murder of any number of persons by any government.^[13]

A more special term, Classicide, was proposed by Michael Mann to describe the "intended mass killing of entire social classes".^[16]^{[nb 4]}

Dispossessive vs coercive mass killings

Benjamen Valentino, who sees ruler's motives as the key factor explaining the onset of mass killings, outlines two major category of mass killings, dispossessive mass killings and coercive mass killings.^[18] The first category included ethnic cleansing, killings that accompany agrarian reforms in some states led by communists, mass killings during colonial expansion, etc. The second category includes mass killings during counter-guerilla warfare, killings during the Axis imperialist conquests during the World War II, etc. Although Valentino does not consider ideology or regime type as an important factor that explains mass killings,^[19] he outlines communist mass killings as a subtype of dispossessive mass killings, which is considered as a complication of original theory his book is based on.^[9]

Global databases of mass killings

Two global databases are currently available, one, collected by Rudolph Rummel, covers a time period from the beginning of XX century till 1977, and and another one, collected by Barbara Harff, combines all mass killing events since 1955; the later database is the most frequently used by genocide scholars.^[9] These data are intended mostly for statistical analysis of mass killings in attempt to identify the best predictor for their onset. According to Harff, since these data are assembled globally, they combine all available estimates for each country, and, taking into account that genocide scholars are not specialists in history of each concrete country, these data cannot cannot be considered the most accurate data for each particular country.^[13] A comparative analysis of these two databases revealed a significant difference between the figures of killed per years and low correlation between Rummel's and Harff's data sets. In particular, Rummel's data are skewed to in the direction of highest values^[13] due to the intrinsic flaws of the statistical methodology used by Rummel.^[20] Anticipating possible criticism of inaccuracy, Harff noted, as soon as these data are used for obtaining global patterns and text the models that predict mass killing onset, these databases serve their goal well, and an absolute precision is neither required nor expected. ^[13]

**Genocides and Politicides from 1955 to 2001**^[15]
Country and date	Nature of episode	Estimated number of victims
Sudan, 10/56-3/72	Politicide with communal victims	400,000-600,000
South Vietnam, 1/65-4/75	Politicide	400,000-500,000
China, 3/59-12/59	Genocide and politicide	65,000
Iraq, 6/63-3/75	Politicide with communal victims	30,000-60,000
Algeria, 7/62-12/62	Politicide	9,000-30,000
Rwanda, 12/63-6/64	Politicide with communal victims	12,000-20,000
Congo-K, 2/64-1/65	Politicide	1,000-10,000
Burundi, 10/65-12/73	Politicide with communal victims	140,000
Indonesia, 11/65-7/66	Genocide and politicide	500,000-1,000,000
China, 5/66-3/75	Politicide	400,000-850,000
Guatemala, 7/78-12/96	Politicide and genocide	60,000-200,000
Pakistan, 3/71-12/71	Politicide with communal victims	1,000,000-3,000,000
Uganda, 2/72-4/79	Politicide and genocide	50,000-400,000
Philippines, 9/72-6/76	Politicide with communal victims	60,000
Pakistan, 2/73-7/77	Politicide with communal victims	5,000-10,000
Chile, 9/73-12/76	Politicide	5,000-10,000
Angola, 11/75-2001	Politicide by UNITA and government forces	500,000
Cambodia, 4/75-1/79	Politicide and genocide	1,900,000-3,500,000
Indonesia, 12/75-7/92	Politicide with communal victims	100,000-200,000
Argentina, 3/76-12/80	Politicide	9,000-20,000
Ethiopia, 7/76-12/79	Politicide	10,000
Congo-K, 3/77-12/79	Politicide with communal victims	3,000-4,000
Afghanistan, 4/78-4/92	Politicide	1,800,000
Burma, 1/78-12/78	Genocide	5,000
El. Salvador, 1/80-12/89	Politicide	40,000-60,000
Uganda, 12/80-1/86	Politicide and genocide	200,000-500,000
Syria, 4/81-2/82	Politicide	5,000-30,000
Iran, 6/81-12/92	Politicide and genocide	10,000-20,000
Sudan, 9/83-	Politicide with communal victims	2,000,000
Iraq, 3/88-6/91	Politicide with communal victims	180,000
Somalia, 5/88-1/91	Politicide with communal victims	15,000-50,000
Burundi, 1988	Genocide	5,000-20,000
Sri Lanka, 9/89-1/90	Politicide	13,000-30,000
Bosnia, 5/92-11/95	Genocide	225,000
Burundi, 10/93-5/94	Genocide	50,000
Rwanda, 4/94-7/94	Genocide	500,000-1,000,000
Serbia, 12/98-7/99	Politicide with communal victims	10,000

Explanation of the onset of mass killings

The term "mass killing" was proposed by genocide scholars in attempts to collect a uniform global database of genocidal events and identify statistical models for prediction of onset of mass killings.

