Book Reviews

Michael Mann, The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 2005. 580 pp. d13.36 (pbk), d37.44 (hbk).

Unlike its classical predecessor that had a clear sense of purpose and vision,

contemporary sociology is largely a schizophrenic enterprise. Whereas Durkheim,

Weber, Marx and Simmel, in their aim to explain the paradoxes of modernity, drew

extensively on the existing empirical research of their day and thus produced coherent

and testable (in both the positivist and interpretative sense) theories of social change,

current sociology is almost exclusively split between those who ‘do the theory’ and

those who ‘do the empirical work’. Not only that, there is little or no recognition of

how problematic this seismic divide is, and any significant attempt at bridging this

chasm is actively discouraged. This is done both institutionally (by the major

publishers and journal editors who prefer either theoretical or empirical pieces) and

normatively (by quickly condemning rare quixotesque attempts at broader theoretical

generalisation on the basis of extensive secondary research as ‘excessively ambitious

sweeping generalisations’).

In this context Michael Mann’s entire life work goes very much against the grain.

His path-breaking Sources of Social Power that charts the anatomy of power ‘from the

beginning’ (a formulation to infuriate pedantic empiricists) till the present day, just as

his recent books on quasi-imperial features of American polity and comparative

sociological analysis of fascist movements in Europe, are all exercises in grand theory-

building which is supported by meticulously collected and illuminatively interpreted

empirical material.

The Dark Side of Democracy is written in a similar vein. This is another brave book

that challenges both the ways comparative analysis of genocide is traditionally done as

well as the prevalent orthodoxy that identifies ethnic cleansing with the authoritarian

and ‘backward’ world. Thus not only does Mann provide us here with a successful

attempt to extrapolate what is common to as nominally diverse cases as the

extermination of indigenous populations of North and Mezzo America, Australia

and South West Africa, the genocide of Armenians in 1915, the Nazi Holocaust, the

mass-scale killings of Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot to the more recent tragedies of Rwanda

and former Yugoslavia, but he does it also in a very provocative yet theoretically

convincing way.

Mann’s argument is that the intensification of mass-scale killings on the basis of

ethnic group membership has a great deal to do with modernity and its direct offshoot

– the ideology and process of democratisation. It is in this modernising and

democratising context that powerful social movements within particular ethnic

collectivities advance rival state-making projects over the same territory. The fact

that they are able to make legitimate claims for competing state-building projects and

that they are able to mobilise large groups of individuals around these projects is an

indicator of how ideologically entrenched the modernist principle of popular rule is.

The rule of ‘people’, a direct product of the Enlightenment, had from its inception

blurred meanings, as demos was often understood as ethnos, and where the project of

democratisation tended to be implemented as one of ethnic homogenisation. The

intrinsic link between the two creates a historical condition where mass-scale ethnic

Nations and Nationalism 11 (4), 2005, 637–656. r ASEN 2005

group violence is in fact the ‘dark side of democracy’. Liberal democracy, the welfare

state, economic sustainability and eventually tolerant political culture were all,

according to Mann, ‘built on top of ethnic cleansing’, either as mass murder or

institutionalised coercion. Hence genocide is not a prerogative of authoritarianism, it is

more likely to occur under the conditions of imperfect democratisation and liberal-

isation. The 1915 genocide of Armenians was not executed by an authoritarian but

multiethnic Ottoman empire, it was conceived and put in practice by liberalising,

secular and western oriented Young Turks. One of the first twentieth century genocides

was not carried out in the name of Allah or imperial Ottoman glory, but in the name of

people conceptualised in modern ethno-national terms.

However, the transformation of intra-group rivalries from simple ethnic riots to

fully blown genocides is always preconditioned by their transposition to the level of the

nation-state. It is a democratising nation-state, often internally deeply divided and

radicalised by geopolitical pressures such as war, that is at the heart of modern mass-

scale systematic killing. This structural context creates a condition where the three

levels of perpetuators of ethnic cleansing emerge: radicalised political elites bent on

implementing a particular ideological blueprint, gangs of young disenchanted militants

organised into paramilitary formations and what Mann calls ‘core constituencies of

ethno-nationalism’ that provide mass support for violent action.

This is truly a book of exceptional quality. However, covering such vast and

diverse empirical material, both historically and geographically, it is bound to be

incomplete and occasionally flawed. It would be too easy to pick on historical

inaccuracies, factual errors, semantic deficiencies and outright simplifications, as no

doubt many particularistic oriented area specialists will, but that would miss the main

point of such a work – a daring attempt to provide us with some sociologically and

thus universally meaningful generalisations about the origins of systematic mass-scale

violence in modernity. Similarly, Mann’s theoretical framework can be challenged

from many different angles such as the fact that both ethnic cleansing and the ideology

and practice of democratisation emerge in the same historical period does not

necessarily imply that one causes the other, or that his excellent macro sociology of

power lacks correspondingly good micro sociology of social action. The inner

dynamics of ethnicity are largely understudied or ignored; his concepts are, despite

his nominal commitment to non-essentialism, still too rigid and too tangible for

understanding the subtle transformations of collective perceptions and the processes of

social categorisation (i.e. ethnicity is still understood as a group’s property and not as

an aspect of social relationship). His extremely wide and trans-historical conceptua-

lisation of class that subsumes both status groups and caste-based organisations, as

well as his underestimation of the importance of ethnic nationalism in the legitimisa-

tion of rule in the Soviet-type societies, can all be the subject of justified criticism.

However, none of these shortcomings is serious enough to undermine the essential

quality of this great work – its bold and rather successful attempt to meet the tough

criteria set up by the classics of sociology – to explore and test the giant, provocative

and disturbing ideas in the ongoing historical laboratory of social life. With more

books like this one there would be genuine hope that sociology can transgress its

current schizophrenic state.

SINISA MALESEVIC

National University of Ireland, Galway

638 Book Reviews

Umut Ozkirimli (ed.), Nationalism and its Futures. London: Palgrave, 2003. 168 pp.

d47.50 (hbk).

The last two decades of the twentieth century witnessed an unprecedented burgeoning

of nationalism as a political phenomenon and as a subject of academic studies. The

evolving post-ideological atmosphere of the age, resulting from a combination of the

fall of communism and the rise of postmodernity, have put an end to the wars among

the ‘isms’ of yesteryear. The big mobilising ideas of the twentieth century have lost

their fascination in an era in which a sense of a global TINA (There Is No Alternative)

spread. But one ‘ism’ stood out stubbornly and refused to disappear – nationalism. In

fact, the disappearance of all the rest of the ‘isms’ seems to have just reinforced the

advancement, some would say the return, of nationalism, and obviously of the

simultaneous academic interest in it. But what is nationalism? What is the secret of

its grip on the modern mind? Is nationalism compatible with democracy? And what is

the future of nationalism in a world that becomes simultaneously ever more global and

ever more local? These are some of the questions that Nationalism and its Futures

grapples with.

