Badredine Arfi - Ethnic Fear, The Social Construction of Insecurity (1998)

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Ethnic fear: The socialconstruction of insecurityBadredine Arfi a ba Fellow at the Mershon Center, Ohio StateUniversity,b Visiting assistant professor in the Departmentof Political Science, University of Illinois,Urbana‐ChampaignPublished online: 24 Dec 2007.

To cite this article: Badredine Arfi (1998) Ethnic fear: The social construction ofinsecurity, Security Studies, 8:1, 151-203, DOI: 10.1080/09636419808429368

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ETHNIC FEAR:

T H E SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF INSECURITY

BADREDINE ARFI

FULL-SCALE VIOLENCE erupted between the Serbs and Croats inthe Krajina region of Croatia in June 1991. The Yugoslav Na-tional Army played an important role in the fighting. Nonethe-

less, local warfare between neighboring Serb and Croat groups reachedvery significant proportions, too. Although the Serbs and Croats in themixed communities of Krajina and Slavonia were not so divided onlymonths earlier, they took up arms against one another. Prior to theeruption of violence, most Serbs and Croats in the region knew thatwar was unnecessary and would be too costly. In a few months, how-ever, Serb-Croat ethnic polarization emerged and reached full scale.Many people, who had previously resisted the appeals of a minority ofextremists on both sides, finally opted for violence. A rapid homogeni-zation of opinion in favor of ethnic violence occurred on a large scaleon both sides.

A variety of causes has recently been proposed to explain such apuzzle—the rapid and widespread eruption of ethnic violence betweenpreviously peacefully cohabiting, ethnic communities. Two sorts ofexplanation have been particularly emphasized in the aftermath of the

Badredine Arfi is a fellow at the Mershon Center at Ohio State University, and a visit-ing assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Illi-nois at Urbana-Champaign

The author thanks Edward Kolodziej, Rick Hermann, Ned Lebow, David Laitin, TedHopf, Edward Mansfield, Richard Gunther, Peg Herrman, Kimberly Zisk, DouglasFoyle, Roger Kanet, Carol Leff, Benjamin Frankel, and the anonymous reviewers forSecurity Studies, as well as the participants of the Mershon Center Monthly Seminar fortheir suggestions and comments on various drafts of this paper.

1. Misha Glenny, The Fall of Yugoslavia (New York: Penguin, 1992), 85.2. For an attempt to synthesize various levels of explanations, see Stuart J. Kaufman,

"Spiraling to Ethnic War: Elites, Masses, and Moscow in Moldova's Civil War," Inter-national Security 21, no. 2 (fall 1996): 108-38.

SECURITY STUDIES 8, no. 1 (autumn 1998): 151-203Published by Frank Cass, London.

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152 SECURITY STUDIES 8, no. 1

cold war, though. First, some works have advanced a so-called ancient-hatreds hypothesis. These works argue that ancient ethnic hatreds andcentury-old feuds, long suppressed by repressive communist regimes,simply reerupted as the cold war waned to cause ethnic conflict andviolence. Second, others have proposed rational-choice-based explana-tions which can be delineated into two main variants. An elite-basedapproach argues that ethnic conflict is a rational strategy that threat-ened ruling elites use to fend off domestic challengers. A group-basedperspective argues that "intense ethnic conflict is most often caused bycollective fears of the future....As information failures, problems ofcredible commitment, and the security dilemma take hold, groups be-come apprehensive, the state weakens, and conflict becomes morelikely." Neither the ancient-hatreds hypothesis nor a rationalist ap-proach with its two main variants can satisfactorily explain the emer-gence of ethnic fear and violence.

I argue instead that a reconstruction of the social identities of ethnicgroups can cause ethnic fear and violence. Social identity—a set ofmeanings that an actor attributes to itself while taking the perspectiveof others—defines the actor and provides information on its interestsand behavior. Social identity endows social interactions with predict-ability around a set of expectations, a necessary ingredient to sustainsocial life. Changes in the social identities of ethnic groups destabilizeestablished patterns of interethnic relations, decrease interethnic pre-dictability, and create uncertainty about future relations. As politicalentrepreneurs and ethnic activists modify interethnic practices andmodes of interaction, which enact their group social identities, cur-rently held expectations about interethnic relations increasingly be-come unrealistic. Every ethnic group therefore seeks updated private

3. See, for example, Robert D. Kaplan, Balkan Ghosts: A Journey through History(New York: St. Martin's, 1993).

4. V. P. Gagnon Jr., "Ethnic Nationalism and International Conflict: The Case ofSerbia," International Security 19, no. 3 (winter 1994/95): 130-66.

5. David A. Lake and Donald Rothchild, "Containing Fear: The Origins and Man-agement of Ethnic Conflict," International Security 21, no. 2 (fall 1996): 41-75, 41. Fora detailed rationalist discussion of group conflict, see Russell Hardin, One for All: TheLogic of Group Conflict (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995).

6. The ancient-hatreds hypothesis has been rebutted from many academic quarters. Iinstead focus on the rationalist approach to ethnic conflict as presented by V. P. Gag-non at the élite level and by David Lake and Donald Rothchild at the group level.These two works are illustrative of the two main variants of a rationalist approach toethnic conflict. Of course, most authors using either variant of the rational-choice ap-proach use a mixture of both variants, but do nonetheless put more emphasis on one orthe other.

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The Social Construction of Insecurity 153

information from other groups, inquires about the degree of commit-ment of other groups to future interethnic arrangements, and reconsid-ers its security and welfare assurances. Salient ethnic historical memo-ries and the structure of ethnic cleavages strongly shape this dynamicand infuse it with a potential to produce aggressive social identities—ethnic groups would define one another as an enemy.

Aggressive social identities are socially constructed through a se-quence of four complementary processes. First, ethnic leaders selec-tively use salient ethnic historical memories to construct a set of politi-cal myths. Second, the propagation of the political myths and theirinternalization by the distinct groups and consequent mobilization ofthese groups create a climate where leaders' strategies become pivotalelements of interethnic relations. Third, within such a climate, ethnicleaders entertain discourses and take actions that demonize the "other."Fourth, the "other" reciprocates by using similar discourses and ac-tions. If the institutional arrangements of the state either remain inca-pable of controlling the situation or inadvertently reinforce it, this dy-namic becomes a routinized way to view and deal with the "other" asan all-out enemy. Ethnic fear thus takes hold, creating a strong poten-tial to ethnic violence.

The article has four sections. A first section briefly discusses somerecent attempts to understand ethnic conflict and violence within arationalist approach, and highlights few but important shortcomings ofsuch an approach. A second section presents a theory of ethnic fearwithin a constructivist approach that problematizes group identity. Ina third section, I examine the social construction of fear between theSerbs and Croats in events leading to the dissolution of former Yugo-slavia. Finally, a conclusion summarizes the main findings of the arti-cle, highlights the contribution of a social constructivist approach tothe research agenda on ethnic conflicts, and draws policy implicationsfor dealing with ethnic fear and conflict.

T:THE RATIONALIST APPROACH TO ETHNIC CONFLICT

HE STANDARD rational-choice approach to ethnic cooperation andconflict suggests that social actors use ethnicity to organize group

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political action if individual benefits are expected to outweigh thecosts.7 It assumes that actors choose ethnicity as a criterion for politicalorganization based on predetermined interests. The approach thusprovides a consequence-driven explanation of ethnic politics and con-flict. More generally, rationalist explanations start with the stipulationthat "a great variety of human transactions and interactions involve thepossibility of opportunism—self-interested behavior that has sociallyharmful consequences."

V. P. Gagnon, for example, argues that leaders channel or even cre-ate ethnic sentiments and animosities to carry out self-serving politicalagendas. Thus, "violent conflict along ethnic cleavages is provoked byélites in order to create a domestic political context where ethnicity isthe only politically relevant identity....The elite thereby constructs theindividual interest of the broader population in terms of the threat tothe community defined in ethnic terms."9 James Fearon and DavidLaitin argue that taking individual interactions subject to opportunismas a theoretical starting point explains how people are able to"maintain individual reputations for cooperative behavior that aremore difficult to sustain in interethnic interactions."10 Individuals cando so because they interact more often with their coethnics, whichprovides them with access to more information. In addition,"decentralized institutional arrangements are likely to arise to moder-ate problems of interethnic opportunism," because persistent violenceis costly and peaceful interethnic relations are beneficial.

7. Shaheen Mozaffar, "The Institutional Logic of Ethnic Politics: A Prolegomenon,"in Ethnic Conflict and Democratization in Africa, ed. Harvey Glickman (Atlanta: Afri-can Studies Association Press, 1995), 33-69.

8. James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin, "Explaining Interethnic Cooperation,"American Political Science Review 90, no. 4 (December 1996): 715-35, 717.

9. Gagnon, "Ethnic Nationalism and International Conflict: The Case of Serbia,"132. Note that Gagnon's use of the term "constructs" does not imply "social construc-tion" but rather élite single-handed manipulation of the ethnic sentiments of their co-ethnics. In a "social construction" approach the élite's identities will also be mutuallyreconstructed as they try to manipulate their followers' identities.

10. Fearon and Laitin, "Explaining Interethnic Cooperation," 730.11. This is reminiscent of the "Contact Hypothesis," which has been much debated

in social psychology. This hypothesis assumes that increased contact between differentethnic groups gives each group more accurate information about the other and thusreduces friction. The empirical evidence on this argument is rather mixed. For a thor-ough examination of the contact hypothesis, see Hugh D. Forbes, Ethnic Conflict:Commerce, Culture, and the Contact Hypothesis (New Haven: Yale University Press,1997).

12. Fearon and Laitin, "Explaining Interethnic Cooperation," 730.

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One problem with rationalist explanations of ethnic conflicts is thatthey bracket a fundamental aspect of ethnic conflicts—changes ingroup identities. This is a serious shortcoming because identity clashes,which are rooted in a breakdown of intersubjective—socially shared,not subjective—understandings about intergroup relations, shape thestakes in most ethnic conflicts. Therefore, to understand the out-break of hostilities between ethnic groups one should ask whetherthere is a collapse of the intersubjective understandings that under-pinned intergroup relations before the conflict erupted between thegroups. This question is of utmost importance because there cannot bepeaceful coexistence among groups if there is no intersubjective under-standing among them. Intersubjective meanings are a building block ofinterethnic relations because they "give a people a common language totalk about social reality and a common understanding of certainnorms." 4 Fearon and Laitin introduce in-group policing as an efficientinstitutional arrangement that leads to peaceful interethnic relations. Indoing so, however, these authors are implicitly assuming that there isan intersubjective understanding between the relevant ethnic groups,even if the latter do not express (or perceive) it as such. The structureof intersubjective meanings allows ethnic groups to engage in recipro-cated in-group policing to preserve peaceful interethnic relations. Inter-subjective understanding does not imply empathy, however. It onlyimplies that there are common grounds—"collective knowledge that isshared by all who are competent to engage or recognize the appropri-ate performance of a social practice or range of practices" —on whichgroups can meaningfully communicate and recursively engage in socialinteractions. While rationalist and constructivist theories can equallycontemplate a condition of interethnic peace that derives from instru-mental decisions designed to advance group interests, only constructiv-

13. Intersubjective meanings are "not simply the aggregation of the beliefs of indi-viduals who jointly experience and interpret the world. Rather, they exist as collectiveknowledge that is shared by all who are competent to engage or recognize the appro-priate performance of a social practice or range of practices. This knowledge persistsbeyond the lives of individual social actors, embedded in social routines and practicesas they are reproduced by interpreters who participate in their production and work-ings. Intersubjective meanings have structural attributes that do not merely constrainor empower actors. They also define their social reality" (Emanuel Adler, Seizing theMiddle Ground: Constructivism in World Politics," European Journal of InternationalRelations 3, no. 3 [September 1997]: 319-63, 327.

14. Charles Taylor, "Interpretation and the Sciences of Man," in Interpretative SocialScience: A Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow and William Sullivan (Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 1979), 51.

15. Adler, "Seizing the Middle Ground," 327.

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ist explanations allow for the possibility that interethnic interactionscan transform the identities of groups and thereby induce dependableexpectations of interethnic peace.

Also, espousing a rational-choice approach, David Lake and DonaldRothchild argue in the context of ethnic violence that "there must existin principle some potential bargain short of violence that leaves bothsides in a dispute better off than settling their disagreements throughthe use of f orce....This holds irrespective of the breadth of the groupdemands or the extent of the antagonisms."16 This assertion fails toaccount for conflicts between groups that spring from normative con-cerns and identity antagonisms. If anything could in principle be nego-tiated between groups short of violence, this would mean that evengroup identity could be put on the bargaining table. Such a perspectivefalls short of explaining, for instance, the salience and persistence ofdivisive ethnic politics in many multiethnic societies. In fact, evenwithin a rationalist perspective one can argue, following Russell Har-din, that "it may be rational to do what produces a particular identifica-tion and, once one has that identification, it is commonly rational to fur-ther the interests determined by that identification."17 This would in-clude, for example, settling disagreements through a use of force andviolence.

More emphatically, the basic assumption that underpins Lake andRothchild's assertion is the same that allowed Fearon in his rationalistexplanation of international war to argue that "there always exists a setof negotiated settlements that both sides prefer to fighting." To dem-onstrate this proposition, Fearon had to assume that states' utilityfunctions are continuous, increasing, and weakly concave. That is,states are risk-neutral or risk-averse. Were the assumption of concavitychanged to convexity, Fearon's proof, based on mathematical deduc-tions, would not hold. For convex utility functions (that is, risk-acceptant states), one cannot assert that there always be in principle asettlement short of fighting. Instead, as argued in the next section, anactor's social identity determines whether it is risk-averse, neutral, oracceptant. Focusing on the social identities of actors provides a better

16. Lake and Rothchild, "Containing Fear," 45-46.17. Hardin, One for All, 60 (Hardin's emphasis).18. James D. Fearon, "Rationalist Explanations for War," International Organiza-

tion 49, no. 3 (summer 1995): 379-14, 385.19. In mathematical jargon, Fearon assumes that the state utility function u(x) x.

Had he assumed insteaa that u(x)<x, he would not have been able to make his assertion.See appendix in Fearon, "Rationalist Explanations for War."

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explanation for why and how states can or cannot reach a bargain.Moreover, explaining why group conflicts occur along ethnic lines andpersist in the face of changing conditions is part of the procesa of un-derstanding the eruption of ethnic violence. These phenomena illus-trate the process of social construction of identities and interests,which rationalist approaches cannot account for since they posit iden-tities and interests as givens. As argued below, however, ethnic con-flicts can be satisfactorily explained only if the identities and interestsof embattled groups are problematized and considered as variables.