Frank Wayman and Atsushi Tago use the term "mass killing" as defined by Valentino, and they concluded that, even with a lower threshold (10,000 killed per year, 1,000 killed per year, or even 1), "autocratic regimes, especially communist, are prone to mass killing generically, but not so strongly inclined (i.e. not statistically significantly inclined) toward geno-politicide.

References

^ "In contrast to genocide, I see mass killing as 'killing (or in other ways destroying) members of a group without the intention to eliminate the whole group, or killing large numbers of people' without a focus on group membership."^[2]
^ In the Encyclopedia of Genocide (1999), Israel Charny defined generic genocide as "the mass killing of substantial numbers of human beings, when not in the course of military action against the military forces of an avowed enemy, under conditions of the essential defenselessness and helplessness of the victims."^[4] In the 2006 article "Development, democracy, and mass killings", William Easterly, Roberta Gatti and Sergio Kurlat adopted Charny's definition of generic genocide for their use of "mass killing" and "massacre" to avoid the politics of the term "genocide" altogether.^[5]
^ "Our term, 'mass killing', is used by Valentino (2004: 10), who aptly defines it as 'the intentional killing of a massive number of noncombatants'. The word 'noncombatants' distinguishes mass killing from battle-deaths in war, which occur as combatants fight against each other. The 'massive number' he selects as the threshold to mass killing is 'at least fifty thousand intentional deaths over the course of five or fewer years' (Valentino, 2004: 11-12), which of course averages to at least 10,000 killed per year." ... " One reason for selecting these thresholds of 10,000 and 1,000 deaths per year is that we find that in the Harff data on geno-politicide, which are one of our key datasets, there are many cases of over 10,000 killed per year, but also some in which between 1,000 and 10,000 are killed per year. Therefore, analyzing at a 1,000-death threshold (as well as the 10,000 threshold) insures the inclusion of all the Harff cases. Valentino chooses 50,000 over five years as 'to some extent arbitrary', but a 'relatively high threshold' to create high confidence that mass killing did occur and was deliberate, 'given the generally poor quality of the data available on civilian fatalities' (Valentino, 2004: 12). We believe that our similar results, when we lower the threshold to 1,000 killed per year, are an indication that the data in Harff and in Rummel remain reliable down even one power of ten below Valentino's 'relatively high' selected threshold, and we hope that, in that sense, our results can be seen as a friendly amendment to his work, and that they basically lend confidence, based on empirical statistical backing, for the conceptual direction which he elected to take." ... "Within that constant research design, we then showed that the differences were not due to threshold either (over 10,000 killed per year; over 1,000; or over 1). The only remaining difference is the measure of mass killing itself - democide vs. geno-politicide."^[9]
^ "Mann thus establishes a sort of parallel between racial enemies and class enemies, thereby contributing to the debates on comparisons between Nazism and communism. This theory has also been developed by some French historians such as Stéphane Courtois and Jean-Louis Margolin in The Black Book of Communism: they view class genocide as the equivalent to racial genocide. Mann however refuses to use the term 'genocide' to describe the crimes committed under communism. He prefers the terms 'fratricide' and 'classicide', a word he coined to refer to intentional mass killings of entire social classes."^[17]