The opening salvo is provided by Umut Ozkirimli, who strongly disavows the

common talk about the ‘crisis of the nation-state’ and discards the common notion

according to which the future of nationalism is today uncertain, under the twin

pressures of globalisation and identity politics. John Hutchinson, likewise, expresses

strong misgivings about the thesis that either the engulfing waves of commercial

globalisation or the heightening flames of religious resurgence threaten to erode the

nation-state as a major player or nationalism as a prominent identity. Stuart Hall

proceeds in this line by making an analogy between nationalism and the libido:

‘Nationalism is essentially like that, essentially labile, characteristically absorbing the

flavors of the historical forces with which it interacts’ (pp. 15–16). It is for this reason

that with the change of circumstances nationalism may indeed change, but not fade

away. The secret of nationalism in this view lies exactly in its flexibility.

Partha Chatterjee and Craig Calhoun address the question of the universal and the

particular in nationalism, and in distinction from the classical liberal position, both

find the particular of utmost importance ‘not least as a basis for democracy’ (p. 94), as

Calhoun puts it. He warns that cosmopolitanism might create a ‘social imaginary’

deficit; that it might leave us lacking in the old source of solidarity without adequate

new ones; and that without the strengthening of local democracy cosmopolitanism is

likely to be an elite affair. In short, cosmopolitanism ‘conceives of society – and issues

of social belonging and social participation – in too thin and casual a manner’ (p. 97).

What Calhoun calls a tension between abstract accounts of equality and rooted

accounts of differences appears in Chatterjee’s piece as a tension between unbound

serialities and bound serialities. He discusses the problem of national homogeneity and

minority citizenship as it applies to India’s caste regime, and reaches towards a

postcolonial course ‘that steers away from global cosmopolitanism on the one hand

and ethnic chauvinism on the other’ (p. 55). Both Chatterjee and Calhoun are critical

of the tendency of the universalists or cosmopolitans to transcend cultural specifity,

particularity, locality and even emotional attachment. Calhoun gives expression for

both of them when saying that ‘to empower people where they are means to empower

them within communities and traditions, not in spite of them, and as members of

groups not only as individuals’ (p. 103).

Book Reviews 639

Nira Yuval-Davies also addresses the same problematic, and joins the search for a

‘model of belonging’ that ‘encompasses both identity and citizenship’ and that will

engage both indigenous authenticity and diasporic strangeness (p. 127). She is well

aware, however, that the same global conditions that encourage complex and multi-

layered identities also generate the backlash of ethnic-nationalisms.

In the final chapter of the book, Will Kymlicka provides a very concise ‘road map’

to the nationalism debates, including the ones contained in this book. He organises the

discussion usefully around four types of questions: questions about the nature of

nationalism; about the value of nationalism; about the alternatives to nationalism; and

about the global diffusion of nationalism.

Given this all-to-brief review of seven out of eight chapters of the book, it transpires

that by and large the book leans towards an ethno-symbolist affirmative position

towards nationalism. From this perspective, local cultures, longstanding traditions and

cultural boundaries have endurance and competence beyond changing circumstances;

furthermore, all this is valuable from a democratic perspective. In this regard,

nationalism is held as a bulwark against both universalist modernism and cosmopo-

litan postmodernism, which threaten the life-worlds of so many identity groups around

the world. I choose to close this review therefore with a chapter that marks a clear-cut

exception to this rule – the chapter by Fred Halliday. Halliday argues forcefully that

‘over its two centuries, and stretching into the future, nationalism is profoundly hostile

to the universality of rights’ (p. 62). As if to balance the leaning of the rest of the book,

Halliday sums up with the following warning: ‘Much has been said by political

theorists and by academic friends of nationalism, about how nationalism, as an

ideology and as a practice, may be compatible with other, desirable, modern goals:

democracy, identity, community and international order. . . . This may all be so, but it

will only be so if a priority of value is established; if, in other words, nationalism knows

its place. Faced with the record over the past century . . . we should be uneasy about

accepting too readily that such compatibility will occur’ (p. 69).

The chapters of this book are, without exception, most refined analytically and

most dense empirically; yet, adding more voices like those of Halliday would have

produced a more nuanced compilation. After all, Dr Seuss (the author of those naıve

and satirical children’s books) was right in identifying the real causes of animosity

between nations, the Yooks and the Zooks in this case: ‘In every Zook house and every

Zook town every Zook eats his bread with the butter side down!’ And he left us to

doubt whether the Yooks and the Zooks can ever achieve peace among the nations.

URI RAM

Ben Gurion University

Paul Lawrence, Nationalism: History and Theory. Harlow: Longman, 2005. 256 pp.

d14.99 (pbk).

As the football pundit might say, this is a book of two halves. One covers ground that

will be familiar to those working in this field, and which in the case of modernist and

‘ethno-symbolist’ approaches, for example, has been worked more comprehensively by

others, such as Smith in Nationalism and Modernism (London: Routledge, 1998). The

other, more interesting part of Lawrence’s book dusts down texts that receive

640 Book Reviews

considerably less attention in contemporary studies. Lawrence also gives more space

than is usual today to some of the better known early scholars of nationalism like Hayes

and Kohn, situating their work in the context of the climate in which they were writing.

Anderson may have been largely justified in claiming, in the revised edition of Imagined

Communities (London; Verso, 1991), that compared to the work published since the

1980s much that had been written before was of little significance for modern scholars of

nationalism. There is, however, as Lawrence shows, a good deal to be learned in

understanding how the study of nationalism has developed over the last century or so.

Lawrence’s principal thesis, as it moves across four periods from the mid-nineteenth

century to today, is that the analysis of nationalism has been informed by a combination

of changing currents within the social sciences, political and social conditions and the

personal experiences of scholars. Chapter 2 examines the period 1848–1918, and

considers, among other matters, the contribution made by the emerging academic

disciplines of history and, later, sociology. Here, as much as in the cases of John Stuart

Mill and Ernest Renan, Lawrence argues that reflections on nationalism were deeply

coloured by national intellectual traditions as well as, to varying degrees, national

loyalty. Despite this, Lawrence suggests that in this period nationalism and the nation,

while not subjected to much by way of critical thinking (with the exception of Marxist

writers), nonetheless became subjects of intellectual enquiry. It is in Chapter 3, which

spans the period 1918–1945, that Lawrence engages in work akin to an archaeological

dig. Aside from his comparatively substantial discussion of Hayes and Kohn – it is

difficult to think of other books that give similar space to these two other than Smith’s

essay on ‘Nationalism and the Historians’ reprinted in Myths and Memories of the

Nation – Lawrence revisits early psychological approaches to nationalism hitherto

largely neglected by contemporary social scientists. The contribution of academic

psychology to the study, and wider public conception of nationalism and ‘nationality’,

particularly in the period Lawrence is discussing, is certainly worthy of note. Though I

would like to have to seen more on the wider influence of psychological theories of

nationality (such as in Glenda Sluga’s recent essay in this journal), Lawrence’s recovery

of these works highlights how interest in the academic study of nationalism was growing

across the social sciences. Chapter 3, dealing with the development of ‘classical

modernism’, 1945–1969, is largely concerned with the writings of Deutsch, Kedourie

and Gellner, as well as passing discussion of Carr and, again, Kohn. For Lawrence, the

works of these writers, though especially Gellner, herald the move towards a more

sociological form of analysis and, in particular, a general theorising of the rise and

development of nationalism largely absent in earlier work.