To sum up, rationalist approaches to ethnic conflict undoubtedlyhelp us understand a great deal about problems of cooperation and co-ordination within and between ethnic groups. They help us partiallyexplain the strategic dilemmas of ethnic conflicts and design possibleways to manage them. They do this by positing self-interested actorsas prime movers of the conflicts and as the sources of strategic dilem-mas. What is left out, however, is important and should not be over-looked. First, actors' social identities constitute their interests andstrategies. Second, the social environment is part of what constitutesactors' social identities and interests. Whether it is the dilemmas thatarise in ethnic conflicts, the manipulation of historical myths, or theself-serving actions of political entrepreneurs, they are all partially con-stituted by the social environment in which the agents (individuals andgroups) are embedded. Third, group identities are in flux during ethnicconflicts and during efforts to manage them.

Thus, the point is not that rationalist approaches to ethnic conflictsare wrong. Rather, they should be complemented in a way to includethe variability of group social identities and interests as part of the

20. Hardin's effort is especially interesting for he attempts to account for the logicof group conflict by analyzing group identification from a rationalist perspective. Hestops short, however, of accounting for the origin of self-interest of group members.He instead posits that group members are self-interested. He then attempts to explain,for example, how is it that self-interested members tend to identify with groups andreinforce group norms. He argues that "norms that serve collective interests arestronger when they are consistent with individual interest, and they are weaker whenthey are not" (Hardin, One for All, 140). While such a statement is very helpful, it stilloverlooks the fact that group norms (and identity) shape individual interest. There isthus no wonder why Hardin arrives at his conclusion. Individuals remain "free agents,"who act on the basis of their own preferences, as long as the group norms and sharedunderstandings cognitively frame these preferences.

21. Lake and Rothchild, "Containing Fear"; Hardin, One for All; Fearon and Laitin,"Explaining Interethnic Cooperation"; Barry R. Posen, "The Security Dilemma andEthnic Conflict," Survival 35, no. 1 (spring 1993): 27-47.

22. Mozaffar, "The Institutional Logic of Ethnic Politics: A Prolegomenon."

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158 SECURITYSTUDIES8.no. 1

problem to be explained.23 This paper argues that changes in the socialidentities of ethnic groups determine the dynamics of ethnic conflicts.Transformation of the social identities of ethnic groups leads to a socialconstruction of ethnic fear, creating a strong potential for violence.

THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF ETHNIC FEAR

SOCIAL IDENTITIES are sets of meanings that an actor "attributes toitself while taking the perspective of others, that is, as a social ob-

ject." Individuals and groups acquire social identities from the wayothers treat them and from the social practices which confirm thetreatment that they receive from others. Every social actor (individualor group) has multiple social identities that, while always in process,define its interests, including ethnic groups. These social identitiescan be nested within, or cross-cut, each other. Ethnic identity, dividingpeoples into groups of coethnics, is one instance of social identity."Ethnic identity," argues Mozaffar, "is socially validated when it formsa basis for continually realizing one's goals."2

Social identities are social because they are created and sustainedthrough social practices, which are produced and continuously repro-duced. The routinization—repetitive enactment—of these practices isessential to maintaining and validating a given social identity. Socialidentity imbues social interactions with some degree of predictabilityand by creating a sense of social orderliness. It provides information onwho the actors are (what their defining properties are) and on how theactors would behave in social interactions. Social identity thus organ-izes social interactions around a set of expectations. In this way, we (as

23. As put by Mozaffar, clarifying the "reciprocal relationship between institutionsand the political organization of ethnicity involves focusing on how and why politicalactors choose ethnicity over other social cleavages to define and promote tneir inter-ests, how institutions shape ethnic communities and structure the incentives (and dis-incentives) of political entrepreneurs to articulate ethnic-based demands, and how insti-tutions are themselves transformed as a result of ethnic politics" (Mozaffar, "The Insti-tutional Logic of Ethnic Politics: A Prolegomenon," 45).

24. Alexander Wendt, "Collective Identity Formation and the International State,"American Political Science Review 88, no. 2 0une 1994): 384-96, 385.

25. Note that the term "social" as used in this paper refers also to political and cul-tural realms. That is, "social" is used to describe activities between social actors in poli-tics, economics, and what is commonly called the social sphere (and other types)."Social" refers to an actor's practices as part of a larger whole such as a group, a soci-ety, a community, or the world.

26. Mozaffar, "The Institutional Logic of Ethnic Politics: A Prolegomenon," 56.

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social actors) are able to uphold a set of expectations on how we wouldlike to and can interact with these actors, and on how they would liketo or can respond to our actions.27 The very fact that social identitiesdepend on routinized social practices, however, makes them alwaysface a "risk" of change and transformation. A social identity wouldcease to be effective as such if the corresponding social practices werenot reproduced. Thus, the expectations anchored in the social identi-ties and the sense of orderliness that they confer to social interactionsare constantly at risk of change. The trust, which we invest in con-tinuing social exchanges as indicators of a probable future, constantlyfaces a potential threat of being breached. Social interactions are alwayspotentially under the specter of fear that they will be transformed.The actualization of such a latent fear, however, is a process of socialconstruction. This neither implies that social identities are malleable,nor that social expectations unravel easily. To the contrary, becausethe social identities define the very agency of the actors, the latterwould have much at stake to lose in not attempting to preserve andenhance their social identities.

Uncertainty about future interethnic relations arises when groupsperceive changes in the social identities of one another. Because socialidentities determine the realm of intergroup expectations that moldinterethnic relations, a change in social identities creates an environ-ment conducive to prompt new expectations about intergroup rela-tions. As groups begin to enact new social practices, they need updatedinformation on each other. They also need to know each other's de-gree of commitment to whatever bargain in which they may engage.Each also wants to ensure its security and clarify its position on thesecurity of others.31 These issues feed into the construction of new so-cial identities, but do not assume the same form in every interethnic

27. Denis H. Wrong, The Problem of Order: What Unites and Divides Society(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), 37-69.

28. Practice can be intentionally instituted or may emerge from habit and usage.Nardin argues that "The essence of any practice is to be found in the conditions it rec-ommends or imposes on the conduct of agents pursuing self-chosen ends" (TherryNardin, Law, Morality, and the Relations of States [Princeton: Princeton UniversityPress, 1988], 8).

29. William H. Sewell Jr., "A Theory of Structure: Duality, Agency, and Transfor-mation," American Journal of Sociology 98, no. 1 0uly 1992): 1-29.

30. Put differently, individuals and groups always seek more ontological securityand stability. Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity (Stanford: StanfordUniversity Press, 1991), 1-54; William Bloom, Personal Identity, National Identity, andInternational Relations (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 25-53.

31. Lake and Rothchild, "Containing Fear."

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context. Depending on the opportunities and constraints that varioussocial structural factors provide and on the practices that political en-trepreneurs and ethnic activists enact, three kinds of group social iden-tity can be constructed—cooperative, competitive, and aggressive.

First, groups can acquire cooperative social identities. Social rela-tions between ethnic groups with cooperative social identities are basedon the principle of respect for the welfare of the individual group.Each group would be interested in its welfare, and views the "other" asbeing interested in its welfare, too. Noninterference in the affairs ofanother group and nonobstruction of its exchanges with other groupsare norms of behavior. Although each group is interested in its welfare,it can also be interested in the welfare of others. Groups with coopera-tive social identities, however, prefer positive-sum to zero-sum rela-tions in intergroup exchanges. Trustworthy private information is ex-changed; a norm of transparency prevails. Groups have no incentive tomisrepresent private information since they trust one another aboutfuture interethnic bargains. Commitments are also credible, and actorsare risk-acceptant. In short, ethnic groups with cooperative social iden-tities are social partners.

Second, a group can acquire a competitive social identity, whichmeans that it views other groups with which it is engaged in exchangesas rivals. Such a group seeks relative gains when dealing with others,and thus has an incentive to withhold or misrepresent trustworthyprivate information. The group fears that if it does not behave in thisway it might decrease its lot or leverage in future social exchanges.Formally, a group A interacting with a group B would prefer an out-come of (A,B) = (40,20) to an outcome of (A,B) = (50,40), even thoughin absolute terms A gets in the second situation more than it gets in thefirst one. A prefers the outcome (40,20) because the relative differencein (40,20) is larger than in (50,40). Because they recognize each other'ssecurity, while reserving the right to misrepresent private information,intergroup credible commitment is contextually variable. Such a prob-lem of variable commitment heightens the rivalries among groups. Itdoes not however create an intergroup security dilemma since groupsdo not view each other as threats, even if there is a lack of mutualcommitment on some issues. Groups with competitive social identi-

32. The security dilemma stands for a condition vinder which what a group does toenhance its security causes reactions that, in the end, can make the group less secure.Posen, "The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict."

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ties are social rivals, but group security is nonetheless socially taken forgranted.

Third, groups can acquire aggressive social identities. Such groupsview one another as a permanent threat, as an all-out enemy. They donot recognize each other's welfare and security. Each group believesthat the others are committed to its harm and, thus, reciprocates orpreemptively acts by seeking to maximize the losses of other groups.They thus have no need to seek more private information exchange.Nor do they have incentives to misrepresent private information. Insuch a milieu, ethnic groups are extreme revisionists in the sense thateach one seeks the eradication of the others. No action is seen as defen-sive; all actions are seen as offensive. There is no problem of crediblecommitment either; each group "knows" that other groups are com-mitted to its harm. Insecurity is dominant, and ethnic violence is con-stantly expected. Groups with aggressive social identities are socialenemies. Table 1 summarizes this discussion.

The implications of the above typology are different from what arationalist approach, as presented by Lake and Rothchild, suggests.Because the rationalist approach assumes that ethnic groups are self-interested rational actors and because it considers group identity as ex-ogenous to social interactions and constant, it conflates the strategicimplications of competitive and aggressive social identities. It therebyconcludes that three strategic dilemmas are necessary causal conditionsof ethnic violence. In contrast, as Table 1 shows, this paper, based on aconstructivist approach that problematizes group social identity, arguesthat only the security dilemma leads to ethnic violence. This is so be-cause ethnic violence occurs when ethnic groups acquire aggressive so-cial identities. Aggressive social identities, however, do not lead to di-lemmas of information failure or credible commitment; every groupundoubtedly "knows" that the others are strongly committed to itsharm. No revelation of private information would change such a con-ception of the "other." In the case of competitive social identities, thedilemma of information failure may occur, whereas the dilemma ofcredible commitment is more variable and issue-dependent. Nonethe-less, the groups still trust one another on their respective security. Thesecurity dilemma does not take hold, nor does ethnic violence occur.

33. Lake and Rothchild, "Containing Fear."

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Social identityof ethnic group

Cooperative

Competitive

Aggressive

Table 1

SOCIAL IDENTITY AND STRATEGIC PRACTICES

Conceptionof the"other"

Partner

Rival

Enemy

Privateinformation

Norm oftransparency

Incentive tomisrepresent

Irrelevant

Intergroupcommitment

Credible

ContextuallyvariableVery high

Groupsecurity

Taken forgranted

Taken forgranted

Constantlythreatened

For the sake of focus and because of space limitations, I explicate inthe following the processes and factors that lead to the construction ofaggressive social identities only. Before doing that, however, some gen-eral remarks on social interaction are needed. Social interaction is theoutcome of a synergetic combination of three elements: the socialstructural environment, the social practices of relevant actors, and thesocial identities of these actors. Social identities constitute and definethe agents. The agents are embedded within social structures, whichdifferentially empower or constrain their strategies. At the same time,social structures are instantiated in agents' produced and reproducedsocial practices. These three factors have the potential to combine tocreate a high level of intergroup uncertainty among interacting ethnicgroups, thereby redefining intergroup expectations. I explicate this ar-gument in the rest of this section in the case of aggressive identities. Ifirst discuss three social structures that mold the reconstruction of the

34. For an attempt to synthesize various sociological theories on social interaction,see John Turner, A Theory of Social Interaction (Stanford: Stanford University Press,1988).

35. By social structure I mean "shared understandings, expectations, and socialknowledge" embedded in various patterns of social relations (Wendt, "Collective Iden-tity Formation and the International State," 389). These social structures are not re-ducible to individual actors and are persistent enough to withstand, though not immu-tably, the whims of actors. They have a dynamic of their own and a logic that contrib-utes to their reproduction. Sharon Hays, "Structure and Agency and the Sticky Prob-lem of Culture, Sociological Theory 12, no. 1 (March 1994): 57-72.

36. Giddens calls this process "structuration." Anthony Giddens, The Constitution ofSociety (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 1-40.

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social identities of interacting ethnic groups. I then consider how ag-gressive social identities emerge under the impact of these social struc-tures. I also consider how the security dilemma positively feeds backon, and reinforces, the construction of aggressive social identities.

INTERETHNIC SOCIAL-STRUCTURAL ENVIRONMENT

Preexisting social structures shape the construction of a new socialidentity by both empowering and constraining the actors engaged inthe construction process. Three social structures play important rolesin the social construction of social identities of ethnic groups. Theseare: salient historical memories, the structure of ethnic cleavages, andthe institutional arrangements of the state. A combination of the threefactors strongly shapes the construction process.

Salient ethnic historical memories. As widely recognized in the litera-ture on ethnicity and nationalism, historical memory plays an impor-tant role in the definition of ethnic groups. Historical memory is thecollective recollection and interpretation of a shared past. It has its ori-gins in the works of poets, narrators, writers, politicians, historians,and most powerfully in the oral and written stories, and legends ofcommon peoples handed down through generations. Historical mem-ory is usually imbued with quasi-sacred meanings capable of evokingvery powerful emotions. It is thus an important source of symbols andvalues that élites have for mobilizing their constituencies and legitimat-

37. Historical memory possesses the three basic properties that Hays delineates forsocial structures, that is, they are the creation of human beings and in turn mold theidentity of people, they are both enabling and constraining, and they have differentlevels of depth. This applies to historical memories since, first, as argued by BernardLewis, human beings create, remember, and rediscover their historical memory. Sec-ond, historical memory becomes a social-psychological context that molds people'sbeliefs, expectations, and actions and, therefore, may constrain or enable them in theirdaily lives. Third, historical memory often provides deeply rooted rationalizations forpeoples' actions and beliefs even though these peoples might not be readily aware ofthat. Hays, "Structure and Agency and the Sticky Problem of Culture"; Bernard Lewis,History: Remembered, Recovered, Invented (Princeton: Princeton University Press,1975).

38. Eric J. Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge-Cambridge University Press, 1983); Eric J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since1870: Programme, Myth, Reality (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990); PaulR. Brass, Ethnicity and Nationalism: Theory and Comparison (Newbury Park: Sage,1991); Elie Kedourie, Nationalism (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1993); Ernest Gellner, En-counters with Nationalism (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1994); Benedict Anderson, ImaginedCommunities (New York: Verso, 1991); Geoff Eley and Ronald Grigor Suny, BecomingNational (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).