^ Staub, Ervin (1989). The Roots of Evil: The Origins of Genocide and Other Group Violence. Cambridge University Press. p. 8. ISBN 978-0-521-42214-7.
^ Staub, Ervin (2011). Overcoming Evil: Genocide, Violent Conflict, and Terrorism. Oxford University Press. p. 100. ISBN 978-0-195-38204-4.
^ Valentino (2005) Final solutions p. 9
^ Charny, Israel (ed). (1999). Encyclopedia of Genocide, Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio.
^ Easterly, William, Roberta Gatti and Sergio Kurlat. (2006). "Development, democracy, and mass killings", Journal of Economic Growth 11: 129-56.
^ ^a ^b Esteban, Joan Maria, Morelli, Massimo and Rohner, Dominic, Strategic Mass Killings (May 11, 2010). Institute for Empirical Research in Economics, University of Zurich Working Paper No. 486. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1615375
^ Benjamin Valentino, Paul Huth, Dylan Bach-Lindsay, (2004), "Draining the Sea: mass killing and guerrilla warfare," International Organization 58,2 (375–407): p. 387.
^ Valentino (2005) Final solutions p. 91.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f Wayman, FW; Tago, A (2009). "Explaining the onset of mass killing, 1949–87". Journal of Peace Research Online: 1–17.
^ Jones (2010) Genocide p. 137.
^ Beth van Schaack. The Crime of Political Genocide: Repairing the Genocide Convention's Blind Spot. The Yale Law Journal, Vol. 106, No. 7 (May 1997), pp. 2259‒2291.
^ Harff, Barbara; Gurr, Ted R. (1988). "Toward Empirical Theory of Genocides and Politicides: Identification and Measurement of Cases since 1945". 32: 359–371. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g Barbara Harff. The Comparative Analysis of Mass Atrocities and Genocide. Chapter 12. p. 112-115. in N.P. Gleditsch (ed.), R.J. Rummel: An Assessment of His Many Contributions, SpringerBriefs on Pioneers in Science and Practice 37, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-54463-2. [1]
^ Barbara Harff. Death by Government by R. J. Rummel. The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 27, No. 1 (Summer, 1996), pp. 117‒119. Published by: The MIT Press. Stable URL: [2]
^ ^a ^b Barbara Harff. No Lessons Learned from the Holocaust? Assessing Risks of Genocide and Political MassMurder since 1955. The American Political Science Review, Vol. 97, No. 1 (Feb., 2003), pp. 57-73. Published by: American Political Science Association. Stable URL: [3]
^ Mann (2005) Dark Side of Democracy p. 17.
^ Semelin (2009) Purify and Destroy p. 37.
^ Valentino (2005) Final solutions p. 70.
^ Scott Straus. Review: Second-Generation Comparative Research on Genocide. Reviewed Work(s): Genocide in the Age of the Nation State by Mark Levene; The Dark Sideof Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing by Michael Mann; The Killing Trap: Genocide inthe Twentieth Century by Manus I. Midlarsky; Purifier et détruire: Usages politiques desmassacres et génocides by Jacques Sémelin; Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide inthe Twentieth Century by Benjamin A. Valentino; A Century of Genocide: Utopias of Raceand Nation by Eric D. Weitz. World Politics, Vol. 59, No. 3 (Apr., 2007), pp. 476-501. Published by: Cambridge University Press. Stable URL: [4]
^ Tomislav Dulić. Tito's Slaughterhouse: A Critical Analysis of Rummel's Work on Democide, Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 41, No. 1 (Jan., 2004), pp. 85‒102. Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd. Stable URL: [5]

[3] "In contrast to genocide, I see mass killing as 'killing (or in other ways destroying) members of a group without the intention to eliminate the whole group, or killing large numbers of people' without a focus on group membership."^[2]

[7] In the Encyclopedia of Genocide (1999), Israel Charny defined generic genocide as "the mass killing of substantial numbers of human beings, when not in the course of military action against the military forces of an avowed enemy, under conditions of the essential defenselessness and helplessness of the victims."^[4] In the 2006 article "Development, democracy, and mass killings", William Easterly, Roberta Gatti and Sergio Kurlat adopted Charny's definition of generic genocide for their use of "mass killing" and "massacre" to avoid the politics of the term "genocide" altogether.^[5]

[12] "Our term, 'mass killing', is used by Valentino (2004: 10), who aptly defines it as 'the intentional killing of a massive number of noncombatants'. The word 'noncombatants' distinguishes mass killing from battle-deaths in war, which occur as combatants fight against each other. The 'massive number' he selects as the threshold to mass killing is 'at least fifty thousand intentional deaths over the course of five or fewer years' (Valentino, 2004: 11-12), which of course averages to at least 10,000 killed per year." ... " One reason for selecting these thresholds of 10,000 and 1,000 deaths per year is that we find that in the Harff data on geno-politicide, which are one of our key datasets, there are many cases of over 10,000 killed per year, but also some in which between 1,000 and 10,000 are killed per year. Therefore, analyzing at a 1,000-death threshold (as well as the 10,000 threshold) insures the inclusion of all the Harff cases. Valentino chooses 50,000 over five years as 'to some extent arbitrary', but a 'relatively high threshold' to create high confidence that mass killing did occur and was deliberate, 'given the generally poor quality of the data available on civilian fatalities' (Valentino, 2004: 12). We believe that our similar results, when we lower the threshold to 1,000 killed per year, are an indication that the data in Harff and in Rummel remain reliable down even one power of ten below Valentino's 'relatively high' selected threshold, and we hope that, in that sense, our results can be seen as a friendly amendment to his work, and that they basically lend confidence, based on empirical statistical backing, for the conceptual direction which he elected to take." ... "Within that constant research design, we then showed that the differences were not due to threshold either (over 10,000 killed per year; over 1,000; or over 1). The only remaining difference is the measure of mass killing itself - democide vs. geno-politicide."^[9]

