Reigns of Terror

Geoff Hamilton is a Killam Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of
British Columbia.

This book examines the political contexts that have contributed to
large-scale crimes committed by states against their own citizens.
Marchak contends that in order to understand these crimes “we need to
understand the structural constraints of states when changes are imposed
on them either by internal pressures or external pressures.” The first
section of the work analyzes the causes and characteristics of state
crimes; the second section furnishes nine case studies that illustrate
her theories: Ottoman Empire (1915–16), USSR (1932–33), Nazi Germany
(1933–45), Burundi and Rwanda (1972–95), Chile (1973–88), Cambodia
(1975–79), Argentina (1976–83), and Yugoslavia (1990–94).

Marchak’s analysis of the conditions leading to state crimes is
formidably astute, and her book represents an important contribution to
the field of genocide studies. While other scholars have reduced the
etiology of genocide to the dynamics of racism or modern bureaucracy,
Marchak convincingly argues that it is, more broadly, the failure of
states to reproduce systemic inequalities that leads to massive state
crimes: “States must reproduce a given system with its hierarchy, and
it is when they cannot do so that they respond violently against
citizens.”

The book’s nine case studies clearly demonstrate the usefulness of
the author’s theories in accounting for disparate instances of state
violence. For instance, Marchak credibly connects the conditions leading
to the Holocaust (often treated as a kind of sui generis event) with
other genocides that, on the surface, may look very different. Earlier
examples of genocide are discussed only in passing, but she makes the
case that they, too, can be understood in terms of the failure of states
to reproduce inequalities.

Marchak soberly sets forth the many obstacles to international
intervention in state violence, properly emphasizing the weakness of the
United Nations and the refusal of the United States to permit its own
leaders and soldiers to fall under the jurisdiction of international
law. As a predictive tool, the explicative framework provided here looks
very promising, though many will find Marchak’s optimism about the
potential of international efforts to curb state violence—“Genocide
and politicide are viruses we can overcome”—less than wholly
persuasive.