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ing their action.39 By using historical memory as an explanatory vari-able, I am attempting to capture the extent to which widely held no-tions of the past (or interpretations thereof) come to shape the parame-ters within which interethnic relations are defined, anchored, or chal-lenged. These collective notions of the past contribute to determine thevalues that shape people's views on, and consent to, prevailing inter-ethnic relations. Because historical memory is inescapably interpreta-tive, differences of interpretation of a shared past are inherent even inthe most ethnically, religiously, racially, culturally, or ideologicallyhomogeneous society (supposing that such a society exists). Such dif-ferences do not, however, lead to crises in every society. In societieswhere there are more than one politically active ethnic, racial, relig-ious, or cultural community, historical memory can become a battle-ground for politics.

Salient historical memories can become strong determinants of in-terethnic relations when translated into political myths. By politicalmyths I mean political goals and beliefs construed from, or justified by,historical memories. Political myths are often used to challenge pre-

39. On studies of historical memory, see Lewis, History: Remembered, Recovered,Invented; David Lowenthal, The Past Is a Foreign Country (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1985); Richard E. Neustadt and Ernest R. May, Thinking in Time:The Uses o f History for Decision-Makers (New York: Free Press, 1986); George L. Mosse,Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars (New York: Oxford Univer-sity Press, 1990); John R. Gillis, Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994); S. Frederick Starr, The Legacy of Historyin Russia and the New States of Eurasia (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1994); YaelZerubavel, Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli National Tradi-tion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995); Iwona Irwin-Zarecka, Frames ofRemembrance: The Dynamics of Collective Memory (New Brunswick: Transaction,1994); Nachman Ben-Yahuda, The Masada Myth: Collective Memory and Mythmaking inIsrael (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995); Paul Connerton, How SocietiesRemember (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994); James W. Pennebaker,Dario Paez, and Bernard Rimé, Collective Memory of Political Events. Social Psychologi-cal Perspectives (Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1997).

40. Edward H. Carr, What Is History? (New York: Vintage, 1961).41. Edelman defines a myth as "an unquestioned belief held in common by a large

group of people that give events and actions a particular meaning" (Murray J. Edelman,Politics as Symbolic Action [Chicago: Markham, 1971], 53). Snyder and Ballentine de-fine nationalist myths as "assertions that would lose credibility if their claim to a basisin fact or logic were exposed to rigorous, disinterested public evaluation" (Jack Snyderand Karen Ballentine, Nationalism and the Marketplace of Ideas," International Secu-rity 21, no. 2 [fall 1996]: 5-40, 10). Snyder's and Ballentine's definition is appropriate totheir approach based on a marketplace-of-ideas analogy. Had Snyder and Ballentinedefined nationalist myths differently, it would have been hard to qualify the myths as a"commodity" in a marketplace of ideas. People would not be able to falsify or discreditmyths that do not have a variable "marketable value." Such assumptions do not exactlyfit in the social milieu within which political myths are constructed and propagated. Insuch a milieu, the consumer is far from being an "economic" actor. Political myths are

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vailing intergroup power relations. Elites legitimize and imbue the po-litical myths with a quality of "oughtness" by anchoring the myths insalient historical memories (or interpretations thereof) of their respec-tive communities. A political myth would lack historical legitimacyand "moral appropriateness" were it not rooted in salient historicalmemories. In this way, historical memory becomes a strong constitu-tive element of ethnic politics, and, consequently, of ethnic fear andviolence. Although usually recognized as an ad hoc contributory factorto ethnic violence, historical memory plays a minor explanatory rolein rational-choice approaches. Lake and Rothchild, for example, arguethat "intense ethnic conflict is most often caused by collective fears ofthe future....Ethnic activists and political entrepreneurs, operatingwithin groups, build upon these fears of insecurity and polarize soci-ety. Political memories and emotions also magnify these anxieties,driving groups further apart."42 Even though Lake and Rothchild ad-mit that political memories "magnify" the strategic dilemmas, theyforego the constitutive role those historical memories play in generat-ing fear. The two authors adopt a "forward-looking" perspective onthe origin of fear. They thereby minimize the impact of the "shadow-of-the past" on intergroup and group-state relations to the level of amagnifying factor.

As expectations about the future might lead to fear and violence,however, so, too, do historical memories. Expectations about the fu-ture are often simultaneously rooted in strategic calculations and in"lessons" drawn from historical experiences. In addition, the three di-lemmas that Lake and Rothchild advocate are often rooted in past ex-periences. Lessons from past experiences often shape, if not cause, in-formation failures, problems of credible commitment, and incentivesto use force preemptively. Interacting groups (especially in multiethnicsocieties) do not emerge the day the conflict begins. Each group carriesa "baggage" of memories that shape its strategies. Each group therebyfaces the task of reconciling the pressure of such "lessons" of historyand forward-looking concerns. Historical memory not only magnifies

interpretative and social in nature, and their credibility arises from intersubjectivemeanings constructed through public discourses and social interactions. Moreover, asHardin put it, "that the belief is not convincing, even patently not so in the sense thatit would not stand serious scrutiny, however, does not entail that people cannot be-lieve it" (Hardin, One for All, 62). My definition concurs with Lake s and Rothchild'sremark that ethnic myths are "often rooted in actual events, and probably could not belong sustained absent a historical basis" (Lake and Rothchild, "Containing Fear," 55).

42. Lake and Rothchild, "Containing Fear," 41.

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group anxieties, but often contributes to create them. A forward-looking perspective on ethnic fear and violence cannot substitute for ashadow-of-the-past dimension; the two are complementary.

The structure of ethnic cleavages. The structure of ethnic cleavages in amultiethnic society can also become a determining factor of interethnicrelations. Czechoslovakia's two larger ethnic groups, the Czechs andSlovaks, were, for example, territorially segmented, especially after theSecond World War as increasingly fewer Czechs and Slovaks migratedoutside their region.43 Similarly, the segmentation of Bosnia-Herzegovina into regions with high concentration of Muslims, Serbs,and Croats was quite strong. In both cases, the territorial distributionof ethnic groups played a major role in determining the fault lines inevents that unfolded in the 1990s. Czechoslovakia split into a CzechRepublic and Slovakia, and Bosnia became engulfed in ethnic cleansingamong the Serbs, Croats, and Muslims.

The theoretical literature on the impact of ethnic cleavages on inter-group relations is rather mixed. Lijphart, for example, argues that eth-nic territorial segmentation is a necessary condition for successful con-sociationalism. This occurs because the resultant lack of direct inter-ethnic contact on a daily basis enhances each community's politicalsolidarity. This would increase leaders' autonomy to compromise withone another at no risk of losing the support of their respective con-stituencies.44 In contrast, Duchacek argues that ethnically mixed re-gions have a potential "calming effect" in federal states. For Horow-itz, it is more likely to find intraethnic competition in territoriallysegmented multiethnic societies, than not. The structure of this compe-tition shapes the potential for interethnic cooperation. Cross-cuttingcleavages would provide an incentive for interethnic cooperation. Sucha pattern of divisions, if it occurs, could foster intraethnic competitionover non-ethnic issues. In cases where cross-cutting cleavages are noteffectively mobilized (or are absent), however, intraethnic competitioncould evolve into an outbidding on ethnic issues. This would have theeffect of limiting the freedom of the élite (including previously moder-

43. J i r í Musil, "Czech and Slovak Society," Government and Opposition 28, no. 4(fall 1993): 479-93; Henry Kamm, "At Fork in Road, Czechoslovaks Fret," New YorkTimes, 9 October 1992, A10.

44. Arend Lijphart, Democracy in Plural Societies: A Comparative Exploration (New-Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), 25-44.

45. Ivo D. Duchacek, "Comparative Federalism: An Agenda for Additional Re-search," in Constitutional Design and Power-Sharing in the Post-Modem Epoch, ed. Dan-iel J. Elazar (Lanham: University Press of America, 1991), 31.

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ate elements) and force it to capitalize on inflammatory interethnicissues.46 Despite various differences, these and other works agree thatethnic cleavages do shape the prospects for interethnic interaction, and,by extension, the social construction of group social identities.

Moreover, the structure of ethnic cleavages and salient historicalmemories mutually reinforce one another. When the structure of eth-nic cleavages facilitates intraethnic competition, for example, the out-bidding faction of the élite draws on historical memory to gather morepublic support. Historical memory could thereby become a battle-ground among outbidders. Conversely, preserving the structure ofethnic cleavages also contributes to keep the "vividness" of historicalmemories through various ways, such as communal holidays, com-memorations, songs, poetry, and a variety of social, cultural, religious,and political rituals.

State institutional arrangements. State institutional arrangements alsocontribute to the environment under which new social identities ofethnic groups emerge. They do so either by constraining the optionsor by, if most of the time inadvertently, enhancing the opportunitiesbefore political entrepreneurs and ethnic activists. That is, "in struc-turing politics by defining the strategic context of political interactions,institutions constrain the choice of social actors over goals, strategies,and behavior....They also empower social actors with prescribed po-litical, material, and organizational (both physical and symbolic) re-sources." . Moreover, institutional arrangements can shape, positively

46. Donald Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress, 1985); 577-600.

47. David I. Kertzer, Ritual, Politics, & Power (New Haven: Yale University Press,1988).

48. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict, 563-76; Milton J. Esman, Ethnic Politics(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 1-48; Mozaffar, "The Institutional Logicof Ethnic Politics: A Prolegomenon."

49. Mozaffar, "The Institutional Logic of Ethnic Politics: A Prolegomenon." Theproblem is the more acute in societies where there are profound differences about theform of the state—a stateness problem. On the stateness problem during democratiza-tion, see Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan, "Political Identities and Electoral Sequences:Spain, the Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia," Daedalus 121, no. 2 (spring 1992): 121-39;Alfred Stepan, "When Democracies and the Nation-State are Competing Logics: Re-flections on Estonia," Archives Européennes de Sociologie 35 (1994): 127-41; Claus Offe,"Capitalism by Democratic Design? Democratic Theory Facing the Triple Transitionin East Central Europe," Social Research 58, no. 4 (winter 1991): 865-92; Donald Hor-owitz, A Democratic South Africa? Constitutional Engineering in a Divided Society(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991); Donald Horowitz, "Democracy inDivided Societies," Journal of Democracy 4, no. 4 (fall 1993): 18-38; Adam Przeworski,Sustainable Democracy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), chap. 1; JuanLinz and Alfred Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern

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or negatively, the impacts of historical memory and the structure ofethnic cleavages on interethnic relations.

Gagnon, for example, argues that the emphasis on ethnicity inYugoslavia "was reinforced by a system of ethnic 'keys' within eachrepublic which determined the distribution of certain positions byethnic identity according to the proportion of each group in the repub-lic's population. This political reification of ethnicity, along with thesuppression of expressions of ethnic sentiment, combined to reinforcethe. historical construction of political identity in terms of ethnic iden-tity, and made ethnic issues politically relevant when the political sys-tem opened up to include the wider population." In other words,ethnic identity was politically relevant during the construction ofYugoslavia, and remained so during its historical evolution. Is it a sur-prise then that it played an important role during the phase of ethnicviolence and disintegration? Similarly, in Czechoslovakia the two ma-jor constituent nations—Czechs and Slovaks—were unable definitely toresolve their dispute on the best state institutional arrangements. Inview of their historical aspiration and struggle for political autonomy,if not statehood, the Slovaks would not be satisfied with any institu-tional arrangement that did not ipso facto facilitate the achievement oftheir historical goals. The Slovaks were at times forced, and at othertimes lured, to accept the institutional arrangements of the state.Nonetheless, the Slovaks did not rest until they achieved institutionalparity with the Czechs as a result of the federalization of the commu-nist regime in the late 1960s. Establishing institutional parity betweenthe two nations, however, did not strengthen the socio-political cohe-sion of the Czechoslovak polity as a whole. It instead consolidated theunderlying division of the country into Czech and Slovak sub-polities.Establishing parity in reality institutionalized the binational characterof the country.53 Slovak and Czech parliaments became more represen-

Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Uni-versity Press, 1996); Badredine Arfi, "Democratization and Communal Politics," De-mocratization 5, no. 1 (spring 1998): 42-63.

50. Gagnon, "Ethnic Nationalism and International Conflict: The Case of Serbia,"140-41.

51. Carol S. Leff, National Conflict in Czechoslovakia: The Making and Remaking of aState, 1918-1987 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988).

52. Stanislav J. Kirschbaum, A History of Slovakia: The Struggle for Survival (New-York: St. Martin's Griffin, 1995), 1-10, 225-72.

53. Leff, National Conflict in Czechoslovakia: The Making and Remaking of a State,1918-1987.

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tative of their respective nations, while the federal parliament had tofollow whatever Czech and Slovak leaders had agreed upon.

SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF AGGRESSIVE SOCIAL IDENTITY

Salient ethnic historical memories, the structure of ethnic cleavages,and state institutions shape the construction of group social identitiesby prescribing, proscribing, and permitting élites' choice of strategiesand behavior. These social structures are not, as standard rational-choice theory would contend, just tools in the hands of self-servingélites. Although this occurs to some extent, social structures also con-stitute the "agency" of these élites (as relevant social actors) by defin-ing, constraining, and empowering them. Thus, social structures derivetheir political potency by providing resources to the élites and, at thesame time, by constituting the élites as agents. The nesting and cross-cutting of the multiple constraints and opportunities that the élites faceas agents shape their strategic freedom. As such, social structures shapeand animate ethnic politics and conflict. A rounded explanation of thisrelationship should clarify how structures shape both the conditionsand the processes that prompt the political activation of ethnicity. Theexplanation should also show how social actors rely on ethnicity topromote individual and group interests by reconstructing the socialidentity of their groups. In the following, I explicate four sequentialprocesses that lead to the social construction of aggressive social identi-ties for ethnic groups. As rightly argued by standard rational-choicetheory, political entrepreneurs play a prominent role in the construc-tion of aggressive social identities. The existence of certain types of so-cial structures simultaneously, however, enables and constrains such arole. Ethnicity would not be a relevant political variable without suchsocial structures. The latter define what is "ethnically realizable" andwhat is "ethnically unrealizable."

Aggressive social identities emerge through a sequence of four proc-esses. These are: (1) the emergence of a set of political myths that fun-damentally challenge the status quo, especially interethnic relations; (2)a widespread internalization of these myths by the ethnic group; (3) agroup mobilization to openly reject the interethnic status quo; and (4)an interethnic, reciprocated process of demonizing.