The final, substantial chapter of the book, which, according to Lawrence, charts the

‘rise and fall of classical modernism’, 1970–2003, is in the main concerned with

‘modernists’ such as Benedict Anderson and Eric Hobsbawm and, conversely, the

work of Anthony Smith and those who have followed a similar path. What is not

evident from Lawrence’s account is the nature of the ‘fall’ of the modernist approach,

still very much the consensus in mainstream academic studies. The weakest element of

this chapter is the section dedicated to ‘recent theoretical innovation’. Within nine

pages Lawrence covers postmodernism, postcolonial theory and feminism. These are

certainly necessary inclusions, but given that he earlier gives more space to psycho-

logical writings of the 1920s, his discussion here is disappointingly short. The

discussion of feminism, for example, relies on one already well-travelled essay by

Floya Anthias and Nira Yuval-Davis. There is no mention of recent theories of liberal

nationalism, one of the most interesting ‘theoretical innovations’ of the last two

Book Reviews 641

decades. There is, moreover, not a single reference to (theories of) globalisation. Since

one of Lawrence’s primary concerns is to trace the relationship between broader

theorising in the social sciences and wider social and political developments on the

study of nationalism, it is odd that he does not enter into any discussion of one of the

dominant concerns of contemporary social scientists. Lawrence is not alone in giving

insufficient attention to the growing body of work that falls outside the mainstream

sociological work on nationalism – see, for example, Ozkirmili’s short chapter on ‘new

approaches’ in his Theories of Nationalism (London: Macmillan, 2000) – but since he is

elsewhere careful to show the growing breadth of interest in nationalism, and to trace

the link to wider trends within the social sciences, this is a curious omission.

This book will nevertheless be of interest to those looking for an introduction to the

field, and should enjoy a wider readership as an intellectual history. The book finishes

weakly – although Lawrence states that it is not his intention to decide on which

approach is the most convincing (p. 8), the conclusion really needs to say something

about whether we are better off today in our knowledge of nationalism and related

phenomena than we were a century ago – but this should not detract from what is

broadly an engaging study.

ANDREW THOMPSON

University of Glamorgan

Sandra F. Joireman, Nationalism and Political Identity. London and New York:

Continuum, 2003. 224 pp. d70.00 (hbk), d19.99 (pbk).

Sandra Joireman seems to have taken George Santayana’s famous aphorism, ‘the

spirit’s foe in man has not been simplicity, but sophistication’, to heart. Nationalism

and Political Identity is anything but sophisticated. It begins by offering elementary

definitions of ethnicity and nationalism; then proceeds to outline what she calls the

main theoretical approaches to ethnicity, namely primordialism, instrumentalism and

social constructivism. It concludes with a description of ethnic conflicts in Quebec,

Bosnia-Herzegovina, Northern Ireland and Eritrea, and an examination of possible

solutions to ethnic and nationalist conflicts in general.

Now, simplicity may well be a blessing, especially in a book written for ‘under-

graduates’ and ‘generalists’, but too much simplicity can easily become a foe of the

intellect – if not of the spirit. Nationalism and Political Identity is a stark reminder of

this, and shows us how easy it is to cross the fine line between the simple and the banal.

The book is replete with unwarranted generalisations, often couched in typical

textbook (i.e. assertive) language. Hence we learn that ‘the types of identities that

people choose for themselves tend to fall into a few categories: regional, religious,

racial and linguistic’ (what about gender and class?) (p. 2), that there is a division ‘in

the world between old and new states in the way in which ethnic identity is manifest’ (p.

25), that in old states (including, by the way, the United States!) ‘a civic nationalism

has replaced ethnic nationalism’ (p. 25), that indeed ‘patriotism is civic nationalism’ (p.

26), or that ‘states that do not make an effort to promote civic nationalism are

ultimately weaker’ (p. 46). At times, Joireman’s quest for simplicity becomes truly

extravagant, when, for example, she tells us that ‘in warfare we kill our enemies, but we

do not call it murder because they are not us’ (p. 23), that ‘in many previously

642 Book Reviews

colonized countries . . . there are a variety of languages spoken in the home. These

languages are what we call ‘‘mother tongues’’ because we learn them on our mother’s

knee’ (p. 27), or that the image of the Union Jack on a packet of shortbread biscuits

does promote nationalism at some level ‘and perhaps also the association of

nationalism with something sweet’ – one is tempted to ask what about the flags on

matchboxes or on stamps? Do they promote an association of nationalism with

something that ‘burns’ or perhaps that ‘sticks’?

On the other hand, there are other virtues (other than simplicity) a general textbook

such as this should strive for, notably comprehensiveness and accuracy. Joireman’s

summary of key debates is hasty, one-sided and often dated. Very few scholars stick to

the distinction between ‘old’ and ‘new’ states today, and there is a substantial literature

casting doubt on the usefulness of the distinction between ‘ethnic’ and ‘civic’

nationalisms. This also impairs the author’s discussion of various ethnic conflicts

where she unproblematically refers to the Serbs, Croats or Eritreans, glossing over a

huge corpus of work which stresses the discursive nature of nationalisms – and this is

all the more striking given the author’s commitment to ‘social constructivism’.

Joireman’s book is not true to facts either. We are told, for example, that the

citizenship policy in the United States is based on the principle of jus sanguinis whereas,

of course, the opposite is the case. We are then ‘informed’ that in Belgium, French is

the language of commerce and education north of the language line and Dutch is the

language of commerce and education south of it! Once again, the opposite is true and

even the Lonely Planet tourist guide would tell you this. The author’s discussion of the

work of leading theorists of nationalism is also misguided. Anthony D. Smith has

never claimed that ethnicity is ‘innate and unchangeable’ (p. 28); nor has ‘Benedict’ (I

believe she means Benedict Anderson!) argued that it became possible to imagine

communities with the advent of ‘print journalism’ – the term is, of course, ‘print-

capitalism’, and the difference between the two is hardly trivial (p. 57).

Finally, should not a textbook pay utmost attention to referencing? Why then are

Kaufmann 2001 (p. 96) or Banac 1984 (p. 105) or Lijphart 1978 (p. 148) not cited in the

Bibliographies of the relevant chapters? How come Russell Hardin’s name can be

spelled in two different ways (Hardin and Harding) in the same paragraph (p. 104)? Do

we need to remind Continuum that meticulous copy-editing is as important as inserting

tables or symbols here and there to produce a user-friendly textbook?

No doubt, Nationalism and Political Identity would have made great reading for an

introductory course on nationalism, or NAT 101 – if only we had such courses. Until

then, however, the book could serve as a decent example of a master’s dissertation for

students in various postgraduate programmes on ethnicity and nationalism.

UMUT OZKIRIMLI

Istanbul Bilgi University

Patrick J. Geary, The Myth of Nations: the Medieval Origins of Europe. Princeton, NJ

and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2001. 261 pp. d26.95 (hbk), d11.95 (pbk).

This is a rather curious book, in part an attempt by a distinguished historian of early

medieval Europe to explicate ethnic classifications and realities during the Roman

Empire and its aftermath, and in part a polemic against nationalist uses of the past to

Book Reviews 643

legitimise territorial claims and ethnic expulsions in contemporary Europe. It is

directed at policy-makers to warn them against internalising a nationalist vision of

the world that denies the multiethnic complexities of European history.