[21] "Mann thus establishes a sort of parallel between racial enemies and class enemies, thereby contributing to the debates on comparisons between Nazism and communism. This theory has also been developed by some French historians such as Stéphane Courtois and Jean-Louis Margolin in The Black Book of Communism: they view class genocide as the equivalent to racial genocide. Mann however refuses to use the term 'genocide' to describe the crimes committed under communism. He prefers the terms 'fratricide' and 'classicide', a word he coined to refer to intentional mass killings of entire social classes."^[17]

[Staub1-1] Staub, Ervin (1989). The Roots of Evil: The Origins of Genocide and Other Group Violence. Cambridge University Press. p. 8. ISBN 978-0-521-42214-7.

[Staub2-2] Staub, Ervin (2011). Overcoming Evil: Genocide, Violent Conflict, and Terrorism. Oxford University Press. p. 100. ISBN 978-0-195-38204-4.

[4] Valentino (2005) Final solutions p. 9

[Charny-5] Charny, Israel (ed). (1999). Encyclopedia of Genocide, Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio.

[Easterly-6] Easterly, William, Roberta Gatti and Sergio Kurlat. (2006). "Development, democracy, and mass killings", Journal of Economic Growth 11: 129-56.

[Esteban-8] Esteban, Joan Maria, Morelli, Massimo and Rohner, Dominic, Strategic Mass Killings (May 11, 2010). Institute for Empirical Research in Economics, University of Zurich Working Paper No. 486. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1615375

[9] Benjamin Valentino, Paul Huth, Dylan Bach-Lindsay, (2004), "Draining the Sea: mass killing and guerrilla warfare," International Organization 58,2 (375–407): p. 387.

[10] Valentino (2005) Final solutions p. 91.

[Tago-11] ^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f Wayman, FW; Tago, A (2009). "Explaining the onset of mass killing, 1949–87". Journal of Peace Research Online: 1–17.

[13] Jones (2010) Genocide p. 137.

[14] Beth van Schaack. The Crime of Political Genocide: Repairing the Genocide Convention's Blind Spot. The Yale Law Journal, Vol. 106, No. 7 (May 1997), pp. 2259‒2291.

[harffgurr-15] Harff, Barbara; Gurr, Ted R. (1988). "Toward Empirical Theory of Genocides and Politicides: Identification and Measurement of Cases since 1945". 32: 359–371. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)

[harff@rummel2-16] ^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g Barbara Harff. The Comparative Analysis of Mass Atrocities and Genocide. Chapter 12. p. 112-115. in N.P. Gleditsch (ed.), R.J. Rummel: An Assessment of His Many Contributions, SpringerBriefs on Pioneers in Science and Practice 37, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-54463-2. [1]

[Harff@Rummel-17] Barbara Harff. Death by Government by R. J. Rummel. The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 27, No. 1 (Summer, 1996), pp. 117‒119. Published by: The MIT Press. Stable URL: [2]

[harff-t-18] Barbara Harff. No Lessons Learned from the Holocaust? Assessing Risks of Genocide and Political MassMurder since 1955. The American Political Science Review, Vol. 97, No. 1 (Feb., 2003), pp. 57-73. Published by: American Political Science Association. Stable URL: [3]

[19] Mann (2005) Dark Side of Democracy p. 17.

[20] Semelin (2009) Purify and Destroy p. 37.

[22] Valentino (2005) Final solutions p. 70.