First, political entrepreneurs and ethnic activists begin by construct-ing new, or by reviving old, political myths that challenge the status

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quo of interethnic relations. Mythmaking is inherent to human socie-ties. 5 Governments, social movements, and challenging élites often usemythmaking to mobilize constituencies. Not every political myth,however, can become a serious threat to intergroup relations. To be-come a serious challenge, a political myth has to be anchored in his-torical memories that are salient enough to evoke emotional attach-ments and mass arousal. Political myths that lack historical legiti-macy would not arouse strong emotional attachment from the masses.To avoid such a problem, the élite builds its strategies around a politi-cization of a selected set of salient historical memories. Using self-styled selective criteria, the élite divides the group's history into majorstages, reducing complex historical events to a set of images. The élitethen presents these images as core elements of the group's historicalmemory. A reification of these revived or reinterpreted images intopolitical goals and beliefs produces a set of political myths. Suchmyths are powerful symbols through which the élite construes itsgroup's understanding of the current conditions and rationalizes cho-sen goals, strategies, and courses of action.

Second, having articulated a set of political myths that challenge theinterethnic status quo, the élites move on to induce large segments of

54. Ethnic activists are individuals who genuinely advocate the group's identity andpolitical, economic, and social welfare. Political entrepreneurs are individuals who mayor may not be strongly committed to the views that the activists advocate, but whoseek leadership positions and political power. Lake and Rothchild, "Containing Fear."

55. Geoffrey Hosking and George Schöpflin, eds., Myth & Nationhood (New York:Routledge, 1997), 1-35.

56. Edelman, Politics as Symbolic Action; Kertzer, Ritual, Politics, & Power.57. George Schöpflin argues that "for a myth to be effective in organizing and mobi-

lizing opinion, it must, however, resonate It seems that there are clear and unavoid-able limits to invention and imagination and these are set by resonance. This is signifi-cant because it underpins the proposition that myth cannot be constructed purely outof false material; it has to have some relationship with the memory of the collectivitythat has fashioned it. There has to be some factor, some event, some incident in thecollective memory to which the myth makes an appeal; it is only at that point that thereinterpretation can vary radically from a closer historical assessment" (Hosking andSchöpflin, Myth & Nationhood, 25-26).

58. Janice G. Stein, "Image, Identity, and Conflict Resolution," in Managing GlobalChaos: Sources of and Responses to International Conflict, ed. Chester A. Crocker, FenO. Hampson, and Pamela Aall (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace,1996), 93-111.

59. Berger and Luckmann define reification as "the apprehension of the products ofhuman activity as if they were something else than human products" (Peter L. Bergerand Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology ofKnowledge [New York: Doubleday, 1966], 89).

60. W. L. Bennett, "Myth, Ritual, and Political Control," Journal of Communication30, no. 2 (March 1980): 166-79.

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group members to internalize the political myths. Internalizaron canoccur through various ways, examples of which are ritualization,stereotyping and fear-arousing discourses, ideological indoctrina-tion, and coercive material and psychological inducement. Thesestrategies are mutually supportive, and are often used simultaneouslyto achieve successfully widespread internalization of the politicalmyths. What the élite wants to do is to make the political myths thecore of the group views on interethnic relations. The élite thus rede-fines or reinterprets "reality"—what people consider as real, possible,and desirable—on the basis of these political myths. The group mem-bers accordingly change their beliefs on the social world. The élite canthenceforth frame the conditions and problems of the group in such away that causes and effects appear simple and remedies unambiguous,however difficult achieving them might be.65 The vision and goals thatthe élite articulates would thereby acquire a "quality of oughtness,"leading to a consolidation of the elite's position and to acquiescencefrom the group members.

Both ethnic activists and political entrepreneurs participate in theprocess of constructing the social identity of the group. Political entre-preneurs, however, aim, in addition, to create and preserve a degree oflegitimate leadership for themselves. The entrepreneurs use the politi-cal myths to defeat in-group challengers, portraying them as threats tothe group. They can, however, become entrapped in self-legitimatingstrategies that they use to rally the support of their respective commu-nities. The political myths become in return constraints on the kind of

61. This list is meant to be suggestive rather than exhaustive. The issue, how shiftsin group loyalty occur is still a debated one. For a review, see Daniel Druckman,"Nationalism, Patriotism, and Group Loyalty: A Social Psychological Perspective,"Mershon International Studies Review 38 (1994): 43-68.

62. Ritualization proceeds through a repetitive use of emotionally charged symbolsin symbolically significant locations at symbolically appropriate times. Kertzer, Ritual,Politics, & Power, W. L. Bennett, "Imitation, Ambiguity, and Drama in Political Life:Civil Religion and the Dilemmas of Publics Morality," Journal of Politics 41, no. 1(February 1979): 106-33.

63. Kaufman, "Spiraling to Ethnic War: Elites, Masses, and Moscow in Moldova'sCivil War"; Lake and Rothchild, Containing Fear.

64. Esman, Ethnic Politics.65. Edelman, Politics as Symbolic Action. Van Evera argues that myths come in three

principal varieties: self-glorifying myths which encourage the membership to contrib-ute to the community, self-whitewashing myths which bolster the authority and po-litical power of the incumbent élites, and other-maligning myths which support theclaims that the community faces external threats. Stephen Van Evera, "Hypotheses onNationalism and War," International Security 18, no. 4 (spring 1994): 5-39.

66. R. Merelman, "Learning and Legitimacy," American Political Science Review 60,no. 3 (September 1966): 548.

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strategies that the leaders can adopt to mobilize group members andsustain the mobilization momentum. The relation between leaders'strategies and historical memory is thus neither linear, nor purely in-strumental; it is one of mutual dependence. Even though the élitemight have constructed the political myths to manipulate them strate-gically, the myths can become a constraint on the elite's choice ofgoals, actions and strategies. The myths could become a frame thatstrongly shapes the kind of appeal to which most group memberswould strongly respond. Transforming these self-legitimating strategiescan jeopardize the elite's leadership status. Many leaders would nottake such a risk and would rather resort to escalation. They do so be-cause they fear that a deescalation might marginalize them, or reducetheir power status. Leaders might also end up believing that such astrategy is the only effective way of change—self-fulfilling their own"prophecies."

Third, as more and more group members internalize the politicalmyths, the political entrepreneurs and communal activists seek to mo-bilize large segments of their followers to reject the status quo andchallenge their relations with other communal groups. If the élitesucceeds in mobilizing large segments of the group behind its goals, thestatus quo loses its legitimacy. This prompts groups to imitate andlearn from one another as well as reciprocate each other's practices.This is the fourth factor that contributes to a reconstruction of the so-cial identities of ethnic groups. The construction of new social identi-ties crucially depends on this process of mutual representation betweencommunal groups through recursively reciprocated practices. By recip-rocating each other's strategies and discourses communal elites andtheir followers begin in fact intersubjectively to construct new mean-ings that ultimately redefine their group social identities. The processof reciprocating practices is neutral as to the kind of social identitiesthat could result from it, however. It can produce aggressive as well asnonaggressive social identities. It is the practices that are recursivelyreciprocated which determine the type of social identity that is eventu-ally constructed.

67. Group mobilization can be achieved through various strategies depending on theconditions surrounding group-state and intergroup relations and on the issues at stake.Ted R. Gurr, Minorities at Rtsk, a Global View of Ethnopolitical Conflicts (Washington,D.C.: United States Institute of Peace, 1993), 61-88, 123-38; Jeff Goodwin, "Toward aNew Sociology of Revolutions," Theory and Society 23, no. 5 (1994): 731-66.

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Aggressive social identities emerge if the following conditions aremet. First, the political myths that are constructed from salient ethnichistorical memories (or interpretations thereof) entail conflicting po-litical positions and actions across ethnic lines. Second, the propagationof the political myths and their internalization by the respectivegroups and consequent mobilization of the latter create a climate ofhigh uncertainty where leaders' actions become strongly determinativeof intergroup relations. Third, elites' discourses and actions demonizethe "other," and the "other" reciprocates in a similar fashion. If main-tained long enough, such a dynamic becomes a routinized way to viewthe "other" as an enemy, and to conceive of intergroup relationswithin a threat-dominated perspective. If state institutional arrange-ments remain incapable of controlling the situation, or reinforce it, ifinadvertently, ethnic fear henceforth dominates interethnic relations,thereby creating a strong potential for an eruption of ethnic violence.

Although I have specifically explicated the processes that lead to aconstruction of aggressive social identities and to the emergence ofethnic fear, the implication is that ethnic cooperation and peace arealso socially constructed. From a constructivist conceptual point ofview, constructing conflict is no more difficult than constructingpeace, even though realizing them in practice might be quite different.Moreover, neglecting or minimizing the constitutive role that socialand material structures play, one can argue that opportunistic leaderscreate conflictual conditions to preserve or enhance their self-interests.While leaders' opportunism cannot be wished away, opportunisticleaders cannot not be embedded in social and material structures,which simultaneously empower and constrain their actions and strate-gies. Existing social structures constitute the agency of leaders, whosepractices instantiate the social structures. Agents and social structuresmutually constitute one another.

Therefore, from a constructivist perspective, neither Kaplan's hy-pothesis on ethnic hatred nor rationalist arguments on opportunismsatisfactorily explain the eruption of ethnic conflict in, say, Yugoslaviaor Rwanda. A satisfactory theory should be able to explain not onlythe eruption of ethnic violence but also, at the same time, the persis-tence of preceding ethnic cooperation and peace. Problematizing iden-tity provides such an avenue. It also contributes to a resolution of thedebate between primordialist and instrumentalist approaches to ethnic

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conflict.68 From a constructivist perspective, the mutual constitution ofagents and social structures explains the possibility of persistence ofidentities, as well as the possibility of their transformation. By relyingon the notion of social practice, constructivism can explain both per-sistence and change. Hence, it is possible to explain why, for example,Bosnian Serbs, Croats, and Muslims lived as peaceful neighbors fordecades, and had high rates of interethnic marriage. It is also possible toexplain why the same groups then turned to killing each other in the1990s. A change in the social identities of these groups can go far inexplaining both types of interethnic relations and behavior.

Social identities can be very stable and persist for very long times,but are not immutable. Nor are they easily malleable. Identities andinterests are constructed, stabilized, and deconstructed through socialpractice. Doubtless, leaders (opportunistic and otherwise) play promi-nent roles in the construction, maintenance, and deconstruction ofgroup identities and interests. Arguing otherwise would simply be em-pirically wrong. As Milosevic and Tudjman played important roles inreconstructing the social identities of their respective ethnic groups, so,too, did Tito (and other leaders). Indeed, Tito tried, and to a large ex-tent succeeded, to construct and maintain nonaggressive social identi-ties for these groups for decades. The eruption of ethnic violence be-tween the Serbs, Croats, and Muslims does not imply that the Titoregime failed in its ethnic policy, as the ethnic-hatred hypothesis wouldargue. It means that group identities are social constructions inherentlysubject to transformation. Nor would a rationalist explanation ofTito's success (or failure) be sufficient, either. Leaders' roles acquiresuch a prominent position because they are embedded in social struc-tures, which simultaneously empower and constrain their actions andstrategies.

A rationalist counterargument is that the construction of social iden-tity depends heavily on rationalistic incentives. A strong state appara-tus in Tito's Yugoslavia, for example, played a major role in keepingthe peace and preventing long-standing hatreds from becoming mobi-lized. Thus, the timing of much of what happened between the Serbsand Croats, for example, depended on rationalistic factors. For one,such an argument is implied by a core point of this paper. Elites'strategies and practices are "realized" only within the existing social

68. For a short summary of the primordialist-instrumentalist debate on ethnicity,see Esman, Ethnic Politics, 9-16.

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(and material) structures. In the Yugoslav case, the transformation ofthe Serb and Croat social identities occurred embedded within the ex-isting social structures, among which are the institutional arrangementsof the federal state. Under different institutional arrangements, theoutcome might have been completely different. More precisely, thepolitical system of the second Yugoslavia depended in a crucial way onthe role that Tito played in it. To put it metaphorically, Tito became acrucial "institution" of the state. The federal state depended on Tito'srole, and made Tito's role. Second, rationalistic incentives such as fearsof persecution are not outside the purview of my argument. Oppor-tunistic leaders are always embedded in social structures, which alwaysshape leaders' opportunism. Tito's death represented not only the de-mise of a strong and iron-fist leader, but also the absence of a crucialinstitution of the state—the role of Tito. The nationalistic leaders ofthe 1980s thus enacted their new strategic practices under differentstate institutional arrangements. As argued in the next section, the ro-tation system that Tito created within the collective presidency en-abled the Serb leadership to stall the political process at the highestlevel. Although Tito created such a system to contain nationalisticdrives in the early 1970s, this very institutional arrangement did ex-actly the opposite after Tito's demise. The collective presidency systemcrucially depended on an underpinning institution, the role of Tito. Tosum up, a reconstruction of social identities simultaneously depends onthe strategic practices of the leaders and on the existing social structuralenvironment. Even opportunistic leaders cannot enact their opportun-istic strategies if the social structural environment does not empowersuch strategies.

In the next section, I use the argument of the paper to discuss howthe social construction of ethnic fear between the Serbs and Croatsoccurred in former Yugoslavia. Obviously, this is not a final test of thetheory. Nor is the following illustration a full explanation of the disin-tegration of the Yugoslav federation. The main purpose of the nextsection is to highlight the role of change in the social identities of eth-nic groups in driving the social construction of ethnic fear.

69. Obviously, Tito was not operating by himself only. He had many supportersdevoted to him.

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THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF ETHNIC FEAR IN YUGOSLAVIA

THIS SECTION presents an account of the social construction of eth-nic fear between the Serbs and Croats in the early 1990s. Gagnon

is right to some extent in arguing that the Serb leaders used ethnicity asa resource to carry out self-serving strategies. He does not explain,however, how ethnicity became such a potent force, except by recog-nizing that it has historically been politically relevant. He does notanswer the question of why other political forces (such as the demo-cratic élite) failed to mobilize the populace against Milosevic and like-minded leaders.

Although this paper uses changes in identity as an explanatory vari-able, it argues that it is not ethnic identification per se that led to eth-nic violence in the former Yugoslavia. Rather, it is changes in the so-cial identity of ethnic groups—how ethnic groups define themselveswhile taking the perspective of others—that determined the role ofethnic identity in intergroup relations and politics. The relations be-tween the Serbs and Croats were to a large extent shaped by how eachredefined its role in the federation while taking the perspective of otherethnic groups. Milosevic's and Tudjman's self-serving strategies couldnot have been as effective as they were outside such a social context ofmeanings. Using changes in the social identities of the Serb and Croatcommunities as an explanatory variable provides a framework thatshows the mutual constitution of élites' strategies and the social struc-tural context of meanings.