The introduction and first chapter set out the rationale of the book. Geary is

concerned at the revival of ethnic nationalism in contemporary Europe. In the

successor states of the former Communist bloc this is linked to disputes over territories

and minority rights, in Western Europe to fears of large-scale immigration, and each

case is legitimised by myths of ancient ancestry. The toxic ideology of nationalism is

the legacy of nineteenth century German romantics who, appropriating Roman and

Biblical classifications, used the new disciplines of philology, archaeology and history

to construct a world of ancient and culturally distinctive European peoples during

classical antiquity as the precursors of modern European nations. The rest of the book

(chapters 2 to 5) is an attempt to show how misleading this is as an understanding of

ethnicity in the ancient world, and how ethnicity in European history has been a

fluctuating and invented category in a part of the world characterised by continuous

waves of migration.

The empirical core of the book is fascinating and examines the salience of ethnicity

in classical and late antiquity. Our conception of this is shaped by Greek and Roman

sources, and Geary rejects Roman dichotomising classifications of themselves as a

political and constitutional people, differentiated from ‘barbarian’ others (British,

Gallic and Germanic tribes) who were united by descent, custom and geography. In

reality, the latter were political federations rather than ethnic polities, uniting groups of

diverse origins under charismatic leaders and aristocratic families by success in war,

and justifying their conquest of territories by assuming the names and the mythologies

of earlier rulers. Victory led to their rapid expansion, but defeat to their dissolution, so

that while the names of groups remained, the social realities changed rapidly. In brief,

ethnicity is a construct of political elites.

He explores these themes up to the eighth century by which time a new post-Roman

world had emerged in Europe. Up to the fourth century AD, ‘barbarian’ identities

blurred with Roman within the empire, and other identities (class, region and urban)

loomed larger, while on the frontiers warrior federations rose and fell though often

assuming the names and mythologies of their precursors. The arrival of the nomadic

steppe confederation of the Huns in 375 transformed the situation, leading to the

formation during the sixth century of territorial kingdoms within the Roman Empire

named after ‘barbarian’ peoples, while on the frontiers new barbarian federations such

as the Saxons and Avars formed. The barbarian kingdoms sought to create a cultural

unity in the federations against the local populations through common laws and

descent myths, but as a military minority they tended to fuse with the local population.

Only the Franks (within the disintegrating empire) created an enduring polity, and

even this as it expanded during the eighth century absorbed Roman forms, accepted

local autonomies and revived ancient heritages. On the margins of empire the Slavs as

soldier farmers were the exception who established broadly based ethnic communities.

What does Geary conclude from this? He argues that the evolutionary models

beloved of historians in which barbarian peoples settle in territorial kingdoms to

establish cohesive cultural communities that form into modern European nations is a

mirage. The peoples of Europe are a work in progress, continuously changing through

migrations. Ethnic names and myths may remain and be asserted but this continuity

bears little relation to the shifting social forms: only in the modern period has there

been a successful attempt to create homogeneous polities based on myths and this has

644 Book Reviews

led to disastrous results in the twentieth century. The demographic and other move-

ments of the contemporary period suggest a return to a world of multiethnicity. The

task of the historian is to re-educate policy elites of the true character of the classical

past so that they can reject the disastrous simplifications of populist xenophobes.

If we accept Geary’s purpose, can he be trusted as a guide? He is an authority in his

field but his Kedourie-like depiction of romantic nationalism (which after all combined

with liberal movements in many contexts) is so jaundiced that it raises doubts about his

interpretation of what he admits is often ambiguous evidence in the classical period.

Even Geary is forced to admit exceptions to his general rejection of ethnicity as

anything other than a political construct of military elites when he discusses the Slavs.

But there are many examples that would prove awkward for his model, including the

Irish, the Jews and the Armenians.

The strong ideological drive of this book reduces its value to those who seek

explanations for the rise and persistence of ethnic and national identities. In fact, there

is polemic and much interesting description but little in the way of explanation. It is

peculiar that Geary is so keen to dismiss continuities in cultural identity over a few

centuries (within the Roman period) but is willing to believe that the iniquities of

modern nationalism are explained by continuities in ideas (of ethnic classification)

which stretch over two thousand years. Can one really blame nationalism on the

Romans and Greeks? Were (often barely literate) populations mobilised under the

thrall of Tacitus? Aside from the implausibility of idealist explanations, how does one

account for the continuity of classificatory schemes and of names (but not identities)?

After all, collective names do change, but Geary offers no reasons why groups find

value in identifying with a lineage or past or decide to develop their own. Finally, apart

from Le Pen and his like, who are his targets? Are there any scholars who seriously

believe in national continuities with the ancient world, and do even mainstream

nationalists base their rationale d’etre on such continuities? Most nationalists will have

as reference points periods closer to home; the English, the Reformation period; the

French, the later middle ages of the Hundred Years War. In short, this is two books in

one, the first a very interesting account of ethnic phenomena in the Roman and post-

Roman period, the second an anti-nationalist polemic with an uncertain logical

connection to the first.

JOHN HUTCHINSON

London School of Economics and Political Science

George W. White, Nation, State, and Territory: Origins, Evolutions and Relationships.

Volume 1. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2004. 304 pp. $75.00 (hbk).

Reports concerning the imminent demise of the nation are greatly exaggerated.

Globalisation and a series of related phenomena may eventually overwhelm the nation

as a relevant political and social category, but for the moment at least the nationalist

paradigm that nation and state should coincide geographically continues to structure

our thinking of the world and to inspire often bloody conflict. Thus, argues George W.

White in his latest work, understanding the nation and its relationship with the state is

a pressing issue for social scientists. The key, as already advanced in his previous text

Book Reviews 645

(White,Nationalism and Territory: Constructing Group Identity in Southeastern Europe,

2000), to such a relationship is that both are essentially spatial, and it is territory that

brings them together. ‘How’ is the question that White seeks to answer in the present

text.

After the introductory chapter in which White sets out the principal arguments to

be pursued, Chapter 2 discusses the spatial elements of the nation, including place,

landscape and territory, while Chapter 3 concerns the essentially spatial nature of the

state and state power, and particularly the way in which the state seeks to ‘shape and

mould the nation’ in such a way as to make it coincide geographically with the state.

While Chapters 2 and 3 introduce more general, abstract concerns, chapters 4 and 5

present a more historically grounded account of how nation, state and territory have

come together and developed together in Europe and beyond since late medieval times.

The book finishes with an ‘Interlogue’, by means of which White leads us to a second

volume of more specific studies on the development of nation, state and territory in

South-eastern Europe.

At a general level, White’s text is interesting in two ways. First, he provides a timely

reminder of the importance of an explicitly spatial understanding of nationalism; not

so much the ‘when’ or ‘why’ of the nation, but rather the ‘where’. This is not an

uncontroversial claim. For some, territorial considerations have formed part of many

accounts of nationalism and the nation, and as such White, it may be argued, merely

retraces the footsteps of such distinguished scholars as Ernest Gellner, Anthony D.

Smith or Benedict Anderson. However, White is right, I feel, when he claims that

spatial considerations have not been placed at the centre of studies on the nation and

nationalism, and thus his contribution might be considered an attempt to fill such a

gap in the literature on the subject. Second, White’s text provides an interesting

introduction for students and scholars of modern European geographical history to the

endless and complex process of state and national boundary changes and forced

population movements especially in South-eastern Europe, where he is able to

illustrate his arguments with precision and clarity.

