“Ethnic Cleansing”: An Analysis of Conceptual and Empirical Ambiguity

Abstract

Abstract Despite significant scholarly disagreement about its definition, core meaning, and corresponding cases, ethnic cleansing has escaped careful conceptual examination. This article identifies five key areas of conceptual confusion that undermine the integrity and utility of the concept. These include discrepancies over the core meaning of ethnic cleansing; tension between ethnic cleansing as a practice and a policy; the lack of boundedness between ethnic cleansing and other related concepts; the universe of cases that belong together; and disparate subtype classification criteria. This conceptual confusion undermines effective comparative analysis and, in turn, our understanding of the causes of ethnic cleansing and associated policy recommendations. The solution is to abandon the social science usage of ethnic cleansing in favor of alternative concepts defined by the distinct intent of the perpetrator(s): massacre (to annihilate), mass expulsion (to remove), coercive assimilation (to eliminate a unique cultural identity), and control (to subjugate). This eliminates ambiguity, improves theoretical precision, and opens a promising new research agenda.