Nor does the paper argue that material structural factors (such asserious economic problems) did not play a role in the eruption of eth-nic violence in former Yugoslavia. While recognizing such factors, thepaper, focuses on another type of question that the extant literature onethnic violence has yet to address satisfactorily, that is, the question ofhow changes in the social identities of ethnic groups constituted a cli-mate of fear and paved the way to violence. In addressing such a ques-tion, I problematize the social identities and interests of the major eth-nic groups. I show how a reconstruction of the social identities of theSerbs and Croats carried out by political entrepreneurs and ethnic ac-tivists within existing social-structural constraints and opportunitiesengendered ethnic fear and a strong potential to ethnic violence.

This section, therefore, describes how changes in the social identitiesof Serb and Croat ethnic groups destabilized established patterns ofinterethnic relations, decreased interethnic predictability, and created

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uncertainty about interethnic future relations. As Serb and Croat po-litical entrepreneurs and ethnic activists enacted new strategies in the1980s, the social identities of their respective ethnic groups began tochange. Ethnic fear took hold when this dynamic produced aggressivesocial identities in the early 1990s—the Serbs and Croats began to viewone another as sworn enemies. Because this dynamic became routi-nized in Serb-Croat interactions, ethnic fear began to dominate Serb-Croat relations and eventually led to an eruption of ethnic violence.

Salient Serb and Croat ethnic historical memories, the structure ofethnic cleavages, and the institutional arrangements of the federal statestrongly contributed to shaping the changes that occurred in Serb andCroat social identities. To show the importance of ethnic historicalmemory in the Yugoslav context, I consider some illustrative but im-portant ethnic historical memories of the Serb and Croat communities.I also briefly discuss the structure of ethnic cleavages that existed inYugoslavia. A discussion of key federal institutions illustrates the rolethat the institutional arrangements of the federal state played in shap-ing the reconstruction of Serb and Croat social identities.

The process of constructing aggressive social identities developed asSerb and Croat political entrepreneurs and activists began politicizingethnic historical memories, manipulating the structure of ethnic cleav-ages, and using the opportunities offered by key federal institutions tochannel their respective agendas. The Serb and Croat leaders, however,were not in control of the process of social identity reconstruction,even if their strategies ignited it. As the discussion below shows, thestructure of ethnic cleavages in Yugoslavia provided Serb and Croatpolitical entrepreneurs and activists with "raw materials" throughwhich they enacted their strategies. The mutual feedback between thereciprocated strategic practices of the élites, the response of the twocommunities at large, and the simultaneous weakening of key federalinstitutions, all contributed to sustaining the process of identity recon-struction. By the early 1990s, it became clear that large number ofCroats pledged more allegiance to an independent and sovereign Croa-tia than to the federation. In contrast, most Serbs still pledged alle-giance to a Yugoslavia. The Serbs, however, wanted a federation wherethey could preserve the unity of their nation (which is dispersed allover the federation territory) and thus dominate the political system.In other words, the Serbs wanted a federation much reminiscent of thefirst Yugoslavia under King Alexander. The future of Yugoslaviahenceforth came to be viewed as a zero-sum game between the Serbs

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and Croats (as well as between the Serbs and Slovenes), who increas-ingly saw one another as enemies, committed to each other's harm.

THE STRUCTURE OF ETHNIC CLEAVAGES

Yugoslavia was a multinational country, with no dominant ethnicgroup. Out of a total population of 22.4 million in 1981, for example,the Serbs represented 36.3 percent and the Croats 19.7 percent.70 Sig-nificant similarities in terms of language, ethnic origin, and customsexist among the Yugoslav national groups. The country's overall eth-nic makeup did not change drastically in the seventy years after thecountry was founded in 1918, although the population grew by morethan 70 percent during that time. Exceptions to this pattern of stabilitywere a marked increase of the Albanian population and a steep declinein the numbers of Jews, ethnic Germans, and Hungarians after theSecond World War. Most nationalities were not confined within theborders of the country's republics or provinces, thereby complicatingthe ethnic landscape. In 1981, for example, about 98 percent of allYugoslavia's Slovenes lived in Slovenia, and about 96 percent of itsMacedonians lived in Macedonia. In comparison, only 60 percent ofthe Serbs lived in Serbia proper, and only 70 percent of the Montene-grins lived in Montenegro. Croatia had a substantial Serb minority ofabout 12 percent. For many Croat nationalists, the Serb minority inCroatia had no real reason to claim a distinctive Serb ethnic identity.Croat nationalists claim that the Serb minority has been living inCroatia and speaking the same language as the Croats for many centu-ries. They also claim that Croatia's ethnic Serbs are in no fundamentalway distinguishable from ethnic Croats. Conversely, many Serbs be-lieve that the Croats do not originate from a distinct ethnic group, butare Serbs who converted to Catholicism.

The widespread territorial distribution of ethnic Serbs in Yugoslaviaproved to be an asset that ultranationalistic Serb leaders capitalized onin their bid to create "Greater Serbia," especially in the Krajina regionof Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, and Vojvodina. The presence

70. Sabrina P. Ramet, Nationalism and Federalism in Yugoslavia, 1962-1991(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992); Susan L. Woodward, Balkan Tragedy:Chaos and Dissolution after the Cold War (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 1995), 21-46.

71. Woodward, Balkan Tragedy, 21-46.72. Aleksa Djilas, "Fear Thy Neighbor: The Breakup of Yugoslavia," in Nationalism

and Nationalities in the New Europe, ed. Charles A. Kupchan (Ithaca: Cornell Univer-sity Press, 1995), 85-106.

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of an important Serb minority in Croatia was a complication thatCroat leaders could not ignore, especially after Croatia launched itsdrive for sovereignty and independence. Some aspects of the regime inCroatia worsened the climate of suspicion and threat between ethnicSerbs living in Croatia and ethnic Croats. The Serbs, for example, wereoverrepresented in the police and security forces in the Titoist era, atroubling fact for the Croats. Conversely, to the Serbs in Croatia thereal issues included the lack of their own cultural institutions andnewspapers, the relatively lower level of Serb economic development,and that Zagreb was ruling them. To Serb demands for more auton-omy within Croatia, the Croats usually replied that there also werelarge pockets of Croats in Vojvodina and Bosnia-Herzegovina, who donot advocate autonomy in either region.

From the time of its inception as a socialist state in 1945, Yugoslaviahad faced a nationality dilemma. It was not easy to reconcile demandsfor national and ethnic recognition with the task of building and pre-serving a strong all-Yugoslav state, and not fall into the ethnic dilem-mas that haunted interwar Yugoslavia. Tito's nationalities policy hadmounted a multifaceted assault on the roots of domestic discord. Thesystem in principle recognized the ethnic particularity and full equalityof most national groups and embodied the right of cultural-linguisticself-determination. The state was organized as a federation with exten-sive decentralization and the right of political self-determination, in-cluding in principle the right of secession. The communist party as-serted the need to equalize economic conditions throughout the federalunits, and recognized the equal claim of all nationalities to economicresources and high standards of living. Self-management at the lowestlevel was purportedly defusing the tensions between various ethnicgroups. Most importantly, a dual identity was officially affirmed—national identity and Yugoslav identity, whereas separatism and unita-rism were both considered dangerous.

The dual identity was institutionalized in Yugoslavia's federal andrepublican constitutions, which guarantee equal rights for all ethnicgroups, including the right to participate in public life, government,

73. Woodward, Balkan Tragedy.74. Ramet, Nationalism and Federalism in Yugoslavia, 1962-1991.75. Stevan K. Pavlowitch, Yugoslavia (New York: Benn, 1971); Ivo Banac, The Na-

tional Question in Yugoslavia: Origins, History, Politics (Ithaca: Cornell UniversityPress, 1984).

76. Woodward, Balkan Tragedy.; Leonard J. Cohen, Broken Bonds: Yugoslavia's Dis-integration and Balkan Politics in Transition (Boulder: Westview, 1995).

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and the armed forces. Minority nationalities have the right to organizegroups to preserve their cultural heritage and promote their nationalinterests. Article 119 of the federal criminal code, however, prohibitspropaganda and other activities aimed at inciting or fomenting na-tional, racial, or religious intolerance and hatred. The federal and re-publican constitutions also provide for proportional representation ofthe nationalities in assemblies and commissions, at the highest levels ofthe army's officer corps, and in other government institutions.77 Con-solidating the dual identity has proved to be difficult, however. DespiteTito's efforts, the nationalities question was still a problematic issue atthe time of his death in May 1980.

The Serbs and Croats had different, self-styled interpretations ofwhat it meant to be a Yugoslav, Yugoslavism. For many Serbs, Yugo-slavism was tantamount to preserving a unified Serb nation within asingle state. For the Croats, Yugoslavism was mainly a means to pro-tect themselves against foreign powers. Not surprisingly, these inter-pretations implied different forms for the Yugoslav state. For theSerbs, a unitary Yugoslav state was the best safeguard against a futuredispersion of their nation. The Croats preferred a loose federationwithin which they would be secure from Serb hegemony, and escape afate similar to that of interwar Yugoslavia. Absent Tito, these diverseand conflicting views slowly, but inexorably, outdated Tito's idea ofYugoslavism, and made their way to the political arena. By early 1990s,the divisions dominated the political debate at the federal level. 8

These divisions, therefore, were not a creation of Serb or Croat con-servatives as a rational strategy to counter challengers in the 1980s.Rather, they have existed in Yugoslavia since its creation in 1918,sometimes coming to the forefront and at other times seemingly wan-ing. The persistence of the structure of ethnic cleavages is undoubtedlyone of the factors that contributed to sustain the Serb-Croat divisionson what Yugoslavism meant. The ethnic cleavages never completelywaned from Yugoslavia's politics, but their political potency dependedon the social identities that the groups enacted.

77. Ramet, Nationalism and Federalism in Yugoslavia, 1962-1991.78. Cohen, Broken Bonds, 45-78.

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RECONSTRUCTING THE SOCIAL IDENTITIES OF THE SERB

AND CROAT COMMUNITIES

Yugoslavia's complicated and persisting structure of ethnic cleavages isnot sufficient to explain the emergence of ethnic fear between theSerbs and Croats in the 1990s. The major contours of the Yugoslavethnic map have not changed much since the country was created in1918. Thus, there is no particular reason why these contours shouldhave led more effectively to violence in the 1990s. Moreover, manyother countries have similarly complicated contours of ethnic maps,but have not witnessed the type of virulent ethnic fear that occurred inYugoslavia in the 1990s.

Adverse changes in the international environment, particularly theglobal economic recession that began in the late 1970s and the reper-cussions of the end of the cold war in 1989-91, faced Yugoslavia withdaunting political and socio-economic problems. To address theseproblems, changes to the status quo were needed which undoubtedlythreatened the position of conservative leaders. These threats, arguesGagnon, prompted conservative Serb leaders to create a violent con-flict to fend off domestic challengers. That is, the conflict was "a pur-poseful and rational strategy planned by those most threatened bychanges to the structure of economic and political power, changes be-ing advocated in particular by reformists within the ruling Serbiancommunist party."

While this explanation is not wrong, it falls short of explaining threeimportant aspects of the emergence of ethnic fear and violence inYugoslavia. First, as the discussion below shows, the emergence ofethnic fear was a multilateral construction, that is, both the Serb andCroat (and other) leaders participated in the construction of ethnicfear. Although the Serb conservatives may have started the process ofcriticizing Tito's legacy and challenging the status quo, other ethnicleaders quickly joined and opposed them in that endeavor. Second, thefeedback between the Serb and Croat (and Slovene) leaders within andoutside the federal institutions played an important role in stalling allfederal attempts to improve the system, and contributed to ignite the

79. Woodward, Balkan Tragedy, 47-113.80. I focus somewhat on Gagnon's work because his set of hypotheses has many

aspects in common with a constructivist account of ethnic conflict, although he doesnot frame his work in this way.

81. Gagnon, "Ethnic Nationalism and International Conflict: The Case of Serbia,"140.

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conflict. Third, as the example of Bosnia-Herzegovina shows, despitehigh rates of interethnic marriage and good relations between neigh-bors for many years, many Serbs, Croats, and Muslims became staunchenemies, killing and massacring one another. In other words, an expla-nation of the emergence of ethnic fear should be able to account forwhy and how ethnic leaders succeeded in turning peaceful neighborsinto staunch enemies.

To be sufficient the explanation should also account for the shift insocial identity that occurred in both Serbia and Croatia. Gagnon isright to argue that the process did not spontaneously begin fromwithin the ranks of the masses. He does not, however, explain how theleaders were able to turn the process into an ethnicity-based conflict.Nor does he explain how the leaders were able to turn personal fearfor political status into mass-internalized ethnic fear. Gagnon arguesthat élites construct "the individual interest of the broader populationin terms of the threat to the community defined in ethnic terms," butdoes not offer a satisfactory account of the construction process. Heneither specifies the mechanisms of construction, nor does he accountfor the role that interethnic feedback plays in the process. While thispaper also highlights leaders' self-serving strategies, it argues that ethnicfear did not emerge from a purposeful and rational strategy of Serbianconservatives. Rather, it was the outcome of a social construction ofaggressive social identities of the Serb and Croat communities. BothSerb and Croat (and Slovene) leaders actively participated in the con-struction of identities, without, however, either controlling it, or fore-seeing its conclusion. Explaining how such a construction of ethnicfear occurred is the purpose of the remaining part of this section.

To begin with, the political and socio-economic problems thatYugoslavia became engulfed in by the early 1980s played the roles offacilitating conditions for a new brand of leadership style (but not nec-essarily leaders) to emerge.83 Tito's death in 1980 sent a systemic shockinto the federation's political system while the country was alreadysuffering from the impact of the global economic recession in the late1970s. Tito had attempted to unify the different ethnic groups by usingthe ideology of Yugoslavism and by creating a set of federal institu-

82. Ibid., 132.83. The collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the end of the cold war also

ppirovided the context where many leaders remained in power, but transformed their

ladership style away from communist authoritarianism.

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tions. The latter should have purportedly mitigated the impact of eth-nicity on the Yugoslav polity.

The federal constitution, the League of Communists of Yugoslavia(LCY), and the collective presidency, all faced daunting crises in the1980s. The constitutional arrangement that Tito had implemented in1974 came under attack from the Serb (and Albanian) quarters. A seg-ment of the Serb élite began questioning the status quo immediatelyafter Tito's death, and increasingly challenged Tito's legacy of quasi-confederal federalism. It perceived Tito's federalism as a plot, based onthe principle that a weak Serbia is tantamount to a strong Yugoslavia.The conspiracy, the Serbs rationalized, was to keep them divided andpowerless in a state they believed they had done the most to create anddefend. The LCY became increasingly marginalized. Party membersand large numbers of citizens began losing confidence in the party'scapacity to resolve the country's difficulties. In parallel, republican andprovincial party organizations and elites became more autonomous,unwilling to implement the decisions that their representatives hadworked out at the federal level.85 Moreover, from Tito's death in 1980until Milosevic's rise in 1987, regional party organizations increasinglyfragmented. The collective presidency also became entangled in thesame issues that faced the South Slavs in 1918 when they created thefirst Yugoslavia—the nature of the political system.