However, despite such merits the text has certain important shortcomings, none

more so than the lack of an explicit theoretical underpinning. The rather atheoretical

nature of the book means that far from breaking new ground in the study of the

complex relationship between nation, state and territory, it offers an historically based

description of the coming together of nation, state and territory, without explaining

why this occurred across different spatial settings when it did. If one of the stated aims

of the text is to fully understand national territorial conflict, then such questions

should occupy a central place in the account. In addition, the lack of theory means that

while spatial and territorial elements are discussed, there is no overall driving force of

argument capable of bringing together in a cohesive whole the many interesting points

made throughout the text.

Further problems arise, not so much in the book’s conception, but in its execution.

Readers of White’s previous work will recognise too many sections that have been

simply lifted and placed into the present one, without any further development. In

addition, the final chapter or ‘Interlogue’ should have been the place to present a

summary of the arguments developed throughout the book, and then point the way to

the promised second volume. However, at just over a page long, the chapter is clearly

too short, and fails to draw out any meaningful conclusions from the preceding

chapters, while the promise of a second volume on South-eastern Europe raises the

spectre of repetition of his already published work on the question.

646 Book Reviews

Overall, while White’s study once more underlines the need for greater attention to

spatial and territorial considerations when studying nation and state, the lack of solid

theoretical foundations means that the author ultimately falls short of fulfilling the

expectations aroused by such an ambitious title.

JOHN ETHERINGTON

Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona

David Pearson, The Politics of Ethnicity in Settler Societies: States of Unease.

Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave, 2001. 240 pp. d52.50 (hbk).

This book may be read in more than one context. On one level, it is a history of settler-

societies – and more specifically of British ‘colonies of settlement’ (Canada, Australia

and New Zealand) – drifting away from their source and turning into post-settler

states. As such, this is a story of the re-shaping of the dominant strata–once an

offspring of empire, and now a ‘core’ ethnie on its own, moulded by both external and

internal forces that re-drew the boundaries between the Old and the New worlds with

the demise of colonialism and the advance of globalisation. Also in this sense, leaving

behind ‘old’ conceptions of ‘white settler colonies’, this study moves on to problematise

Britishness and thus refrains from depicting ‘the population with the most power and

numerical supremacy as a residual category’ (p. 14).

On another level, Pearson’s book is about the politics of aboriginality. ‘The

dispossession of territory’, he writes (p. 13), ‘is the hallmark of aboriginal minorities’,

and this stood at the core of the characteristic relationship of ‘internal colonialism’

between settlers and indigenes. In time, the politics of aboriginality has become one of

‘globalising aboriginality’ (manifested, to give one example, in the draft UN Declara-

tion on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples; see pp. 189–90). The growing acknowl-

edgement of the autonomous standing of aboriginal minorities may still not have

changed their socio-economic disadvantage, yet given the liberal reputation of the

post-settler societies under study, ‘they might have a decisive edge in negotiations’ (p.

190).

Local/global dynamics also depict another set of minority/majority relationships,

relating to immigrant minorities, that in recent years is being determined by growing

controls on migration. Distinguishing between these two types of minorities –

aboriginal and immigrant – further clarifies the dynamics of ethnic relations in post-

settler states. More specifically, although both challenge the ‘integrity’ of the ‘nation-

state’, they do so differently and with different ramifications for their modes of

representation, hence political clout, within these changing polities. In this context

Pearson, quite rightly, remains cautious not to over-emphasise the impact of globalisa-

tion on the future (disintegration) of the ‘nation-state’.

This caution may be attributed to Pearson’s theoretical approach to the study of

ethnic politics, which is shaped by his distinguishing of state formation from nation-

making, and by accounting for the interrelationship between ethnicity and citizenship

in determining the ‘politics of categorisation’. This is justified by the particularity of the

case studies in question, where ‘nation-statehood is not easily achieved’ (p. 8), due to ‘a

constant tension between three linked historical trajectories’ as mentioned above

(colonisation, settlement and migration). However, this distinction has proven useful

Book Reviews 647

elsewhere as well, when a non-essentialist approach to the formation of social

categories was taken. Anthony W. Marx (Faith in Nation: Exclusionary Origins of

Nationalism, New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), to give one example, has

argued against the conflation of the emergence of states and nations, demonstrating

how nationalists, by selectively allocating citizenship rights, act not to homogenise

society, but rather to ensure loyalty to the state and to diminish conflict. Thus he did

not only reject the representation of ethnic- and civic-nationalism in dichotomous

terms, but also undermined the tendency to posit ethnicity as being antagonistic to the

notion of modern citizenship. In a similar vein, Pearson’s study highlights the

ethnicised aspect of modern nation-statehood, which equally renders the dichotomy

ethnicity/citizenship wrong, and even misleading.

His case studies show how blurred is the line between these two concepts, and how

national ideologies and state institutions may be re-shaped ‘to accommodate greater

diversity without relinquishing a core framework of ethnic and civic solidarity’ (p.

198). In this sense, unravelling the politics of ethnicity in settler societies helps us

expose the ethnic character of the ‘civic’ core, but also the civic nature of the ‘ethnic’

margins. It shows, and this is a lesson learnt from other places too, how the so-called

‘civilised’ resort to their own ‘ethnie’ in order to delimit integration, while the allegedly

‘uncivilised’ end up empowering a new, more (ethnic) respectful conception of

citizenship. In 2001, not being fooled by the powers of multiculturalism and

globalisation to dissolve the power of ethnicity and nationalism, Pearson ended with

a reluctant optimism regarding the innovative civic/ethnic arrangements that he

depicted. After 9/11, we might only be wishing to see ourselves back in those ‘states

of unease’, when the politics of citizenship was still being re-shaped by the politics of

ethnicity and not vice versa.

GAL LEVY

The Open University, Israel

Edward Schatz, Modern Clan Politics: the Power of ‘Blood’ in Kazakhstan and Beyond.

Seattle, WA and London: University of Washington Press, 2004. 280 pp. $50.00 (hbk),

$22.50 (pbk).

Viewed merely as a ‘relic’ of feudal societies, references to kin-based ties – clans, tribes,

genealogies – were proscribed in Soviet political and academic discourse. The limited

Western scholarship on these themes was generally confined to historical descriptions

of the role of clans, presenting essentialist accounts of their persisting salience ‘despite’

Soviet efforts to eradicate them.

Schatz debunks the primordialist notions of ‘persistence’ of clans by arguing that

modern state and clan identities are not mutually exclusive, as Gellner and modernisa-

tion theorists, or Lenin and Stalin, believed. Rather, modern state, and Soviet state in

particular, remains a central actor that transformed and reproduced kin-based

divisions as it sought to render them illegitimate.

The study focuses on the Central Asian state of Kazakhstan, but captures the

overall features of the political economy of ‘clans’ across the Soviet system. By

exploring the nature and dynamics of kinship ties in a region that has remained on the

margins of mainstream social science inquiry, Schatz makes a profound contribution in

648 Book Reviews

developing a new area of research and extending our understanding of the competing

logics of state institutions and group identity claims.

