Article review
I'm having to do these as part of a class, but this one was pretty interesting.
Gagnon, V.P Jr. "Ethnic Nationalism and International Conflict: The Case of Serbia"
International Security, Vol. 19, No.3. pp.130-166
Gagnon asks if "Ethnicity affects the international systems" and "what causes violent conflict to arise along ethnic lines?" (p. 130) The article, written in 1994, presents a framework for analyzing ethnic conflicts, as well as an analysis of Serbia and the conflicts that have arisen in the Balkans after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Gagnon argues the existing approaches to ethnic conflicts, where such conflicts arise as a result of existing ethnic sentiment or where national decision-makers have decided to stir up such sentiment, are incorrect. He posits that "violent conflict is not caused by ethnic sentiments, nor by external security concerns, but rather by the dynamics of within-group conflict." (p. 131) He clarifies that in this case "ethnic cleavages are provoked by elites in order to create a domestic political context where ethnicity is the only politically relevant identity." (p. 132) To support this argument, Gagnon presents a theoretical framework where based on four premises.
* The domestic arena is of central concern for state decision makers and ruling elites because it is the location of their power bases.
* Persuasion is the most effective and least costly means of influence in domestic politics
* Within the domestic arena, appeals for support must be directed to material and non-material values of the relevant target audience
* Conflict over ideas and how they are framed is an essential character of domestic politics, since the result determines the way political arguments can be made, how interests are defined, and the values by which political action must be justified.
After presenting the framework, he presents a list of nine hypotheses about the conditions under which national leaders will resort to conflictual policies that are described and justified in terms of threats to the ethnic nation. Using the presented frame work Gagnon explores the case of Serbia. He argues that the “violent conflict in the former Yugoslavia was a purposeful and rational strategy planned by those most threatened by changes to the structure of economic and political power.” (p. 140) He presents an analysis of the threats starting in the 1960’s through 1991.
He argues that the Serbian case shows the importance of recognizing that political rhetoric is political behavior, and that conflict taking place along ethnic lines, may be about ethnic issues, but may be caused by issues that are not related to ethnicity. Gagnon concludes his argument by stating that “the current major conflicts taking place along ethnic lines throughout the world have as their main causes, not ancient hatreds, but rather purposeful actions of political actors who actively create violent conflict, selectively drawing on history in order to portray it as historically inevitable.” (p. 165)