Already in 1982 the federal government had faced harsh economicconditions such as rising unemployment and prices, and an increasingnational debt. Beginning in 1987, austerity measures, wage freezes, andplant closures led to industrial strikes of increasing magnitude. For thenext two years, government policy wavered between hard-line meas-ures (such as threats of army intervention to end the strikes) and ac-commodation (such as replacement of unpopular party and state fig-ures). Succumbing to regional pressures, the federal government de-layed macroeconomic reforms and resorted instead to incrementaleconomic renovation. Encouraged by early successes of his 1989 eco-nomic reform program, Prime Minister Ante Markovic had believed

84. Dennison Rusinow, "The Avoidable Catastrophe," in Beyond Yugoslavia: Poli-tics, Economics, and Culture in a Shattered Community, ed. Sabrina P. Ramet and Lju-bisa S. Adamovich (Boulder: Westview, 1995), 13-37.

85. Sabrina P. Ramet, Balkan Babel: Politics, Culture, and Religion in Yugoslavia(Boulder: Westview, 1992).

86. Ramet, Balkan Babel: Politics, Culture, and Religion in Yugoslavia; Woodward,Balkan Tragedy, 82-145; Cohen, Broken Bonds, 79-225.

87. Cohen, Broken Bonds.

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that Yugoslavia's future could be ensured by improving the econ-omy. 8 Neither establishing his party, however, nor postponing effortsat macropolitical reorganization and concentrating instead on incre-mental economic renovation increased the winning chances for Mark-ovic's bid to salvage the country.

These difficult conditions were the context within which a newleadership style based on ultranationalistic strategies and communalmobilization emerged by the mid-1980s.90 The new leadership stylewas based on a revival and politicization of selected historical memo-ries to create nationalist political myths. Simultaneously revived his-torical memories and associated reified political myths, however,clashed with each other. The clashing became an overriding condition,strongly shaping intercommunity as well as community-federal rela-tions. The élites were able to reach topmost leadership positions inSerbia and Croatia and carry out their respective agendas. They suc-ceeded in doing so because they were able to propagate and maintainthe perception that their views, rooted in nationalist political myths,were the only viable solution to Yugoslavia's dire economic and politi-cal conditions. Framing the problems in this way also contributed tolegitimating the new leadership style, and thereby defeating challengingstrategies. As a result, the political myths became lenses through whichthe Serb and Croat (and Slovene) communities framed their future re-lations with one another, as well as with the federal government.

The Serb élite. Serb political entrepreneurs and activists politicizedthe memories of a selected number of important historical events, suchas the collapse of the fourteenth-century Serbian Kingdom,91 the Serbdefeat in the Battle of Kosovo against the Ottomans in 1389,92 and Us-tasha (Croatian fascist party) and Nazi crimes against the Serbs duringthe Second World War. Many Serb politicians and intellectuals drew

88. Woodward, Balkan Tragedy, 127.89. Cohen, Broken Bonds, 72.90. Woodward, Balkan Tragedy..91. Michael B. Petrovich, A History of Modern Serbia, 1804-1918, vol. 1 (New York:

Harcourt Brace Javanovich, 1976); Stephen Clissold, A Short History of Yugoslavia(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966); Fred Singleton, A Short History of theYugoslav Peoples (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).

92. Thomas A. Emmert, Serbian Golgotha Kosovo, 1389 (New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press, 1990); Ivo Banac, "The Dissolution of Yugoslav Historiography," inRamet and Adamovich, Beyond Yugoslavia, 39-65.

93. Emmert, Serbian Golgotha Kosovo, 1389; Banac, "The Dissolution of YugoslavHistoriography"; Bogdan Denitch, Ethnic Nationalism: The Tragic Death of Yugoslavia(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994).

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an analogy between their struggle against the political decentralizationtrend then occurring in Yugoslavia and the disintegration of the Ser-bian medieval kingdom. The massacres committed during the SecondWorld War by the Nazis and the Ustasha became part of the politicalstruggle rhetoric between the Serbs and Croats in the late 1980s. Serbpolitical entrepreneurs and activists portrayed the Croats' persistentquest for national autonomy and statehood as a conspiracy to dividethe Serb nation and eradicate its political unity.95

Serb political entrepreneurs and ethnic activists did not create thesememories. Nor did they need to distort them. Rather, these memoriesare part of what defines the identity of a Serb. Orthodox Serbs every-where share the same idealized memory of their medieval empire,which allegedly comprised all their ancestors in the fourteenth cen-tury, under Tsar Dusan the Mighty. The medieval state continued tolive in the Serb memory through the ages. The Orthodox Churchsanctified it, and folk poetry idealized it. Most folk poems revolvearound two main themes: "the destruction of the Serbian empire" atKosovo and "the avenging of Kosovo." Every Serb is taught the epictales about the glories of the past and the sacred commandments to"avenge Kosovo." The Battle of Kosovo occurred in 1389 between ad-vancing strong Ottoman armies and a crumbling Serbian empire.Within a very short time, the Battle of Kosovo began to be perceivedas the most important event in the historical memory of the Serbs.98

The legendary and poetic interpretations of the Battle of Kosovo andits martyred prince became over the centuries the core of the legend ofKosovo. Kosovo came to be perceived as a sacred cradle of Serb cul-ture, church, and statehood; the Serbs like to call it "our Jerusalem."99

After the end of the Second World War and the establishment of aSocialist Yugoslavia under Tito, there was a marked decline in publiccomment on the meaning of Kosovo. Commemorations of the Battleof Kosovo were confined to services in the Serb Orthodox Church,thereby inflating the role that the Church had already played in pre-

94. Ivo Banac, "Post-Communism as Post-Yugoslavism: The Yugoslav Non-Revolutions of 1989-1990," in Eastern Europe in Revolution, ed. Ivo Banac (Ithaca:Cornell University Press, 1992), 168-87.

95. Denitch, Ethnic Nationalism: The Tragic Death of Yugoslavia.96. Petrovich, A History of Modern Serbia, 1804-1918.97. Ibid.; Ramet, Balkan Babel.98. Emmert, Serbian Golgotha Kosovo, 1389.99. Ibid.; Rusinow, "The Avoidable Catastrophe."

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serving the Kosovo legend. The historic meaning of Kosovo re-gained tremendous value after Tito's death. The turning point came inApril 1981 when Albanian riots in the province of Kosovo stirred re-sentment and bitterness among the Serbs. The Serb backlash was ar-ticulated in a document under the title "Appeal for the Protection ofthe Serb Inhabitants and their Holy Places in Kosovo," which severalSerb Orthodox priests prepared in 1982. On 26 February 1982, a groupof Orthodox priests from Kosovo published a letter commemoratingthe events of Kosovo, accusing the Patriarchate's organ, Pravoslavlje, ofnot taking proper action against the attacks. Reacting to the accusa-tion, Pravoslavlje published on 15 May 1982 a lengthy "Appeal for theProtection of the Serbian Inhabitants and their Holy Places inKosovo." Twenty-one priests signed the document. The letter assertedthat "the question of Kosovo is a question of the spiritual, cultural, aridhistorical identity of the Serbian people...Kosovo is our memory, ourhearth, the focus of our being."101

The collective memory on Kosovo received another strong impetusfrom a 1986 Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Sciences. Thememorandum became a matter of creed for a variety of people andgroups, including the Serbian Writers' Association, news media, manycultural figures, key figures in the Serbian Orthodox Church, and,most significantly, the older generation in the Serbian countryside. Inspring 1989, Patriarch German gave an interview to the journal Poli-tika in which he maintained that in the 1389 Battle of Kosovo the Ser-bian army fought not only to protect the sovereignty of Tsar Lazar'skingdom, but also to protect Christianity, human freedom, culture,and all of Christian Europe. To arouse Serb emotions andstrengthen their attachments to Kosovo, the Orthodox Church con-ducted an outdoor service to commemorate the Battle of Kosovo inBosnia in August 1989. The commemoration was rife with many na-tionalist symbols that had dominated Serb historical memory and dis-courses. Some 150,000 Orthodox Serbs gathered for the service, bear-ing banners of various Orthodox Saints. Throughout Serbia, the leg-end of Kosovo thus recaptured the hearts of Serbs. They dreamed of a

100. Emmert, Serbian Golgotha Kosovo, 1389.101. Pravloslavlje, Belgrade, 15 May 1982.102. Ivo Banac, "The Dissolution of Yugoslav Historiography," in Ramet and Ada-

movich, Beyond Yugoslavia, 39-65.103. Pravloslavlje, Belgrade, 1 June 1989, 3-4.104. Ramet, Balkan Babel.

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"liberation" of Kosovo. Bookstore shelves were full of books aboutKosovo, and musical artists dedicated their works to Kosovo. The re-vival of the memories of Kosovo not only boosted nationalistic senti-ments within the Serb population of Yugoslavia, but also created asense of insecurity for the Serb nation.105 There was also a revived in-terest and nostalgia for monarchs. The Serbian Patriarchate, for exam-ple, invited Princess Jelena Karadjordjevic (who was living in Paris andPeru) to attend the 600th anniversary celebrations of the Battle ofKosovo. On 10 September 1989, the remains of King Lazar were cere-moniously reburied at the Monastery of Ravanica. There was even talkof transporting the last remains of King Peter n back to Yugoslavia, forburial in Oplenac.106

Similarly, the massacres committed during the Second World Warby the Nazis and the Ustasha have been engraved in the Serb historicalmemory. The systematic destruction of hundreds of monasteries andchurch buildings, the liquidation of hundreds of Serbian Orthodoxclergy, and the wartime deaths of at least six of the Church's top hier-archy, all had lasting traumatic effects on the Serb clergy. Forced exile,the liquidation, and the coercive conversion to Catholicism, of part ofthe Orthodox population under the fascist Independent State of Croa-tia deepened the identification of Serbdom with Orthodoxy in theconsciousness of the Serbian Church. Therefore, the OrthodoxChurch came to view the resistance against the Axis powers' occupa-tion as a nationalist cause of the Serb people against two evil forces:Croats and Nazis.1 7 These historical memories became a source forwild charges and countercharges of past attempts at ethnic genocidebetween the Serbs and Croats, and were thus used to justify newrounds of killings. Many Serb elements in the Yugoslav army and Ser-bia's government have often cited the wartime massacres as a justifica-tion for their recent war against Croatia and Bosnia. Many Serbs alsointerpreted the fact that Germany and Austria recently have been ac-tive defenders of an independent Croatia as a confirmation of theirsuspicion that Germans and Croats are probably targeting the Serbpeople, as they did during the Second World War.

105. Sabrina P. Ramet, "The Serbian Church and the Serbian Nation," in Ramet andAdamovich, Beyond Yugoslavia, 102-22.

106. Ibid.107. Ramet, Balkan Babel.108. Denitch, Ethnic Nationalism: The Tragic Death of Yugoslavia.

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Serb political entrepreneurs and activists transformed these historicalmemories into political myths, especially after Slobodan Milosevicseized power in 1987. The political myths created a sense of a besiegedSerb nation, not only in Kosovo but also in Croatia and elsewhere inYugoslavia. Milosevic quickly became the most visible advocate ofSerbian grievances and of the survival of Serbs as a unified nationwithin a strong unitary Yugoslav state. He thereby conflated Yugosla-via's integrity with the national security and survival of the Serbs —athreat to Yugoslavia's integrity was claimed to be tantamount to athreat to the security and survival of the Serb nation. Milosevic usedritualization as well as both coercive inducement and incentives topropagate and entrench his political myths within the Serb population.His approach was five-pronged: win the support of the OrthodoxChurch, win the allegiance of Serb mobs, transform the educationalcurriculum, eliminate or co-opt internal competitors and challengers,and domesticate the Serbian press.

Milosevic skillfully channeled the yearning of the Orthodox Churchfor its past status as a defender of the Serb nation. Before 1987, thecommunists had suppressed the Church press, confiscated Churchland, harassed the clergy, and relegated the Orthodox Church itself toa second-class status. The Serbian Church was conscious of its weak-ness under Tito's regime, with only half the number of clergy it hadhad before the Second World War and a tangibly diminished income.Nevertheless, it did not allow the regime to co-opt it, and assumed anopposition posture, openly from time to time, at least until 1987. Mi-losevic pronounced the Church to be the spiritual component of theSerb national identity, and extended and deepened his rapprochementwith it, granting the Serb Orthodox Church permits to build newchurches and restore old ones. The Church returned his favors andplayed an active role in promoting Serb nationalism.

Milosevic also focused his attention on Serb concerns about the riseof Albanian nationalism in Kosovo. In a visit to Kosovo in April 1987,Milosevic assured the Serb population living there that "[N]o one willbe allowed to beat you! No one will be allowed to beat you!" ! ByNovember 1988, Milosevic's message was rapidly spreading in Serbia.He soon called for new constitutional amendments that would restoreSerbian authority over Kosovo and Vojvodina, and indeed reduced the

109. Ramet, "The Serbian Church and the Serbian Nation."110. Ramet, Balkan Babel.111. Cohen, Broken Bonds, 52.

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autonomy of Kosovo and Vojvodina by de facto annexing them toSerbia. In 1989, he modified the Serbian constitution to reduce the dejure autonomy status of the two provinces. The Orthodox Churchencouraged Milosevic, and published a Saint Vitus day message in itsnewspaper, Glas Crkve, proclaiming that the proffered changes in theSerbian constitution were but a restoration of state sovereignty to Ser-bia over its natural territory.

Milosevic and his conservative coalition also used education as a me-dium to propagate their ultranationaliste political myths. They intro-duced the Cyrillic alphabet, ignoring years of increasingly shifting to-ward the Latin alphabet. Encouraged by Milosevic, the Church sent aletter to the Ministry of Education of Serbia, demanding the introduc-tion of Orthodox religious education as a mandatory subject in allelementary and secondary schools. In June 1990, as a gesture of goodwill toward the Orthodox Church, the Serbian government replacedMarxism in school curricula with religious instruction.