The book is guided by two basic questions: why do subethnic clan divisions persist

and animate political competition, notwithstanding the coercive onslaught of Soviet

modernity? And what kind of political competition do they generate, in turn affecting

state-building? The first part of the book analyses the transformation and reproduction

of clans under state socialism. As the high modernist ideology of the Soviet socialist

state rendered clans illicit, leading to their concealment, clans acquired a new

instrumental role by turning into networks for acquiring goods under the persistent

shortages of the socialist economy. The functional advantage of kinship was retained

in their new materialist role as access networks; however, clans also lost much of their

former socio-cultural salience. The argument in the first part – how the socialist

‘shortage economy’ replaced nomadic pastoralism as the mechanism of identity

reproduction – holds very well.

But how to explain the survival and resurgence of clans in the post-Soviet transition

when such shortages have become a matter of the past and state-led national-cultural

revival projects have allowed some public expression to kin-based identities? The

answer to this in the second part of the book is less compelling. Schatz identifies clan

conflict as occurring on two planes: conflict between various clan networks, including

the three ‘umbrella clans’ or hordes (zhuz in Kazakh) and ‘metaconflict’ – a discursive

conflict over the role clans are understood factually to play in political life and over the

role they ought normatively to play (p. 113). Chapters 5 and 6 offer an engaging

discussion of how clan networks, and metaconflict over contours and meanings

attributed to these divisions, animate political competition. Chapter 7, on ‘Kinship

and Political Change’, rejects primordialism in examining the difference between rural

and urban Kazakhs, reinforcing the argument that it is state action that constructs

clans, as it shapes other identities.

Part two of the book offers at least two debatable conclusions. Schatz sees the

metaconflict about subethnic divisions as possessing an ‘explosive’ political salience.

But there is no compelling empirical evidence in the book, or in the present

Kazakhstani politics, to suggest that this is indeed the case. Clans remain effectively

co-opted within the political system. Despite its public manifestation, clan metaconflict

has not challenged the state-imposed limits upon identity discourse. Soviet-defined

discourse on identity categories remains deeply internalised, both among the ‘quasi

state actors’ and the ‘opposition’, who are identified as two key actors engaged in

metaconflict.

All evidence in part two suggests that the regime headed by president Nursultan

Nazarbaev has successfully managed clan divisions through clan balancing and

exerting considerable presidential patronage. Why would the state elites take on board

suggestions to ‘craft institutions and policies that will transform clan politics into

something less explosive, more manageable’ (p. 162) when they have already found

ways of balancing kin-based ties and interests and producing a political stability that

serves the regime and its broad-based clientele extremely well?

The proposal that a more ‘normal’, i.e. democratic and far less corrupt order, may

be erected by recognising clans as legitimate actors in political and social life (by

holding genuinely competitive elections) has validity when clan networks have become

highly politicised but unable to find adequate share in power. Ironically, the

neighbouring state of Kyrgyzstan – an analogous case that finds virtually no discussion

in the book that pays more attention to clans in Somalia, Morocco and Jordan to make

Book Reviews 649

appropriate comparisons – will be the first test of whether, and how, elections can

endow clans with a democratising role.

The fact that the book has opened up so many questions and avenues for

comparative research is a testimony to its conceptual expanse and the ability to

make linkages with a variety of institutional and identity variables. The book presents

a wealth of archival data, ethnographic details and empirical evidence while preserving

theoretical engagement and broader connections. The book is a much welcome

innovation in the study of kin-based ties, personalist and informal politics in Central

Asia, dismantling the preconceptions of identity networks prevalent in much of the

existing scholarship on the subject. Policy analysts and practitioners will find a

refreshing way of understanding the salience of kin and personal ties in the political

process.

BHAVNA DAVE

School of Oriental and African Studies

Sorin Mitu, National Identity of Romanians in Transylvania, trans. by Sorana

Corneanu. Budapest and New York: Central European University Press, 2001. 314

pp. d34.95 (hbk).

Sorin Mitu’s book, first published in Romanian in 1997 (Geneza identitat,ii nat,ionale la

romanii ardeleni), is a comprehensive study of the national identity of the Transylva-

nian Romanians during the last three decades of the eighteenth century through to the

1850s. Mitu offers a thorough analysis of the evolution of their national consciousness

based on research of a wide range of historical works which circulated in the region at

that time. The main aim of the book is to examine the relationship between Romanians

as a nation and their perception of their place in Transylvanian society. Transylvania

was part of the Habsburg Empire and although Romanians were in the majority, they

were not recognised as a political entity by ruling authorities.

In Mitu’s opinion, the 1791 Supplex Libellus Valachorum and the revolutions of

1821 and 1848 had the same political impact as the American and French revolutions

in leading to the creation of the Romanian nation. From a methodological perspective,

Mitu is interested in three main themes: first, he describes the ‘identification and

delineation of the themes and cliches of self-image’; second, he indicates the ‘account of

their genesis and of the evolution of their meaning’; and third, he shows ‘the

deciphering of the functionality of the images and the ideological role they perform’

(p. 8).

The book begins by studying the relationship between the Romanians’ self-image

and their perception of other ethnic groups. In constructing their own nation,

Romanians manifested paradoxical standpoints. On the one hand, they sensed ethnic

envy in Transylvania because of their Latin origins as ‘true’ descendants of the Roman

Empire. On the other hand, as they were denied political rights, they felt despised and

betrayed by all other ethnic groups which they perceived as potential enemies. Having

a great historical past, the Romanians felt that they deserved ‘more than anyone else

and [got] less than everyone [else]’ (p. 27). They believed that the major reason which

impeded their political organisation was an international conspiracy against Roma-

650 Book Reviews

nians, directed both against their political progress and against their physical existence

as a nation in Transylvania.

Analysing the ‘negative dimension of the self-image’, Mitu indicates that Roma-

nians compared themselves with other ethnic minorities which lacked political rights

from the authorities: the Gypsy and the Jewish communities. Describing this antithesis,

Mitu quotes intellectuals from the period: Simion Barnut,iu, who believed that ‘the

Romanians are not true citizens but only suffered and tolerated, in the way of the

Gypsies, who ramble here and there, carrying along their tents’ (p. 75); and Gherontie

Cotorone who emphasised that, ‘just like the Jews who, because of their unfaithfulness,

were doomed to perish in the desert before they could reach the Promised Land, they

[the Romanians] will not come to set eyes on the pledged land, namely the heavenly

kingdom’ (p. 80).

In addition to these negative perceptions, the greatest threat to the dissolution of

Romanian national identity came not only from other ethnic groups but also from

inside the Romanian nation. From this perspective, mixed marriages were seen as the

most conspicuous way of altering Romanian individuality. ‘Will those babies be

Romanian, when they always hear their parents speak ill of the Romanians and laugh

at them together with other foreigners . . .?’ (p. 154) was seen as an illustrative example

of how people were afraid that the purity of the Romanian marriage might be tainted.

Mitu also offers counter-examples of major intellectual figures who had mixed

marriages but who, nevertheless, played important roles in the national development

of Romanians.

Another element that helped to define the national identity of Romanians was

reference to the historical past. Romanians saw themselves as the only defenders of

Christianity against barbarians. The major political and military figures from the

Middle Ages, such as Basarab I, S,tefan the Great, Vlad the Impaler and Iancu of

Hunedoara, acquired new roles in the national imagination as they were used to prove

that Romanians were not only ‘silent and anonymous masses . . . but they had their

renowned personalities’ (p. 195). In addition to the glorification of the past,

Romanians were presented in the literature of the time as hospitable, intelligent,

kind and fond of their cultural and religious traditions.

