The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing

Michael Mann 2004

Devastation Rating

Emotionally Ruined
genocide democracy ethnic cleansing sociology

Our Take

Mann's sociological argument is that ethnic cleansing is not a relic of tribalism but a product of modernity — specifically of democracy, which requires the definition of 'the people' in ways that exclude. He tracks the pattern from the Armenian genocide through the Holocaust to Bosnia and Rwanda. The most uncomfortable thesis in genocide studies because it implicates democratic politics rather than exempting it.

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