Milosevic disposed of many prominent political figures in Serbia(such as his predecessor and long-time friend, Ivo Stambolic) to furtherconsolidate his power within the Serb community. He accused them ofbecoming either too assertive or too compromised. To win their con-tinuing support, however, he gave them important and lucrative posi-tions in business as well as other nonpolitical occupations. He alsoskillfully channeled the congruence of interests between his politicalgoals and those of the Yugoslav army.116 At the head of his strategy,Milosevic domesticated the news media and channeled them towardpromoting his political myths. In September 1990, for example, theSerbian daily Politika published an article which called for a lifting ofthe Titoist proscription of a nationalist role for the Church. The arti-cle praised the Serbian Church for its service to the Serb nation, anddeclared Orthodoxy the spiritual basis and most essential componentof the Serb national identity. In general, "nationalist media manipu-lation was the centerpiece of Milosevic's successful strategy for defeat-

112. FBIS-EEU, 4 August 1989, 43.113. Ramet, "The Serbian Church and the Serbian Nation."114. Ramet, Balkan Babel.115. Aleksa Djilas, The Contested Country: Yugoslav Unity and Communist Revolu-

tion, 1919-1953 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991); Djilas, "Fear ThyNeighbor: The Breakup of Yugoslavia"; Gagnon, "Ethnic Nationalism and Interna-tional Conflict: The Case of Serbia."

116. Gagnon, "Ethnic Nationalism and International Conflict: The Case of Serbia."117. Politika, 2 September 1990, 18.

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ing liberal reformers in the scramble for both mass and élite sup-port."118 Never completely controlling all media outlets, Milosevic hadnevertheless under his supervision the state television station and Bel-grade's three major newspapers. More independent media were indi-rectly coerced and constrained in their scope.

The Croat élite. Croat political entrepreneurs and activists revivedand highlighted the memories of a legendary longing for statehood,images of their struggle against the Serb domination during the firstYugoslavia (1919-41), and images of large numbers of Croats whomthe Serb Chetniks killed during the Second World War.121 Croats' con-tinuous demands for more autonomy and recognition of their aspira-tions and self-proclaimed historic rights were legitimated by a belief ina Serb conspiracy to establish hegemony over Yugoslavia. The threatallegedly assumed three forms: a demographic displacement of Croatsby Serbs, an effort to split Croatia in two, and a "Serbianization" ofthe Croatian language. Croat leaders transformed these concernsinto political myths to mobilize their fellow nationals against Serbiannationalists. As in the case of Serbia, Croat political entrepreneurs andethnic activists of the 1980s and 1990s did not create Croats' historicalmemories. Nor did they need to distort them to fit their self-servinggoals. Indeed, the Croat national question has remained a persistentissue throughout both the Kingdom of and socialist Yugoslavia.

Tito's political liberalization of the 1960s, for example, which intro-duced the doctrine of self-management, created an atmosphere condu-cive to a reemergence of the Croat national question. Reform advo-cates in Croatia used the proposed doctrine of economic self-management to justify their demands for greater political autonomy.Economic self-management, they rationalized, could only be achievedthrough a decentralization of the economy and a simultaneous devolu-

118. Snyder and Ballentine, "Nationalism and the Marketplace of Ideas," 26.119. Mark Thompson, Forging War: The Media in Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia-

Herzegovina (London: Bath Press, 1994).120. Gagnon, "Ethnic Nationalism and International Conflict: The Case of Serbia";

Woodward, Balkan Tragedy, Thompson, Forging War.121. Djilas, The Contested Country: Yugoslav Unity and Communist Revolution,

1919-1953.122. Jill A. Irvine, The Croat Question: Partisan Politics in the Formation of the Yugo-

slav Socialist State (Boulder: Westview, 1993).123. Ramet, Balkan Babel.124. Irvine, The Croat Question; Ramet, Nationalism and Federalism in Yugoslavia,

1962-1991.

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tion of political decision-making power to the republics. The charac-ter of the federal system became the focus of intense debates between1965 and 1971 and led to a series of reforms, which fundamentally re-structured the Yugoslav political system. The League of Communistsof Croatia (LCC) worked to increase the autonomy of Croatia's partyorganizations and other institutions. LCC reformers emphasized theprimacy of Croatian statehood and the importance of placing Croatianpolitical interests above those of the Yugoslav state. A revision ofCroatia's constitution was carried out in fall 1971. This general atmos-phere of reforms encouraged more demands relating to the Croatianquestion.

Early in the 1970s, there was a strong Croat revival of ethnic histori-cal memory. During 1970 a popular movement emerged, talkingopenly about the grievances and claims that the communist regime hadrepressed since 1945. Henceforth, the Croats began reexamining theirhistory, searching for lost Croat heroes whom the communist regimehad intentionally ignored. Stjepan Radie (d. 1928), for example, foun-der of the Croatian Peasant Party, became a legendary figure. InAugust 1971, the cultural committee of the League of Students ofCroatia erected a commemorative plaque in his honor on the facade ofthe Zagreb house where he had lived and died. Similarly, the coastaltown of Sibenik canceled plans to erect a monument to the victims offascism, opting instead for a statue of the Croatian king, Petar KresimirIV. There also were efforts to rehabilitate a nineteenth-century Croa-tian military governor, Josip Jelacic, and restore him to the Valhalla ofCroatian gods and heroes. An equestrian statue of Ban Josip Jelacic,which the communists had removed from the Square of the Republicin July 1947, was eventually restored. Accompanying this wave of re-discovering the past, traditional patriotic songs of the Croatian home-land were revived and could often be heard publicly in Croatia's res-taurants. Vice Vukov became Croatia's most popular singer in 1971because of his songs about Croatia.

When the new style of leadership emerged in the 1980s in Yugosla-via, the Croat leaders found a set of historical memories ready to beused as raw materials for nationalist mythmaking. As their counter-

125. Irvine, The Croat Question.126. Ibid.127. Ramet, Nationalism and Federalism in Yugoslavia, 1962-1991.128. The regime banned at least two of his concerts. Ramet, Nationalism and Feder-

alism in Yugoslavia, 1962-1991.

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parts in Serbia used ritualization, coercive inducement, and variousincentives to rally support for ultranationalistic political myths, theCroat leaders also used various means to win the support of the Croatcommunity. In addition, the process of democratization was importantin the Croatian elite's bid to win popular support. The electorate in-ternalized the ultranationalistic political myths through electoral cam-paigns and ballot boxes.

Croatian leaders such as Franco Tudjman launched a campaign ofmobilization of the Croat nation through ultranationalistic propa-ganda. In December 1989, Croat activists organized a petition signedby 25,000 Croatian citizens demanding the legalization of different po-litical parties and free elections. The communist leadership submittedthat the single-party system had exhausted its potentialities, and movedto establish a multiparty system in the country.129 By mid-March 1990,Croatia had formally legalized the creation of political organizationsoutside the communist fold and had scheduled competitive elections.Holding democratic elections opened up the space of political contes-tating, and created an opening for ultranationalistic politics. FranjoTudjman, leader of the Croatian Democratic Alliance (HDZ), built hiscampaign around promises to assert the priority of Croatia's nationalinterests. The HDZ appealed directly to the voters' nationalist senti-ments and to their dissatisfaction with the communist regime. Its coreprogram was the affirmation of Croatian national identity and sover-eignty, though without calling for outright secession from Yugoslavia.In addition, Tudjman called for Croats and Muslims living in Bosnia-Herzegovina to be included in the new Croatia, thereby echoing awidely held Croatian view. Elections held in late April and May gaveTudjman's alliance an impressive victory. The HDZ won a total of 205out of 356 seats in Croatia's legislature, including a majority in each ofthe body's three chambers. Most Serbs in Croatia voted heavily againstthe HDZ, supporting instead either the communists or an increasinglyvocal, nationalistic Serbian Democratic Party (SDS).131 On 30 May1990, deputies in the Croatian legislature elected Tudjman as the re-public's president, by a count of 281 out of 331 votes cast. A byprod-uct of the election campaign was a mobilization of the Croatian com-

129. Cohen, Broken Bonds.130. Linz and Stepan, "Political Identities and Electoral Sequences: Spain, the Soviet

Union, and Yugoslavia."131. FBIS-EEU, 26 June 1992, 18.

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munity around their long-time aspiration to national sovereignty andautonomy.

Reciprocating interethnic strategies. Elites' interethnic strategies rein-forced their respective intraethnic strategies, thereby strengthening theprocess of mobilization of the Serb and Croat communities. The futureof Kosovo played an important role in the interethnic strategies ofboth Serb and Croat leaders. Milosevic called for new constitutionalamendments that would restore Serbia's hegemony over Kosovo andVojvodina by abrogating the autonomous status of the two prov-inces. In parallel, Milosevic-controlled media in Belgrade launched apropaganda campaign against the Croats, accusing them of nurturing aconspiracy against the Serbs because they opposed the annexation ofKosovo. Although the nationalists in Croatia had persistently warnedof an impending "Serbianization," the leaders of the LCC neverthelessavoided any major clash with the Serbian leadership throughout thelate 1980s. The delicate relationship of Croatia's ethnic majority withthe Serb minority in Croatia heightened the Croatian elite's prudenceregarding the Croatian question. The Croatian leaders nonetheless ac-cused Milosevic of "Stalinist" and "unitarist" tendencies when Mi-losevic reduced the autonomy of Kosovo and began calling for morepolitical centralization at the federal level. The Croat leaders allegedthat Serbian politicians were aiming to destabilize Croatia. Serb andCroat ultranationalistic leaders increasingly engaged one another in arhetorical war, accusing each other while self-justifying their respectiveactions and positions in historical grievances and self-acclaimed rights.Demonizing the "other" became an interethnic routine.

Serb and Croat social identities therefore became increasingly cast interms of sharply opposed, self-proclaimed national historical rights andgrievances and irreconcilably construed political myths. The loyaltiesof large segments of these communities were recast in such a way thatthere was a conflation of individual citizenship rights and ethnic rights.Political loyalty to the federation eroded, and nationality-defined po-litical loyalties gradually replaced it. A public opinion survey con-ducted in mid-1990 reveals that only 48 percent of Croats gave moreallegiance to Yugoslavia than to their republic. At the same time, 71percent of Serbs still had strong political loyalty to Yugoslavia. Thishigh percentage of Serb support for Yugoslavia, however, came from abelief that the fate of the Serb nation and Yugoslavia's integrity cannot

132. Woodward, Balkan Tragedy.

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be separated, a belief that Croats have resented since the Kingdom ofYugoslavia. The same data also showed that most Croats (72 percent)did not support the notion that federal constitutional provisionsshould have precedence over republican ones, in contrast to most Serbs(83 percent) who did.

Therefore, by 1990, the relations between Serbia and Croatia (andbetween Serbia and Slovenia) were increasingly viewed from a zero-sum perspective. Aggressive rhetoric and practices incited aggressiveresponses. The more assertive each group became in its ultranationalis-tic project, the more it intruded on politics in the other republic, andthe less prospect there was of reaching any compromise on divisiveissues. "Other republics or the federal government were increasinglyidentified as external enemies to be defeated."134

Reinforcing the role of federal state institutions. Yugoslavia possessedan array of federal institutions such as the collective presidency, theLCY, and the Yugoslav National Army (YNA). Why did these institu-tions fail effectively to stall or reverse the emergence of ethnic fear?Instead of stalling the rise of ethnic politics and fear, the institutions ofthe federal state became arenas where aggressive ethnic politics wasreinforced and where the logic of ethnic fear was anchored. By increas-ingly becoming arenas of aggressive ethnic politics, state institutionscontributed to their own weakening and eventually their completemarginalization. The more leaders asserted their ethnic strategieswithin the federal state institutions, the more the institutions becameincapable of resolving the divisive issues among the major groups(namely, the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes), and the more intransigentthe political entrepreneurs and ethnic activists became in their zero-sum strategies. The resonance between élites' strategies and the weak-ening of the institutions reinforced the belief that the federation couldnot be trusted to protect group rights and security. Thus, each groupbelieved it had to take matters into its own hands. The evolution ofthe collective presidency best illustrates this dynamic.

The collective presidency continued to serve as the executive headafter Tito's death. It brought together delegates of the federal units(one per federal unit), who rotated annually in the office of presidentof the presidency. The members of this body were responsible to theassemblies of their respective federal units, which elected them. By

133. Cohen, Broken Bonds, 172-73.134. Woodward, Balkan Tragedy, 113.

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1990, the number of delegates in the collective presidency was effec-tively reduced to five—Serbian, Slovene, Croatian, Macedonian andBosnian representatives. Milosevic had transformed Montenegro, Vo-jvodina, and Kosovo into satellites of Serbia, assuring himself the sup-port of their delegates. Milosevic's ability to control a majority of votes(four) in the collective presidency was one of the main factors thatparalyzed the institution.

Despite these flaws, the collective presidency nonetheless convened aseries of meetings which revolved around four divisive issues: the statusand value of maintaining the Yugoslav federation, the rights of the re-publics to secede from the existing federation, the character of the re-publican borders, and the most desirable type of future political ar-rangements among the republics. Leaders from Slovenia and Croatiaproposed a confederation of sovereign republics. This proposal wasbased on the principle that the future organization of the country mustpreserve both the sovereignty of each republic and the inviolability ofthe existing republic's borders. For Serbia and Montenegro, the Yugo-slav federation not only remained a political reality but needed to bestrengthened, albeit perhaps in a different form. They both completelyrejected the notion that a republic could unilaterally proclaim its ad-ministrative borders to be state borders. The Serbian leadership be-lieved that Serbia's and Yugoslavia's interests were inextricably linked;a dissolution of Yugoslavia was tantamount to a territorial fragmenta-tion of the Serb nation. The Muslim leadership of Bosnia simultane-ously advocated the principles of republican sovereignty and the invio-lability of borders within a unified Yugoslav state. Macedonia agreedwith Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia on the issues of sovereignty andborders, but wanted strong economic and security relations among therepublics. The result of these irreconcilable positions was a paralysis ofthe collective presidency and a shunning of the federal prime minister.

The LCY did not fare any better than the collective presidency. Thereconstruction of political loyalties marginalized the LCY, especiallyafter the onset of democratic elections in most of the republics. Despiteall attempts to strengthen the popularity and legitimacy of the leagueduring Tito's life, the institution relatively quickly eroded after hisdeath. The competitive elections held in Yugoslavia's republics fromApril through December 1990 constituted a major turning point in theparty's evolution. Already fragmented, the LCY was either swept frompower or forced to enter into a dialogue with the opposition in everyregion of the country. Popularly legitimated political leaders, who

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were devoted to sharply conflicting visions of Yugoslavia's constitu-tional and political future, were governing Serbia, Slovenia, and Croa-tia. Democratic party politics, however flawed in itself, reinforcedwhat the collective presidency was doing to the federation: a shunningof the federal institutions. Ethnic politics was thus being reinforced notonly from within the collective presidency, but also, and perhaps moreso, through democratic party politics and elections.