[23] Scott Straus. Review: Second-Generation Comparative Research on Genocide. Reviewed Work(s): Genocide in the Age of the Nation State by Mark Levene; The Dark Sideof Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing by Michael Mann; The Killing Trap: Genocide inthe Twentieth Century by Manus I. Midlarsky; Purifier et détruire: Usages politiques desmassacres et génocides by Jacques Sémelin; Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide inthe Twentieth Century by Benjamin A. Valentino; A Century of Genocide: Utopias of Raceand Nation by Eric D. Weitz. World Politics, Vol. 59, No. 3 (Apr., 2007), pp. 476-501. Published by: Cambridge University Press. Stable URL: [4]

[dulic-24] Tomislav Dulić. Tito's Slaughterhouse: A Critical Analysis of Rummel's Work on Democide, Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 41, No. 1 (Jan., 2004), pp. 85‒102. Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd. Stable URL: [5]

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+'''Mass killing''' is the term defined by a genocide scholar [[Ervin Staub]] as "killing members of a group without the intention to eliminate the whole group or killing large numbers of people without a precise definition of group membership."<ref name="Staub1">{{Cite book|last =Staub|first =Ervin|authorlink = |title =The Roots of Evil: The Origins of Genocide and Other Group Violence|publisher =Cambridge University Press|year =1989|location = |pages =8|url =https://books.google.com/books?id=d0FHWmChRYgC|doi =   |isbn =978-0-521-42214-7}}</ref>{{refn|group=nb|"In contrast to genocide, I see mass killing as 'killing (or in other ways destroying) members of a group without the intention to eliminate the whole group, or killing large numbers of people' without a focus on group membership."<ref name="Staub2">{{Cite book|last =Staub|first =Ervin|authorlink = |title =Overcoming Evil: Genocide, Violent Conflict, and Terrorism|publisher =Oxford University Press|year =2011|location = |pages =100|url =https://books.google.com/books?id=WcxhGuq7VY8C|doi =   |isbn =978-0-195-38204-4}}</ref>}} This term is used by a number of genocide scholars because the term "[[Genocide|genocide]]" (its strict definition) does not cover mass killing events when no specific ethnic or religious group is targeted, and when perpetrators are not intended to eliminate of the whole group or its significant part. This article primarily discusses different models used by genocide scholars to explain and predict the onset of mass killing events.
-#REDIRECT [[Mass murder]]
+==Terminology==
+No generally accepted terminology exists to describe killing of large numbers of noncombatants.<ref>[[#Valentino2005FinalSolutions|Valentino (2005) ''Final solutions'']] p. 9</ref> Below are listed the terms used by genocide scholars to describe mass killings.
+* '''Mass killing''' Referencing earlier definitions{{refn|group=nb|In the Encyclopedia of Genocide (1999), Israel Charny defined generic genocide as "the mass killing of substantial numbers of human beings, when not in the course of military action against the military forces of an avowed enemy, under conditions of the essential defenselessness and helplessness of the victims."<ref name="Charny">Charny, Israel (ed). (1999). [https://books.google.com/books?id=8Q30HcvCVuIC&source=gbs_navlinks_s Encyclopedia of Genocide], Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio.</ref> In the 2006 article "Development, democracy, and mass killings", William Easterly, Roberta Gatti and Sergio Kurlat adopted Charny's definition of generic genocide for their use of "mass killing" and "massacre" to avoid the politics of the term "genocide" altogether.<ref name="Easterly">Easterly, William, Roberta Gatti and Sergio Kurlat. (2006). [http://williameasterly.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/46_easterly_gatti_kurlat_developmentdemocracymasskillings_prp.pdf "Development, democracy, and mass killings"], Journal of Economic Growth 11: 129-56.</ref>}}, Joan Esteban, Massimo Morelli and Dominic Rohner have defined ''mass killings'' as "the killings of substantial numbers of human beings, when not in the course of military action against the military forces of an avowed enemy, under the conditions of the essential defenselessness and helplessness of the victims".<ref name="Esteban">Esteban, Joan Maria, Morelli, Massimo and Rohner, Dominic, Strategic Mass Killings (May 11, 2010). Institute for Empirical Research in Economics, University of Zurich Working Paper No. 486. