Authoritarian strategies and prospects: Lessons from pre-genocide Rwanda

Professor Marie-Eve Desrosiers will hold a lunchtime seminar on Authoritarian strategies and prospects: Lessons from pre-genocide Rwanda.

Rwanda is often associated with one of the most horrific episodes of state-led mass violence in the past century: the 1994 genocide perpetrated against the Tutsi. In light of the genocide, it is also associated with images of pervasive state control and widespread citizen compliance, both before and during the events of 1994. Consequently, Rwanda is frequently portrayed as an exceptional case, along with the authoritarian regimes that governed it prior to 1994. However, the authoritarian strategies these regimes employed were not unique but part of a broader, well-known authoritarian playbook.

In her presentation based on her book Trajectories of Authoritarianism in Rwanda: Elusive Control before the Genocide, Marie-Eve Desrosiers examines the political developments of the First and Second Rwandan Republics (1962-1994). She challenges the notion that pre-genocide Rwandan authorities ever fully achieved authoritarian control. Instead, it was their failure to do so that led them to adjust their strategies overtime, adopting increasingly repressive forms of authoritarianism, which ultimately culminated in the extreme state violence that the country has experienced periodically. What a focus on pre-genocide Rwanda shows is that, over the course of their time in power, authoritarian governments often end up creating more challenges than they succeed in managing, which can lead them to adapt, but also to decay.