Forward to part 2, Structure of political appeals
V.P. Gagnon, Jr.
Thanks to John Oakley, Liz Wishnick, Jack Snyder, John Weiss, Aleksandar Stulhofer and the participants in the Peace Studies Research Seminar for helpful comments and suggestions.
Research for this paper was assisted by an award from the Social Science Research Council of an SSRC-MacArthur Foundation Fellowship on Peace and Security in a Changing World.
The terms ethnic identity and ethnic conflict are increasingly being seen in discussions of international security, and are often portrayed as inextricably linked, the one following the other in a kind of natural progression. Indeed, both the primordialist and instrumentalist approaches to ethnicity seem to agree that appealing to (or framing) peoples' identities as members of a collective group defined in terms of ethnicity is a very powerful mobilization strategy. This ethnic mobilization in turn is said to result in a process of "ethnic outbidding," whereby competition to attract popular support leads political actors to try appear the most supportive of ethnic claims, which causes an almost inevitable spiral toward conflict with other ethnic groups. Donald Horowitz even argues that the only constraint on this process is the ethnic composition of the electorate.[1] While this is surely an exaggeration, and in fact outbidding is restrained by other factors,[2] the implicit assumption is that violent ethnic conflicts can be explained in terms of this outbidding strategy.
From this perspective, the outbreak of violent conflict along ethnic lines is explained with reference to nationalist propaganda and mobilization, whereby political elites mobilize populations by pushing the "ethnic" button. The result, called “hypernationalism” by some IR scholars, is an almost Pavlovian response, where "ethnic masses" either awaken to the fact that the true nature of their political interests is along ethnic lines or are manipulated by nationalist propaganda, thereby driving the political actions of the "ethnic group" into greater and greater conflict and violence with other "ethnic groups."[3]
In this paper I'd like to test the hypothesis of ethnic outbidding and the related assertations that violent conflict along ethnic cleavages is just a further step along the road of ethnic mobilization, and that appeals to ethnic identity naturally lead to violence between "ethnic groups." To do so I consider two sets of questions. First, at times of violent conflict and in periods preceding them, what is the message elites are using in their attempts to influence the beliefs and behaviors of the wider population? To what do they appeal? And second, how does the target audience respond to these influence attempts? Are they in fact mobilized? Are they driven to violence against others?
In order to shed light on this phenomenon, I’ll address these questions by looking at the case of Serbia between the late 1980s and 1993. This case is generally perceived as one of the most extreme of recent cases of ethnically-based conflict, where appeals to ethnic and national sentiment supposedly mobilized the Serbian population into a long and destructive war. Yet the facts point to a quite different dynamic and casts doubt on the image of powerful, ever more militant appeals to ethnic solidarity mobilizing the population toward ever more violent conflict. Rather, this case shows the very real limits of such appeals, as well as the shortcomings of the concept of ethnic solidarity as an explanatory factor for such violence.
As will be argued below, political rhetoric and imagery of ethnic resentment and racism were dominant in the Serbian leadership’s political rhetoric as long as the political system was an authoritarian one, and the leadership did not need the active support of a majority of the population. But in periods when Serbia’s leaders needed the support of the wider population to stay in power (because of the introduction of multiparty democracy), attempts by Serbia’s political leadership to influence the wider population focused not on themes of hatred, national or ethnic intolerance. Rather the overall message was focused much more on non-ethnic issues; and in those messages related to national identity, the focus was on a broader concept of injustice. In addition, rather than a process of ethnic outbidding, what we see instead is a process of ethnic underbidding, that is, competition between elites driving them to seem less nationalistic and more moderate on nationalist issues.
In terms of the effects of these strategies, what is clear is that despite images of egregious injustices and dangers to Serbs and to Serbia, and of violence being perpetrated against Serbs, the population was not actively mobilized along these issues, and was certainly not mobilized into violent conflict. Indeed, candidates who espoused extremist language consistently did poorly, while in terms of willingness to act in solidarity with other Serbs, military mobilization campaigns were utter failures despite images of innocent victims of atrocities. As for the violent conflict along ethnic lines, it was not the result of nationalist mobilization, but rather a purposeful policy undertaken by political elites. And its goal was not to mobilize, but to demobilize the population.
Just as in the rest of Eastern Europe, so too in Serbia there was a very large constituency for radical change in the status quo political and economic system. But unlike in most of the region, the Serbian communist party managed to maintain its hold on power. By sending military and paramility forces into other Yugoslav republics in order to start violent conflict, which was portrayed as “ethnic conflict,” the regime managed to refocus the center of political discourse away from issues of radical change. This meant that the kinds of people who were on the streets, mobilized against the regime in places like Czechoslovakia and Hungary, in Serbia were silenced by the images of war and by the prospect of being sent to the front. In fact, exactly because of the limited effectiveness of appeals to ethnic solidarity the regime had to resort to violent conflict along ethnic lines to keep its opponents from mobilizing the population against the regime itself. This silencing or demobilizing strategy has proved quite successful in the Serbian case.
The paper looks at the two aspects of nationalist mobilization in the context of the Serbian case in the period immediately preceding the wars as well as during the violence. First it looks at the structure of political influence attempts in two ways: one, in terms of the actual content of those political appeals that directly addressed ethnic and national sentiment, and two, the weight of the concept of ethnic solidarity as a factor in political competition. Second, it looks at the actual political outcome of these appeals and the overall impact of appeals to ethnic solidarity and nationalist issues. The focus will be on Serbs within Serbia. (The situation of Serbs in Croatia and in Bosnia-Hercegovina was in fact very similar until guerrilla groups from outside began the violence there.)[4] In the concluding section I'll suggest some possible hypotheses about the link between ethnic mobilization and violent conflict along ethnic cleavages.
Forward to part 2, Structure of political appeals
Last revised 10/20/99