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1615375</ref> The term has been defined by Benjamin Valentino as "the intentional killing of a massive number of noncombatants", where a "massive number" is defined as at least 50,000 intentional deaths over the course of five years or less.<ref>Benjamin Valentino, Paul Huth, Dylan Bach-Lindsay, (2004), "Draining the Sea: mass killing and guerrilla warfare," ''International Organization'' 58,2 (375–407): p. 387.</ref> This is the most accepted quantitative minimum threshold for the term.<ref name="Esteban"/> <ref>[[#Valentino2005FinalSolutions|Valentino (2005) ''Final solutions'']] p. 91.</ref> "<ref name="Tago">{{Cite journal|first1=FW|last1=Wayman|first2=A|last2=Tago|title=Explaining the onset of mass killing, 1949–87|journal=Journal of Peace Research Online|year=2009|pages=1–17}}</ref>{{refn|group=nb|"Our term, 'mass killing', is used by Valentino (2004: 10), who aptly defines it as 'the intentional killing of a massive number of noncombatants'. The word 'noncombatants' distinguishes mass killing from battle-deaths in war, which occur as combatants fight against each other. The 'massive number' he selects as the threshold to mass killing is 'at least fifty thousand intentional deaths over the course of five or fewer years' (Valentino, 2004: 11-12), which of course averages to at least 10,000 killed per year." ... " One reason for selecting these thresholds of 10,000 and 1,000 deaths per year is that we find that in the Harff data on geno-politicide, which are one of our key datasets, there are many cases of over 10,000 killed per year, but also some in which between 1,000 and 10,000 are killed per year. Therefore, analyzing at a 1,000-death threshold (as well as the 10,000 threshold) insures the inclusion of all the Harff cases. Valentino chooses 50,000 over five years as 'to some extent arbitrary', but a 'relatively high threshold' to create high confidence that mass killing did occur and was deliberate, 'given the generally poor quality of the data available on civilian fatalities' (Valentino, 2004: 12). We believe that our similar results, when we lower the threshold to 1,000 killed per year, are an indication that the data in Harff and in Rummel remain reliable down even one power of ten below Valentino's 'relatively high' selected threshold, and we hope that, in that sense, our results can be seen as a friendly amendment to his work, and that they basically lend confidence, based on empirical statistical backing, for the conceptual direction which he elected to take." ... "Within that constant research design, we then showed that the differences were not due to threshold either (over 10,000 killed per year; over 1,000; or over 1). The only remaining difference is the measure of mass killing itself - democide vs. geno-politicide."<ref name=Tago/>}}
+*[[Genocide]] – under the [[Genocide Convention]], the [[Genocide#Genocide as a crime|crime of genocide]] generally applies to mass murder of [[Ethnic group|ethnic]] rather than political or social groups. Protection of political groups was eliminated from the UN resolution after a second vote, because many states<ref>[[#Jones2010Genocide|Jones (2010) ''Genocide'']] p. 137.</ref> anticipated that clause to apply unneeded limitations to their right to suppress internal disturbances.<ref>Beth van Schaack. The Crime of Political Genocide: Repairing the Genocide Convention's Blind Spot. ''The Yale Law Journal'', Vol. 106, No. 7 (May 1997), pp. 2259‒2291.</ref> ''Genocide'' is also a popular term for mass political killing, which is studied academically as ''democide'' and ''politicide''.<ref name="Tago"/>
+*[[Politicide]] – the term "politicide" is used to describe the killing of groups that would not otherwise be covered by the Genocide Convention.<ref name="harffgurr">{{Cite journal|last=Harff|first=Barbara|first2=Ted R.|year=1988|title=Toward Empirical Theory of Genocides and Politicides: Identification and Measurement of Cases since 1945|volume=32|pages=359–371|journal=|last2=Gurr}}</ref> Barbara Harff studies "genocide and politicide", sometimes shortened as '''geno-politicide''', to include the mass killing of political, economic, ethnic and cultural groups.<ref name="Tago"/>
+*[[Democide]] – [[R. J. Rummel]] defines democide as "''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''".<ref name="harff@rummel2">Barbara Harff. The Comparative Analysis of Mass Atrocities and Genocide. Chapter 12. p. 112-115. in N.P. Gleditsch (ed.), R.J. Rummel: An Assessment of His Many Contributions, SpringerBriefs on Pioneers in Science and Practice 37, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-54463-2. [http://afes-press-books.de/html/SpringerBriefs_PSP_Rummel.htm]</ref> According to him, this definition covers a wide range of deaths, including forced labor and concentration camp victims; killings by "unofficial" private groups; extrajudicial summary killings; and mass deaths in deliberate famines, as well as killings by ''de facto'' governments, i.e. civil war killings.<ref name="harff@rummel2"/><ref name="Harff@Rummel">Barbara Harff. Death by Government by R. J. Rummel. ''The Journal of Interdisciplinary History'', Vol. 27, No. 1 (Summer, 1996), pp. 117‒119. Published by: The MIT Press. Stable URL: [https://www.jstor.org/stable/206491]</ref>