In the last chapter of his book, Mitu tackles the role of religion in fostering the

national identity of Romanians. Religion may be perceived as the major factor which

defined Romanians as a nation. Mitu offers various examples of how this relationship

was understood. Thus, according to Gavril Munteanu ‘the Romanians owe their

existence uniquely to religion, this strong protection against what the future has in

store for them’ (p. 246); in addition, George Barit, wrote that ‘we have had enough

experience to be able to tell nationality [only] from religion’ (p. 247). The national

mythology of Romanians included a direct link to Christian missionaries from the first

century, suggesting that Romanians appeared in history as a Christian nation. As

Dimitrie T, ichindeal argued, ‘Some of our ancestors received the Christian faith from

the mouths of the apostles Peter and Paul in Rome, and in the days of Emperor

Trajan brought it here to Dacia: to Banat, to the Romanian Country and to Moldavia’

(p. 250).

Mitu’s analysis of Romanian national identity gives one of the most interesting

accounts of how people saw themselves in relation to other ethnic minorities in

Transylvania. The book offers analytical and historical research based on unpublished

manuscripts and documents, papers and periodicals, calendars, books, correspon-

dence, political memoirs and petitions, anthologies as well as specialised contemporary

Book Reviews 651

material in the field. Mitu’s book offers an exceptionally well-documented analysis,

and future research on this topic should take into account his study as a reference point

in the literature.

LUCIAN N. LEUSTEAN

London School of Economics and Political Science

Chester A. Crocker, Fen Osler Hampson and Pamela Aall, Taming Intractable

Conflicts: Mediation in the Hardest Cases. Washington, DC: United States Institute of

Peace Press, 2004. 224 pp. $35.00 (hbk), $14.95 (pbk).

This is a successor to the book the authors edited on largely successful cases of

mediation. That volume had the wonderfully evocative title of Herding Cats: Mediation

in a Complex World (United States Institute of Peace Press, 1999). The focus in this book

is on mediation in the most difficult and resistant cases, but in the event they include in

this category some of the cases discussed in the earlier volume and draw extensively on

their treatment there. It is to the authors’ credit that they do not attempt to disguise the

fact that their knowledge of some of the cases they rely on for examples is second-hand.

However, this limitation perhaps in part explains their tendency to pull their punches in

the later chapters in the book where more use of examples is made. At the outset the

authors adopt an admirably tough-minded attitude towards their subject. They reject the

cynical view propounded by neo-conservative critics of the Clinton Administration of

international mediation as global social work not worthy of a superpower. But they also

emphatically reject the idealistic representation of mediation as necessarily and rightly

conducted without reference to the mediator’s national interest for the greater good of

humanity. They maintain that mediation is undertaken (or obstructed) for a variety of

motives and that mediators ‘typically are not driven solely or even chiefly by altruistic

motives’ (p. 21). They readily acknowledge that not merely may mediation fail but it may

make matters worse. At the same time, they underline that disengagement from

mediation may also carry very high costs. For example, in relation to the Israeli-

Palestinian conflict, they argue that ‘the US decision in early 2001 to back off from both

mediation and conflict resolution served only to fuel local and regional instability’ (p. 31).

A characteristic of intractable conflicts is that violence becomes institutionalised

and the parties themselves adjust to the expectation that it will continue. Nevertheless,

they argue, outsiders should not become fatalistic about such conflicts, not least

because of their potential spill-over effects. Thus, they suggest that if greater efforts

had been made to resolve the conflicts in Afghanistan and Sudan in the 1990s, then 9/

11 might conceivably have been averted. Drawing on the work of William Zartman,

they argue that the existence of a hurting stalemate may make a conflict ripe for

resolution. And they emphasise that changes in the external environment as well as the

internal balance of power may create openings for mediation in what had previously

appeared to be hopeless cases.

In the light of recent history they also argue very persuasively that with the

achievement of a political settlement, the mediator’s work is only half done. They stress

that ensuring the implementation of an agreement is likely to prove just as arduous a

task in the case of intractable conflicts as arriving at a settlement in the first place.

This is a well-written book that reaches sensible judgements for the most part and is

sharp and incisive in its categorisations and distinctions. Particularly good is their

652 Book Reviews

categorisation of the varieties of forgotten conflicts under the headings of neglected,

orphans, captives, dependants and wards. However, for a book that sets out to ask hard

questions about mediation in difficult cases, there are some gaps. Thus, there is extensive

reference in the book to American promotion of mediation between the North and

South of Sudan, but no mention of the crisis in Darfur, which might be seen as an

indirect, if perhaps unforeseeable, consequence of these efforts. Admittedly, at the time

the authors submitted their manuscript to the publisher, events in Darfur may not have

loomed as large as they do now. The authors do mention the 1993 Arusha accords on

Rwanda but they do not give consideration to their possible relationship to the genocide

in 1994. They might reasonably argue that the fault lay not with the accords as such but

with the international community’s unwillingness to commit resources to support their

implementation, but the issue does deserve to be aired. It is a pity that in the later

chapters, the authors appear to back off from illustrating more fully how mediation can

go wrong, so that an unfortunate tone of self-congratulation tends to creep in. The effect

is to undermine slightly the authors’ original intent to discuss the successes and failures

of mediation in a level-headed manner. Nevertheless, the authors deserve to be

commended for their willingness to explore questions from a theoretical perspective

that many advocates and practitioners of mediation tend to duck.

ADRIAN GUELKE

Queen’s University, Belfast

Nenad Dimitrijevic and Petra Kovacs (eds), Managing Hatred and Distrust: the

Prognosis for Post-Conflict Settlement in Multiethnic Communities in the Former

Yugoslavia. Budapest: Local Government and Public Reform Initiative, 2004. 328

pp. Free publication.

As the editors partially explain in their introduction, this book is a successor volume to

a previous publication of the Open Society Institute, Managing Multiethnic Commu-

nities: In the Countries of the Former Yugoslavia that came out in 2001 and was edited

by Nenad Dimitrijevic. This volume, like its predecessor, is a product of research

carried out by the Local Government and Public Service Reform Initiative of the Open

Society Institute for its Managing Multiethnic Communities Project (MMCP). The

book is organised into six sections, with a section each on Bosnia, Croatia, Kosovo,

Macedonia, Serbia and Slovenia.

There is a very diverse range of contributors to the book, including academics,

journalists and the staff of research institutes from the fields of sociology, politics, public

administration and law. On the whole the quality of the contributions is high and all are

mercifully free of pretension. They are plainly written and convey lucidly the local

contexts that they focus on. What comes across most clearly is the diversity of the state

of relations among different ethnic communities, sometimes within the same territory,

though more striking were the differences past and present among former parts of

Yugoslavia. Thus, the authors rightly make much of the contrast in pre-conflict and

post-conflict relations among the ethnic communities in Bosnia and Kosovo.

Yet it seems that the policies of the international community in Kosovo have been

shaped by a determination to avoid mistakes made in the very different context of

Bosnia. Florian Bieber’s chapter, ‘The Legal Framework for Post-War Kosovo and the

Myth of Multiethnicity’, underlines these points particularly effectively, describing

Book Reviews 653

present-day Kosovo as follows: ‘a territory with an unclear long-term political status, a

deeply divided population and a high rate of basic violations of human rights’ (p.118).

