ABSTRACT
In 1994, in response to a request by senior US policy makers, the State Failure Task Force was established to design and carry out a data-driven study of the preconditions of state failure, defined to include ethnic and revolutionary wars, adverse or disruptive regime transitions, and genocides and politicides. Genocides and politicides are the promotion, execution, and/or implied consent of sustained policies by governing elites or their agents—or, in the case of civil war, either of the contending authorities—that are intended to destroy, in whole or part, a communal, political, or politicized ethnic group. This chapter presents a descriptive overview of some distinct factors that influence the risk of genocide and politicide. It provides detail about the weighting assigned to each factor in the overall risk assessment. China is less worrisome because of its low potential for future instability, a factor that in its absence is likely to offset future genocidal risks.