+:Rummel's "democide" concept is very similar to "geno-politicide", however there are two important differences. First, an important prerequisite for geno-politicide is government's intent to destroy a specific group.<ref name=harff-t/> In contrast, "democide" deals with wider range of cases, including the cases when governments are engaged in random killing either directly or due to the acts of criminal omission and neglect.<ref name="harff@rummel2"/>
+:Second, whereas some lower threshold exists for a killing event to be considered "geno-politicide" (Valentino uses 50,000/five years, other authors use lower threshold), there is no low threshold for democide, which covers any murder of any number of persons by any government.<ref name="harff@rummel2"/>
+:A more special term, [[Classicide]], was proposed by Michael Mann  to describe the "intended mass killing of entire social classes".<ref>[[#Mann2005DarkSideofDemocracy|Mann (2005) ''Dark Side of Democracy'']] p. 17.</ref>{{refn|group=nb|"Mann thus establishes a sort of parallel between racial enemies and class enemies, thereby contributing to the debates on comparisons between Nazism and communism. This theory has also been developed by some French historians such as Stéphane Courtois and Jean-Louis Margolin in ''The Black Book of Communism'': they view class genocide as the equivalent to racial genocide. Mann however refuses to use the term 'genocide' to describe the crimes committed under communism. He prefers the terms 'fratricide' and 'classicide', a word he coined to refer to intentional mass killings of entire social classes."<ref>[[#Semelin2009PurifyandDestroy|Semelin (2009) ''Purify and Destroy'']] p. 37.</ref>}}
+===Dispossessive ''vs'' coercive mass killings===
+Benjamen Valentino, who sees ruler's motives as the key factor explaining the onset of mass killings, outlines two major category of mass killings, dispossessive mass killings and coercive mass killings.<ref>[[#Valentino2005FinalSolutions|Valentino (2005) ''Final solutions'']] p. 70.</ref> The first category included ethnic cleansing, killings that accompany agrarian reforms in some states led by communists, mass killings during colonial expansion, etc. The second category includes mass killings during counter-guerilla warfare, killings during the Axis imperialist conquests during the [[World  War II]], etc. Although Valentino does not consider ideology or regime type as an important factor that explains mass killings,<ref>Scott Straus. Review: Second-Generation Comparative Research on Genocide. Reviewed Work(s): Genocide in the Age of the Nation State by Mark Levene; The Dark Sideof Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing by Michael Mann; The Killing Trap: Genocide inthe Twentieth Century by Manus I. Midlarsky; Purifier et détruire: Usages politiques desmassacres et génocides by Jacques Sémelin; Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide inthe Twentieth Century by Benjamin A. Valentino; A Century of Genocide: Utopias of Raceand Nation by Eric D. Weitz. ''World Politics'', Vol. 59, No. 3 (Apr., 2007), pp. 476-501. Published by: Cambridge University Press. Stable URL: [http://www.jstor.org/stable/40060166]</ref> he outlines [[Mass killings under communist regimes|communist mass killings]] as a subtype of dispossessive mass killings, which is considered as a complication of original theory his book is based on.<ref name=Tago/>
+==Global databases of mass killings==