Yet paradoxically, as Bieber concludes, a rigid system emphasising ethnic differences

has been imposed on Bosnia, a land ‘without a long history of strained interethnic

relations’ (p. 135), while just the opposite has happened in Kosovo where there has

been no recent tradition of peaceful coexistence.

The point of departure of the editors is that socialist Yugoslavia was destroyed in

cruel inter-ethnic wars as a result of the nationalist policies pursued by Slobodan

Milosevic. Yet such a top-down as well as one-sided view of the causes of conflict in the

1990s is not borne out by the analysis of local situations that the rest of the book

contains. Thus, both attitudinal and structural factors appear to account for the

contrast between the polarised conditions to be found in Vukovar and the achievement

of inter-ethnic co-operation to be found in Knezaevi Vinogradi, two municipalities in

Croatia that chapters by respectively Tania Gosselin and Ivana Djuric describe. The

different fates of the two municipalities during the conflict proved important. The

physical destruction of a large part of Vukovar embittered relations between the

communities, just as the absence of involvement in the conflict assisted Knezevi

Vinogradi in preventing the wider political context from souring relations at a local

level. But also of vital importance in these cases was the relative post-war size of the

Croat and Serb communities in the two municipalities, as well as the presence of a

substantial third group, the Hungarians, in the case of Knezaevi Vinogradi.

In general, the authors concentrate on what further steps might be taken at the local

level to improve relations among the different ethnic communities, though from time

to time the need for a much larger transformation of the whole context of the problem

of community relations is mooted. Thus, Ratko Bubalo, in a chapter on Serb refugees

in Vojvodina, argues that there is unlikely to be a durable solution to the problem of

refugees in the former Yugoslavia without radical change that includes ‘a general

political defeat of the concept of ethnically homogeneous nation states’ (p. 298). In the

face of the success of ethnonationalism as an ideology for effective political mobilisa-

tion across the entire region since the end of the Cold War, such a hope seems little

short of utopian. It is, nonetheless, a useful reminder in a book that highlights the role

of local factors in shaping relations among people of different ethnic identities that the

wider context also matters. In Renata Treneska’s chapter on the subject of coexistence

in Macedonia before and after the conflict in that state in 2001, there is an interesting

discussion of the appropriateness of the use of consociational mechanisms to repair the

damage done by that conflict. The familiar objection is raised that these have led to a

deeper ethnicisation of political life at the expense of a civic concept of the state.

ADRIAN GUELKE

Queen’s University, Belfast

Luis Moreno, The Federalization of Spain. London: Frank Cass, 2001. 192 pp. d70.00

(hbk), d21.99 (pbk).

Is Spain a modern-day federation? Or is it, as declared by the 1978 Constitution, a

unitary state? In this concise book, the Spanish sociologist Luis Moreno leans toward

the first hypothesis. He does so by defining the process as federalization, rather than

identifying an existing federation as a tangible institution.

654 Book Reviews

Chapter 1 introduces the book’s conceptual and terminological framework,

including federalism, nation-building and subsidiarity. Chapter 2 is a very succinct

description of the historical events leading to the present configuration of Spain’s

ethnoregional politics. The next two chapters provide the bulk of the book’s argument

and originality: Chapter 3 explores the relationship between Spain’s central govern-

ment and the seventeen Comunidades Autonomas (Autonomous Communities) estab-

lished by the 1978 Constitution. It convincingly argues that this dynamic relationship

has become a defining trait of both local- and state-level politics. Moreno uses the

concept of ‘multiple ethnoterritorial concurrence’ to indicate the simultaneous asymme-

trical and heterogeneous occurrence of political loyalties and events at both the state

and the sub-state level.

Scholars of Spanish politics know well that, despite its unitary stress, the

Constitution allows for ample margins of autonomy to be negotiated between centre

and periphery. It also recognises the right to self-government by the ‘comunidades

autonomas’. The constant negotiation manoeuvres have deeply modified the state’s

structure, in such a way that it increasingly resembles a federation of regions and

communities. In fact, Spain remains constitutionally a unitary state, but in the process

it has acquired strong federal features, as well as elements of asymmetry between the

various Autonomous Communities. Asymmetrical federalism means that each com-

munity is endowed with a different degree of power.

The most important of the four chapters, Chapter 4, describes how the post-1978

configuration has deeply shaped and swayed collective identities in all of the seventeen

regions. The ‘historical nationalities’ (Catalonia, Euskadi and Galicia) are only three

of the beneficiaries of the new devolution politics. The effects of the establishment of

regional institutions are such that new regional identities have begun to crystallise.

This process has reached all regions to different extents, but it has reached even the

newest of them, those which did not exist in their present form before 1978 (like La

Rioja and Madrid). Moreno’s most prominent contribution concerns the sociological

impact of these developments, manifested in the fostering of ‘dual identities’, in which

Spanish coexists with regional layers of individual identity. In this way, most citizens

can identify with both their Autonomous Community and Spain as a whole.

The underlying argument is that Spanish-style devolution can be a strong incentive

for accommodating, if not resolving, historical conflicts and, therefore, for preventing

secession. This is a valid and robust argument, one which has been corroborated by

research in several other regions and countries. In the final section, the author

recognises the capacity of the ‘Spanish model’ to provide an exportable set of political

practices and institutions for conflict resolution. But certainly, this would need to be

assessed in different historical circumstances. For instance, Aznar’s attempt to import

US-style patriotism into the framework of the global ‘war on terror’ (2001–04) has

backfired on the very federalisation process. It has fostered resentment throughout

Spain, yet its repercussions on peripheral nationalities have been even more sinister –

and virtually unprecedented by post-Francoist standards. The media-mandated use of

state patriotism has inspired the rapid ascent of reactive anti-state forces: in Catalonia,

the independentist left has gained both the regional and state-level elections, while

similar anti-central challenges have emerged among the other nationalities. The federal

principle can be more difficult to sustain once the central government attempts to

curtail collective rights – even if it just gives the impression of doing so.

The impact of the international context is also considerable: Moreno recognises the

positive influence exerted by the European Union in smothering ethnic conflicts. Given

Book Reviews 655

its multinational origins and nature, EU institutions have actually worked as powerful

frameworks and incentives for conflict resolution. Despite the uncertain outcome of

complex, multi-party negotiations and the difficulty in agreeing upon goals and

strategies, ‘dual identities’ and cross-cutting cleavages on a large number of issues

characterise ethnopolitical processes in both Spain and Europe in general.

But the opposite is also true: the temptation to engage in anti-European politics

could reverberate immediately on centre–periphery relations. Aznar’s dramatic failure

in the periphery was also determined by the perception that its leaning towards the US,

and against ‘old Europe’, could lead to a direct confrontation with the historical

nationalities. A similar situation could arise in Britain ensuing from a referendum on

the European constitution: if the electorate decided to disengage from Europe, Scottish

and Welsh politics might well take a strong separatist turn.

Of course, possible speculations cannot refute the book’s key argument, which rests

upon solid academic grounds, well-informed socio-political research and profound

historical insight. Moreno’s description of ‘multiple territorial occurrences’ and ‘dual

identities’ should be incorporated into every course of, and research into, Spanish

politics. The book represents also a very useful tool for both experts and students in

comparative politics, ethnic conflict regulation and the study of nationalism in general.

DANIELE CONVERSI

London School of Economics and Political Science

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