Macropolitics: concepts and applications

¶ … Voting to Violence, Jack Snyder starkly poses some of the most vexing questions for foreign policy analysts during the 1990's. Why was this decade, despite the collapse of the totalitarian system of communism and an overall greater global potential for democratic involvement, marked by a worldwide increase in ethnic conflict and hatred in Europe and across the larger world?

Why did this "the process of democratization" become seemingly "one of its own worst enemies," because of its populist nature of the democratic politics that seemed to point towards peace and freedom, rather than conflict. Why has the promise of democracy leading to a more stable worldwide peace seemingly inevitably become "clouded with the danger of war?" (Snyder 2000: 21)

In another section of Snyder's book, the author states that "the transition to democratic politics is meanwhile [still] creating fertile conditions for nationalism and ethnic conflict, which not only raises the costs of the transition but may also redirect popular participation into a lengthy antidemocratic detour." It has proved difficult for "advanced civic democracies," the writer Robert Dahl's term for successful and peaceful nations, to evolve from many new nations, even nations espousing democratic ideals, when those nations have arisen out of ethnic self-identification. (Dahl 2000) Snyder and Dahl's analysis force one to ask which conditions and characteristics of a representative democracy in a nation moving towards a new system of government are most and least likely to facilitate the stable, peaceful governance of a diverse political community, and why?

One of, though certainly not the only reason, for the escalation of ethnic conflict during the 1990's was that the regions had long been hotbeds of ethnic unrest. The Balkan region was famously known as the 'powder keg' of Europe before the onset of World War I. After the end of World War I, according to the principles of national self-determination that had become, in Woodrow Wilson's mind, inextricably linked with the principles of democracy, the map of Europe was redrawn. The old Empires were indeed carved up, but this privileged some ethnic groups and disenfranchised others, as not every ethnic minority could be granted a new nation. During World War II, old ethnic rivalries, such as those between the Serbs and the Croats, the former whom were persecuted by the Nazis, the latter of whom became allied with German infiltrating powers because of a perceived cultural bond, were again triggered. After World War II, these ethnic ties were smothered because of the officially nationalist (really pro-Russian) communist ideology of the U.S.S.R. However, with the dissolution of the U.S.S.R., opposition to Russian ethnocentrism, communist economic inefficiency, and outright political repression became articulated through ethnic self-identification rather than through an advocacy of liberal rights and freedoms.

For instance, in the former USSR Republic of Estonia, the teaching of the native language of the region became one of the rallying cries of those who wished to seek more democratic local control of their nation, and finally to separate from the region. Because such ethnically-based policies were often the way these nations managed to define themselves as free of Soviet-based control, and because these policies were popular and easily transmutable on a grass-roots level, ethnic identity became the way one's democratic, i.e. non-Soviet identity was expressed.

The problem with an ethnic form of democracy, however, is that unlike a rights-based form of democracy, which in the democratic ideal officially considers all citizens merely as equal individuals, all possessing certain inalienable freedoms that cannot be impinged upon by the government, ethnic democracy is far more populist. It is more democratic in some respects, in that policies are defined by majority rule. In other words, if the majority of individuals in, for instance, Latvian, wish to speak Latvian and have their children taught in Latvian in school, why not make this the national language and not Russian? This may seem superficially sensible. However, by constructing a democratic identity within the region as inextricably linked with one's status as a Latvian, the very nature of one's identity as a good citizen becomes how Latvian one is, and also how unlike one is from other ethnic groups opposed to the Latvian identity. Thus it becomes problematic to include the Russian minority that dwells within the nation's borders in the process of Latvian nation formation. Also, the nation becomes much more inclined to enter into ethnic conflicts around its borders, because enabling members of its ethnic identity to survive in other lands is linked to the nation's democratic identity and survival.

Snyder correctly points out in his book that this problem is not only endemic to Eastern Europe and the Slavic regions but also in India, which came to its modern identity in opposition to British rule, and other post-colonial nations. He stresses that this does oppose the move towards democracy -- far from it, he believes that the world could become more peaceful were it to become more democratic. "[T]he successful unfolding of a global, liberal-democratic revolution might eventually undergrid a more peaceful era in world politics." (Snyder 2000: 20)

This philosophy is also echoed by Robert Dahl in is book On Democracy. (Snyder 2000: 58) In other words, both authors state that at least in theory because a democratic defines itself and places an inherent value upon the rights of the individual, a democratic nation should tend to be less warlike, less cavalier with the lives of the citizens who back the government. It should also tend to be less expansionist and cavalier of the freedoms of other individuals in other nations. Democracies are more beholden to "inclusive ideals of civil rights for all members of society... And perceive each other as having common principles that make war between them illegitimate and nearly unthinkable" (Snyder, 2000: 353). Or, more succinctly put, because they share a common ideological framework, democracies rarely go to war with other democracies.

However, this valuation of the individual must be for all individuals for this world democratic peace to ensue. In other words, new democracies must be rights-based rather than purely populist and ethnically based, otherwise an 'us vs. them' ethnic ideology will lead to warfare. In an ethnic democracy, the security of one's ethnic state becomes based in the stamping out of all ethnic groups, groups who were historically, previously opposed to one's own ethnic identity. What is called upon is not a naive liberal faith in the value of a democracy, but an intelligent understanding of the complications of democracy, a belief in a rights-based system with a questioning eye upon simple ethnic majority populism. (Snyder 2000: 16-17)