Rogall, Thorsten  <br/><br/>
Mobilizing the masses for genocide 

 - The American Economic Review   
 - 111(1), Jan, 2021: p.41-72 
<br/><br/> Do political elites use armed groups to foster civilian participation in genocidal violence? Are armed groups employed strategically? How do they mobilize civilians? I investigate these questions using data from the Rwandan Genocide. To establish causality, I exploit exogenous variation in armed groups' transport costs induced by weather fluctuations: the shortest distance of each village to the main road interacted with rainfall along the dirt tracks between main road and village. I find (i) 1 additional armed-group member resulted in 7.3 more civilian perpetrators; (ii) armed-group leaders employed their men strategically; and (iii) armed groups invoked civilians' obedience. Reproduced