Work on ethnic and nationalist violence has emerged from two largely non-intersecting literatures: studies of ethnic conflict and studies of political violence. Only recently have the former begun to attend to the dynamics of violence and the latter to the dynamics of ethnicization. Since the emergent literature on ethnic violence is not structured by clearly defined theoretical oppositions, we organize our review by broad similarities of methodological approach: (a) Inductive work at various levels of aggregation seeks to identify the patterns, mechanisms, and recurrent processes implicated in ethnic violence. (b) Theory-driven work employs models of rational actions drawn from international relations theory, game theory, and general rational action theory. (c) Culturalist work highlights the discursive, symbolic and ritualistic aspects of ethnic violence. We conclude with a plea for the disaggregated analysis of the heterogenous phenomena we too caually lump together as "ethnic violence."

The wave of ethnic conflict that has recently swept across parts of Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, and Africa has led many political observers to fear that these conflicts are contagious. Initial outbreaks in such places as Bosnia, Chechnya, and Rwanda, if not contained, appear capable of setting off epidemics of catastrophic proportions. In this volume, David Lake and Donald Rothchild have organized an ambitious, sophisticated exploration of both the origins and spread of ethnic conflict, one that will be useful to policymakers and theorists alike.

The editors and contributors argue that ethnic conflict is not caused directly by intergroup differences or centuries-old feuds and that the collapse of the Soviet Union did not simply uncork ethnic passions long suppressed. They look instead at how anxieties over security, competition for resources, breakdown in communication with the government, and the inability to make enduring commitments lead ethnic groups into conflict, and they consider the strategic interactions that underlie ethnic conflict and its effective management.

The MacArthur Consortium workshop "Slaughter of the Innocents: Understanding Political Killing" focused on mobilization for large-scale killing and genocide. How does such violence become possible? Rather than concentrating on effect and prescription, participants devoted their attention to diagnosis and causal understanding. The workshop had three main areas of investigation:

1. the historical sociology of mobilization for large-scale killing,
   
2. the phenomenology of genocide, and
   
3. the role of memory in such mobilization.
   

In exploring a topic that has become highly problematic and pressing in the context of civil wars, the workshop addressed changing institutions of violence and issues of identity. The workshop aimed to raise as many questions as it answered, as well as to set an agenda for future interdisciplinary understanding.

The wars of the 1990s confirm a basic finding from the study of civil war termination: "peacemaking is a risky business." The greatest source of risk comes from spoilers - leaders and parties who believe that peace emerging from negotiations threatens their power, worldview, and interests, and use violence to undermine attempts to achieve it. When spoilers succeed, the results are catastrophic. But not all spoilers do succeed.

The crucial difference between the success and failure of spoilers is the role played by international actors as custodians of peace. This study begins to develop a typological theory of spoiler management, providing a first step toward understanding the spoiler problem in peace processes and evaluating the appropriateness and effectiveness of different strategies of spoiler mangement.

By developing a strategic approach to the implementation of peace accords in civil war, the United Nations can better the odds for ending a war and fostering development in the long run. Recent attempts at implementation have suffered from recurring difficulties: incomplete, vague and expedient agreements; lack of coordination between implementing agencies; lack of sustained attention by the international community; incomplete fulfillment of agreements by warring parties; and the presence of 'spoilers' who seek to destroy and incipient peace. To overcome these difficulties, the UN must encourage the parties to choose political, cultural, social and economic security-building measures during the negotiation phase and systematically apply confidence-building measures to the military components of implementation. This demands a reconsideration of peace making in a civil war to include a long-term international commitment to the development of war-torn societies.

The tasks of preventive diplomacy and conflict prevention are neither self-evident nor value-neutral, as some of their proponents seem to believe. Diplomacy that aims to resolve long-standing conflicts may have to take sides and coerce powerful parties into concessions. Diplomacy that aims to manage conflict so that it does not become violent may have to sacrifice a quest for justice in deference to the powerful. Prevention might conflict with important national and even global interests. If, as President Clinton has suggested many times, the primary American interest in Bosnia is thwarting the spread of the war, then the arms embargo has been an unqualified success. If, however, the primary American and global interest has been denying Serbian aggression and upholding the principle of Bosnian sovereignty, then the embargo has failed.

A focus on prevention ignores the role that conflict plays in driving political change in societies. For grievances to be redressed, they must be vocalized. If they are vocalized, those with a stake in the status quo will attempt to suppress them. Often the balance of change depends on the ability of the grieved to amplify the conflict to increase their support. If we have learned anything from the disparate cases of conflict resolution in recent decades -- the civil rights movement in the United States, the fight for human rights in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, the fight for national self-determination in the Middle East, the fight against apartheid in South Africa -- it is that some conflicts must be intensified before they are resolved.

Preventive diplomacy and conflict prevention do not lessen the difficulty of choices for leaders, nor do they really lessen costs. For either to succeed, policymakers must still spell out their interests, set priorities among cases, and balance goals with resources. The president will still need to educate the American people about the rationale behind a policy and convince them of the need for action. Absent well-defined interests, clear goals, and prudent judgment about acceptable costs and risks, policies of preventive diplomacy and conflict prevention simply mean that one founders early in a crisis instead of later.

In April 1994, black and white South Africans for the first time will vote for a nonracial government. This watershed election is one of many recent profound changes in Southern Africa, including independence in Namibia, democratic elections in Zambia, a peace agreement in Mozambique, and renewed civil war in Angola.

The authors explore the sources and dynamics of the political, economic, and diplomatic transformations taking place in Southern Africa. They recount how Southern Africa has long endured costly, violent domestic and interstate conflicts, often complicated and intensified by external interventions and interests. They also analyze the various attempts to resolve Southern Africa's conflicts. They suggest that the democratic transition in South Africa opens the possibility to create a secure Southern Africa, but they also note that past conflict legacies and new unanticipated conflicts could stand in the way. The challenge ahead will be to create new institutions at the national and regional levels that can help political players resolve conflict without resorting to violence.

Challenging the literatures on war termination, civil war, and revolution--which typically dismiss the possibility of negotiated settlement--Stephen Stedman examines the problem of negotiations during civil wars and demonstrates that third party mediation can help resolve such conflicts.

Stedman analyzes four international attempts to mediate a settlement to the Zimbabwean civil war of the 1970s and compares the three failed negotiations--the 1974-1975 Kenneth Kaunda/John Vorster "detente" exercise, the Henry Kissinger mediation that led to the Geneva conference of 1976, and the Anglo-American initiatives of David Owen and Cyrus Vance in 1977-1978--with the successful 1979 Lancaster House Conference on Rhodesia, chaired by Lord Carrington. Drawing on primary sources not available previously, his discussion of the factors that distinguish the failures from the successful attempt is a major contribution to conflict resolution theory, particularly with reference to the work of William Zartman. A final chapter considers the lessons of the Zimbabwe experience for South Africa today.