+Two global databases are currently available, one, collected by [[Rudolph Rummel]], covers a time period from the beginning of XX century till 1977, and and another one, collected by [[Barbara Harff]], combines all mass killing events since 1955; the later database is the most frequently used by genocide scholars.<ref name="Tago"/> These data are intended mostly for statistical analysis of mass killings in attempt to identify the best predictor for their onset. According to Harff, since these data are assembled globally, they combine all available estimates for each country, and, taking into account that genocide scholars are not specialists in history of each concrete country, these data cannot cannot be considered the most accurate data for each particular country.<ref name="harff@rummel2"/> A comparative analysis of these two databases revealed a significant difference between the figures of killed per years and low correlation between  Rummel's and Harff's data sets. In particular, Rummel's data are skewed to in the direction of highest values<ref name="harff@rummel2"/> due to the intrinsic flaws of the statistical methodology used by Rummel.<ref name="dulic">Tomislav Dulić. Tito's Slaughterhouse: A Critical Analysis of Rummel's Work on Democide, ''Journal of Peace Research'', Vol. 41, No. 1 (Jan., 2004), pp. 85‒102. Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd. Stable URL: [https://www.jstor.org/stable/4149657]</ref> Anticipating possible criticism of inaccuracy, Harff noted, as soon as these data are used for obtaining global patterns and text the models that predict mass killing onset, these databases serve their goal well, and an absolute precision is neither required nor expected.
+<ref name="harff@rummel2"/>
+{| class="wikitable"
+|-
+|+'''Genocides and Politicides from 1955 to 2001'''<ref name=harff-t>Barbara Harff. No Lessons Learned from the Holocaust? Assessing Risks of Genocide and Political MassMurder since 1955. ''The American Political Science Review'', Vol. 97, No. 1 (Feb., 2003), pp. 57-73. Published by: American Political Science Association. Stable URL: [http://www.jstor.org/stable/3118221]</ref>
+|-
+|'''Country and date''' ||  '''Nature of episode''' || '''Estimated number of victims'''
+|-
+|Sudan, 10/56-3/72 || Politicide with communal victims || 400,000-600,000
+|-
+|South Vietnam, 1/65-4/75 || Politicide ||400,000-500,000
+|-
+|China, 3/59-12/59 || Genocide and politicide || 65,000
+|-
+|Iraq, 6/63-3/75 || Politicide with communal victims || 30,000-60,000
+|-
+|Algeria, 7/62-12/62 || Politicide ||9,000-30,000
+|-
+|Rwanda, 12/63-6/64 || Politicide with communal victims || 12,000-20,000
+|-
+|Congo-K, 2/64-1/65 || Politicide || 1,000-10,000
+|-
+|Burundi, 10/65-12/73 || Politicide with communal victims ||  140,000
+|-
+|Indonesia, 11/65-7/66 || Genocide and politicide ||  500,000-1,000,000
+|-
+|China, 5/66-3/75 || Politicide || 400,000-850,000
+|-
+|Guatemala, 7/78-12/96 || Politicide and genocide ||  60,000-200,000
+|-
+|Pakistan, 3/71-12/71 || Politicide with communal victims || 1,000,000-3,000,000
+|-
+|Uganda, 2/72-4/79 || Politicide and genocide ||  50,000-400,000
+|-
+|Philippines, 9/72-6/76 || Politicide with communal victims ||   60,000
+|-
+|Pakistan, 2/73-7/77 || Politicide with communal victims || 5,000-10,000
+|-
+|Chile, 9/73-12/76 || Politicide ||  5,000-10,000
+|-
+|Angola, 11/75-2001 || Politicide by UNITA and government forces || 500,000
+|-
+|Cambodia, 4/75-1/79 || Politicide and genocide || 1,900,000-3,500,000
+|-
+|Indonesia, 12/75-7/92 || Politicide with communal victims || 100,000-200,000
+|-
+|Argentina, 3/76-12/80  || Politicide  || 9,000-20,000
+|-
+|Ethiopia, 7/76-12/79  || Politicide  || 10,000
+|-
+|Congo-K, 3/77-12/79 || Politicide with communal victims || 3,000-4,000
+|-
+|Afghanistan, 4/78-4/92 || Politicide || 1,800,000
+|-
+|Burma, 1/78-12/78 || Genocide ||  5,000
+|-
+|El. Salvador, 1/80-12/89 || Politicide ||  40,000-60,000
+|-
+|Uganda, 12/80-1/86 || Politicide and genocide ||  200,000-500,000
+|-
+|Syria, 4/81-2/82 || Politicide || 5,000-30,000
+|-
+|Iran, 6/81-12/92 || Politicide and genocide ||  10,000-20,000
+|-
+|Sudan, 9/83- || Politicide with communal victims ||  2,000,000
+|-
+|Iraq, 3/88-6/91 || Politicide with communal victims || 180,000
+|-
+|Somalia, 5/88-1/91 || Politicide with communal victims ||  15,000-50,000
+|-
+|Burundi, 1988 || Genocide || 5,000-20,000
+|-
+|Sri Lanka, 9/89-1/90 || Politicide  || 13,000-30,000
+|-
+|Bosnia, 5/92-11/95 || Genocide || 225,000
+|-
+|Burundi, 10/93-5/94 || Genocide || 50,000
+|-
+|Rwanda, 4/94-7/94 || Genocide || 500,000-1,000,000
+|-
+|Serbia, 12/98-7/99 || Politicide with communal victims || 10,000
+|}
+==Explanation of the onset of mass killings==
+The term "mass killing" was proposed by genocide scholars in attempts to collect a uniform global database of genocidal events and identify statistical models for prediction of onset of mass killings.
+Frank Wayman and Atsushi Tago use the term "mass killing" as defined by Valentino, and they concluded that, even with a lower threshold (10,000 killed per year, 1,000 killed per year, or even 1), "autocratic regimes, especially communist, are prone to mass killing generically, but not so strongly inclined (i.e. not statistically significantly inclined) toward geno-politicide.
+==References==
+{{reflist|group=nb}}