The international system has undergone dramatic transformations since the early 1990s. The collapse of the Soviet Empire and the demise of the Cold War system have brought about a new strategic landscape: rivalry between superpowers no longer dictates the fate of international politics. The importance of geo-strategy and military security has receded in significance, while economic, ecological, communal, and societal security issues have become increasingly important.
War is no longer an instrument of policy and a method of resolving disputes — in most cases it has become a means of creating nationalism, mobilizing the masses for supporting the existing regime or opposition, and sparking social revolution. Although there have been conventional wars, a majority of wars have had nation-building, social-revolutionary, state-creation, or other purely domestic objectives.^[1]
Jack Snyder in his brilliant book challenges the simplistic approach, which claims that democratization would be an effective antidote to international war and ethnic strife. Snyder explains why in some instances democratization may cause nationalist conflicts, whereas in other instances the process of democratization may be relatively smooth and peaceful. He builds the book on his previous research^[2] and openly criticizes a “take it easy” approach of some Western politicians who advocate limited involvement in unseemly struggles because they are caused by ancient hatreds and therefore hopelessly intractable. A key theme in Snyder’s research is that conflict or growth of nationalist feelings cannot generally be explained as an inevitable resurgence of ethnic tensions. Ideas about ethnicity and ethnic differences are essentially political and they are routinely reworked by various political actors. In his view, the process of democratization creates conditions that allow for nationalism and ethnic conflict.
Snyder starts his book by defining nationalism and democratization. He defines nationalism as the doctrine according to which a people that treats itself as distinct from others in its culture, history or institutions should govern itself through a political system that reflects and protects such distinctiveness. Nationalist conflict is organized violence that emerges on the grounds of such a nationalist doctrine. Defining democracy and democratization, Snyder rejects the minimalist view of democracy, which emphasizes the absolute sovereignty of the majority, expressed through elections. Democracy, in his view, is a more complex phenomenon and includes such aspects as freedom in civic, economic, political, cultural and social dimensions, freedom to organize groups to contest elections as well as free press.
Then the author examines with great precision the link between democratization and nationalist conflict. He presents two major contending views, as he labels them, the “popular-rivalries”, when democratization opens a window of opportunity for long-held aspirations of an already-formed nation, and the “elite-persuasion” argument, according to which nationalism is weak or absent prior to democratization processes. Snyder favors the second approach which basically states that the elites in the process of democratization exploit nationalism to prevent surrendering real political authority to common people.
Since the elites are concerned about their own survival, they are usually reluctant to allow full democratization because this could challenge their economic interests as well as political position of power. Since nationalism is the doctrine of rule in the name of people but not necessarily by people, it allows the elites to be popular and not necessarily democratic. In Snyder’s view, the intensity of democratizing country’s nationalism depends on two major factors: 1) the adaptability of elites’ interests to a more democratic setting and how far they feel threatened by democratic developments;
2) the strength of country’s economy and political institutions. The combinations of these two variables produce ultimately four types of nationalism: counterrevolutionary, revolutionary, ethnic, and civic.

Table 1.1. Relationship of Political Institutions and Elites’ Interests to the Type of Nationalism during the Early Phase of Democratization

<img src=http://abimperio.net/pics/tori2000.jpg>

Snyder, p.39

Snyder devotes two chapters to historical case studies of four types of nationalism: counterrevolutionary Germany before the two world wars, civic Britain in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, revolutionary France, and ethnic Serbia in the century before 1914. The most interesting part of Snyder’s case studies is the chapter on nationalism and democratization in the post-Soviet states. He evaluates the applicability of such alternative explanations to nationalist and ethnic conflict in the post-Communist world as long-standing popular rivalries, intermingled ethnic residential patterns, and military insecurity that emerged as a result of imperial collapse. However, as Snyder convincingly demonstrates, the intensity of nationalist violence in the post-Soviet space depended mostly on the variations in the patterns of democratization in these states. More specifically, three major variables shaped the type of nationalism: 1) the state’s degree and timing of economic development; 2) the degree to which democratization processes threatened positions and interests of elites; and 3) the character of political institutions during the transition.
Presenting his post-Soviet cases, the author does not pay enough attention to operationalization of the second variable and does not produce a set of parameters measuring the degree to which elites feel threatened by democratization processes. Thus his case studies do not really test his core argument and remain good illustrations making the reader believe that his theory has a better explanatory potential than the alternative approaches.
I would agree that the political elites, especially in the post-Soviet context and in the developing world, are mostly concerned with themselves and their political survival. However, in order to understand why in some instances elites use nationalist mobilization approaches and in other instances they do not, a more nuanced approach to evaluated a complex and multidimensional nature of international and domestic threats faced by the elites is needed. It would be correct to argue that weak state authority, underdeveloped institutions, multiple party systems with ultranationalist parties wishing to gain political support through risky policy moves, polarization of society, and uncertain results of economic reforms may significantly increase internal instability. When a regime is about to collapse, the leaders may seek to boost their popular support. In such conditions, positive public perceptions of foreign policy and/or domestic nationalistic appeals can serve as a major source of legitimization for the political elite, especially when such legitimacy is difficult to achieve through routine domestic policies. Since the author attempts to explain more complex situations than those described above, and evaluate the impact of democratization on nationalist conflict, he definitely needs to present his theory’s antecedent conditions, or those background conditions that are necessary for his theory to operate. Since Snyder’s theory examines relationship between two phenomena, democratization and nationalist conflict, his presentation of post-Soviet cases cannot be qualified as a process tracing technique when the researcher examines the chain of events by which the initial case conditions are translated into case outcomes. Short examples are simply insufficient to convince the reader that his theory has more explanatory power than the competing explanations. Someone may argue, for instance, that in the post-Soviet space nationalism has nothing to do with democratization but rather reflects the ability of elites to furnish the competing counter-elites with economic benefits or repress these competing elites. In other words, elites were threatened not by rising demands for mass participation but rather by competing elites, which they failed to integrate into the networks of beneficiaries of “economic transition.” Since the former Yugoslavia did not have a typical for any post-Soviet state network of former Communist elites and bureaucracy that possessed a wide range of setting conflicts in essentially closed, non-democratic setting, the elites could not redistribute the economic pie among themselves to accommodate competing elites or repress them at once. In any case, I would argue that, given the peculiarity of post-Soviet partially reformed economies, the democratization-nationalist conflict linkage cannot be adequately analyzed without careful examination of political economy of the countries under consideration.
The author’s policy recommendations are extremely interesting and useful. Snyder develops a complex approach to democratizing states where such issues as economic policy and institution-building processes should promote favorable conditions for a peaceful democratic transition. I just hope that security strategists and economic development specialists would read this book — it might encourage them to overcome the limitations of overly narrow specialization and come up with democratization/economic reform strategies that take into consideration security component as well. Some of Snyder’s suggestions, such as, delegating more power to the majority to enable one ethnic group to monopolize the state power with tangible side benefits distributed to those disadvantaged by such institutional arrangement sounds reasonable in some cases. However, these cases should be carefully tailored to specific democratizing country’s conditions.
Snyder shares with the reader his skeptical point of view on traditional for the Western world policy advice to press all dictators to democratize immediately. In his view, the implementation of such a policy may lead to factionalism along the ethnic lines that in the absence of effective institutions for channeling social cleavages may ultimately lead to nationalist conflict. In other words, speeding up the democratization processes may lead to various negative consequences such as counterrevolutionary backlash.
Nevertheless, I would like to recommend this book to everyone who is interested in nationalism, democratization, and political elites’ calculations. “From Voting to Violence” may be an extremely useful handbook for policymakers dealing with the democratizing countries and regions.