Nor was the YNA, a prominent symbol of the Titoist legacy and amanifestation of the idea of Yugoslavism, spared from the devastatingdilemmas that faced other federal institutions. If the collective presi-dency was paralyzed from within and the LCY was marginalizedthrough elections, the YNA became polarized and what remained of itincreasingly took sides in upcoming conflicts. Under the 1974 constitu-tion, the army was mandated to use all necessary means to protect thecountry and its system of socialist self-management. Because of thisprivileged position, the YNA was slowly drawn into the crisis develop-ing in Yugoslavia. Initially, the army was staunchly opposed to politi-cal pluralism; the military leaders saw political pluralism as a directattack on the constitution. Agitation for more freedom in Slovenia in1988, for example, prompted the army to take relatively strong actionsagainst Slovene dissidents. Eventually the military, if reluctantly, ac-cepted a de facto political liberalization. The army changed its positionwhen it saw the federal and most regional political authorities belatedlyaccepting the principle of party pluralism, in the wake of the EastEuropean wave of democratic revolution. When the new Sloveneleadership asserted Slovenia's political sovereignty in 1990, however,and began groundwork toward independence, the YNA strongly op-posed such goals. The Slovene authorities categorically refused to abideby the federal directives and saw the decision as an interference in therepublic's affairs. The standoff ultimately led to a confrontation be-tween newly proclaimed Slovene forces and the YNA in June 1991. TheYNA failure to restore the authority of the federal government inSlovenia was a bad precedent for the army. The army's constitutionalmandate to protect Yugoslavia's territorial integrity would soon bechallenged in Croatia too. On 25 June Slovenia and Croatia declared

135. For a comparative study of the effect of election sequencing in multiethnicstates, see Linz and Stepan, "Political Identities and Electoral Sequences: Spain, theSoviet Union, and Yugoslavia."

136. James Gow, Legitimacy and the Military: The Yugoslav Crisis (New York: St.Martin's, 1992).

137. Cohen, Broken Bonds.

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independence from socialist Yugoslavia. The YNA lost its reputation asan impartial institution by acting without the approval of the federalprime minister. Slovenes, Croats, and subsequently Muslims came toperceive it as a tool in the hands of Serb ultranationalists.

The stalling of federal institutions and the construction of aggressivesocial identities by the Serb and Croat communities occurred simulta-neously, and mutually reinforced one another. Had the federal institu-tions not reached such a state of weakness, the nationalistic leaderswould not have been able to portray their strategies as the only routesof salvation for their respective communities. The federal institutions,however, did not weaken independently of the élites' strategies.Rather, the federal institutions were part of the media and resourcesthat facilitated the leaders' strategies. The simultaneous evolution ofthe weakening of state institutions and élites' reciprocating strategiescannot be separated from one another; they mutually constituted oneanother. Ethnic leaders enacted new strategies in the 1980s that re-duced the effectiveness and legitimacy of state institutions, increasinglyweakening them. Weakened institutions, in turn, reinforced the veryleaders' strategies. The mutual feedback between élites' strategies andincreasingly weakening institutions ultimately led to a stalling of stateinstitutions and to pivotal roles for ethnic leaders in interethnic rela-tions. Because ethnic leaders defined interethnic relations as zero-sumgames (which reciprocated strategic practices reinforced) and becausetheir respective constituencies internalized such beliefs, the opposinggroups began to see each other as enemies. Ethnic fear took hold,thereby weakening state institutions even more.

THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF ETHNIC FEAR

A STANDARD rational-choice approach to ethnic cooperation andconflict suggests that social actors use ethnicity to organize group

political action if individual benefits are expected to outweigh thecosts. Such an approach to the study of ethnic politics and conflict un-doubtedly provides many insights on the strategic problems that occurin intergroup interactions. Rationalist explanations, however, bracket afundamental aspect of ethnic conflicts, the variability of group identityand its impact on interethnic interactions. This paper suggests a theo-retical framework as a bridge between rational-choice and structural

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analyses of ethnic conflict by looking at how group social identitychanges and its impact on interethnic relations.

The argument is that social identity—a set of meanings that an actorattributes to itself while taking the perspective of others—endows in-terethnic interactions with predictability around a set of expectations.Changes in the social identities of ethnic groups destabilize establishedpatterns of interethnic relations and create uncertainty about futureinterethnic relations. Such a perspective does not minimize the role ofpolitical entrepreneurs and ethnic activists. To the contrary, the paperargues that as political entrepreneurs and ethnic activists modify thepractices and modes of interethnic interaction, which enact their groupsocial identities, an ingroup-intergroup dynamic takes hold. This dy-namic can produce aggressive social identities—groups consider oneanother as enemies, thereby creating ethnic fear and a strong potentialfor ethnic violence. Ethnic leaders, however, are not in control of theprocess of reconstructing their groups' social identities. The process is"social," and feedback mechanisms between interacting groups are es-sential to its evolution. Nor can the leaders be effective agents outsidethe realm of opportunities and constraints that existing social struc-tures define. Salient ethnic historical memories, the structure of ethniccleavages, and state institutional arrangements strongly shape the in-group-intergroup dynamic. The point is not whether leaders are op-portunistic; they are most of the time. Rather, the issue is that the so-cial structural environment constitutes what is "ethnically realizable."

This constructivist approach has a number of implications for theresearch agenda on ethnic conflicts. First, a constructivist perspectivenot only allows to formulate causal explanations as the rationalist orstructuralist approaches do, it also permits a formulation of constitu-tive arguments that neither a rationalist nor a structuralist approachcan offer. Constitutive claims are concerned with how entities are puttogether rather than with the relation between independent and de-pendent variables. This does not, however, make these claims less"theoretical" than causal arguments. Constitutive theories imply hy-potheses about the world that can and should be tested. Addressingconstitutive issues is an important piece of research in itself. Any causalexplanation of ethnic conflict will be underspecified without goodtheoretical descriptions of how social dilemmas and identities are con-stituted or put together. Constitutive and causal arguments reinforceone another.

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Second, it is important to know from a normative and policy view-point how things are put together. This would show multiple ways torealize a phenomenon, some of which might be normatively preferableor practically more feasible. More specifically, ethnic conflict is not animmutable feature of multiethnic societies. The social practices of eth-nic élites and their respective groups can create strategic dilemmas anddrag a multiethnic society into conflict, or alternatively build peacefulsocieties. Both ethnic peace and conflict are socially constructed. Thus,by showing how the social identities of ethnic groups can take differ-ent forms, we may open up desirable political possibilities that wouldhave otherwise been foreclosed.

Third, a constructivist approach shifts the focus from ethnic identityper se to the social meanings that this identity acquires in different so-cietal contexts. This goes a long way in helping to explain the occur-rence of ethnic conflicts in certain multiethnic societies and the peace-ful relations between long-established ethnic communities in others. Aconstructivist framework that focuses on the concept of social identityof an ethnic group can explain, for example, the long ethnic peace inSwitzerland as well as the genocide in Rwanda. A constructivist enter-prise is thus "optimistic" in the sense that constructivist theorizingopens up windows of thinking about various societal issues that a ra-tionalist approach would foreclose.

Fourth, a constructivist approach differs with standard rational-choice-based explanations on another fundamental conception of eth-nic conflict. Standard rationalist theories argue that "competition forresources typically lies at the heart of ethnic conflict."138 A constructiv-ist perspective strongly qualifies this assertion by emphasizing the im-portance of interethnic meanings more than competition for scarceresources. Shifting the focus of study from "ethnicity" per se to socialidentity highlights the explanatory power of the notion of intersubjec-tive—shared—meanings as a fundamental "unit" of analysis of ethnicconflicts. More precisely, the eruption of ethnic conflicts crucially de-pends on a transformation of the intersubjective meanings that under-pin interethnic relations. Neither the occurrence of conflict nor

138. Lake and Rothchild, "Containing Fear," 44; see also: Hardin, One for All, 144-47.

139. As Gibbons put it, any "attempt to understand the intersubjective meaningsembedded in social life is at the same tune an attempt to explain why people act theway they do" (Michael T. Gibbons, "Introduction: The Politics of Interpretation," inInterpreting Politics, ed. Michael T. Gibbons [New York: New York University Press,1987], 3).

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peace can be fully understood without considering such meanings. Re-solving ethnic conflicts is essentially to change the intersubjectivemeanings that underpin interethnic relations. Rationalist approachesare agnostic about the causal role of such meanings, and, hence, cannotfully explain various patterns of ethnic peace and outbursts of ethnichatreds. Emphasizing intersubjective meanings, however, does not en-tail slighting other factors such as socio-economic issues. It means thatthe intersubjective meanings define and underpin other factors. Similarpolitical arrangements and socio-economic conditions can have differ-ent implications for interethnic relations under different intersubjec-tive meanings.

A constructivist approach to the study of ethnic conflicts fundamen-tally differs with a rationalist perspective on the issue of policy impli-cations. For rationalist approaches, the management of ethnic conflicthas "no permanent resolutions, only temporary fixes. In the end, eth-nic groups are left without reliable safety nets....We can only hope tocontain ethnic fears, not permanently eliminate them." A construc-tivist perspective sees both ethnic fear and trust as socially constructedwithin existing social structures, and, hence, both ethnic fear and peacecan be socially deconstructed. The dilemmas that sometimes occurin multiethnic societies are not immutable. They are socially con-structed. They can be contained as well as resolved. The core argumentof this paper is that ethnic fear (and by extension ethnic violence)emerges when aggressive social identities are constructed. This leads totwo policy implications. First, ethnic fear can be preempted by revers-ing the process of constructing aggressive identities. Second, if it is toolate to do so, ethnic fear can be alleviated by deconstructing aggressivesocial identities and constructing nonaggressive ones. This can be ac-complished by simultaneously focusing on the strategies of relevantethnic (state and challenging) elites and on the existing social structuresthat empower or constrain these elites.

More precisely, élites' strategies of constructing and propagating po-litical myths that challenge the interethnic status quo should be dealt

140. Lake and Rothchild, "Containing Fear," 57.141. Fearon and Laitin, who present a much more optimistic scenario than Lake and

Rothchild, argue that "despite the greater tensions, peaceful and cooperative relationsare by far the more typical outcome than is large-scale violence" (Fearon and Laitin,"Explaining Interethnic Cooperation," 715). As pointed out earlier, however, Fearonand Laitin's explanation of interethnic cooperation, although very insightful, still stopsshort of considering the role that group social identity plays in interethnic cooperationand violence.

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with by discrediting the élites' bid to create and propagate conflictualpolitical myths and by promoting political myths that induce cohabita-tion, toleration, and cooperation. This is a battle of constructing inter-subjective meanings, which can be fought effectively only on the samegrounds with appropriate means. Although force and coercion mightstop ethnic élites from constructing and propagating conflictual politi-cal myths, such a policy can be a costly one. Political myths that aim atconstructing aggressive social identities should be countered withstronger and more appealing political myths that promote nonaggres-sive social identities. In addition, efforts should be made to recast therole of the three social structures—salient historical memories, ethniccleavages, and state institutional arrangements—which strongly shapethe process of constructing aggressive social identities.

First, actors willing to preserve ethnic peace should reinterpret sali-ent ethnic memories in ways that highlight toleration, cooperation,and peace, not conflict. People and groups opposed to ethnic conflictshould engage in a battle, the purpose of which is to prevent ethnicélites who are bidding for conflict from appropriating the interpreta-tion of salient historical memories. Focusing only on material incen-tives or "rationalistic" discourse would miss an important part of thebattle, and would thereby leave "the field of meanings" open to ethnicbidders. The point is not to uncover the biased and nonobjective read-ing of historical memory. Historical memory is inherently interpreta-tive, and no interpretation is final. Elites opposed to ethnic conflictand who advocate peaceful coexistence should engage in a reinterpreta-tion of historical memory to create more integrative political myths.

Second, the role of ethnic cleavages should be addressed throughvarious strategies. Ethnic cleavages cannot be ignored if alleviatingethnic fear is to succeed. Short of coercive policies that would onlyenhance ethnic fear, state élites and other parties interested in changingthe conditions that cause conflict need to pay attention to the politicalrole of ethnic cleavages in the present, and as a structure looming overthe stability of future arrangements. Ethnic cleavages exist in most (ifnot all) countries, and cannot be wished away, but their intersubjectivemeanings can be recast toward more toleration and coexistence, if notcomplete integration. The negative effects of ethnic cleavages can be

142. For good reviews, see Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict, 601-52; Esman,Ethnic Politics, 216-40.

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alleviated by redefining their intersubjective meanings, not by imple-menting some sort of an "ethnic cleansing, liberal style."

Third, state institutional arrangements play an important role in theemergence of ethnic fear and, thus, actors opposed to ethnic conflictcannot ignore or minimize this role. A state whose institutions arestrong can always find ways to preempt ethnic conflict, either by co-opting challenging groups, or by minimizing their impacts on the pol-ity as a whole. Too strong an institutional arrangement, however,might also contribute to enhance ethnic fear. Therefore, actors op-posed to ethnic conflict should be more aware of the intricate role thatinstitutional arrangements (as a structural context) play in the recon-struction of social identities. This issue is the more pertinent in in-stances where state institutional arrangements are in flux, such as dur-ing democratization. Although the extant literature has dealt muchwith the cost-benefit analysis that ethnic groups under conditions ofdemocratization engage in, there is still a need for a constructivist"take" on these issues. A successful engineering of new state institu-tions can be achieved only if it is socially constructed by all relevantethnic actors. Two contemporary cases illustrate this problem, SouthAfrica and Algeria. Whereas in South Africa the democratization proc-ess was an all-inclusive social construction, in Algeria the democratiza-tion process began as a government strategy, and remained so. Peace, ifstill somewhat precarious, has been socially constructed in South Af-rica. In contrast, a six-year-old violent conflict with a cost of tens ofthousands of human lives and billions in material destruction has beensocially constructed in Algeria. In South Africa, democratization beganas a social construction and proceeded as such. In Algeria, democratiza-

143. David Laitin introduces this expression in his Identity in Formation: The Rus-sian Speaking Populations in the Near Abroad (Ithaca: Cornelf University Press, 1998),chap. 12. Ethnic cleansing, liberal style stands for a policy which proposes that "groupswhose leaders can make credible claims to being a nation should be rewarded withplebiscites, recognition, and aid packages to help the process of state consolidation"ibid.). As strongly argued by Laitin, such a policy would readily encourage ethnic

cleansing and violence.144. All these policy implications depend on a timely mixture of actors and re-

sources. Timely preempting the construction, or deconstructing, of aggressive socialidentities of the major ethnic groups is crucial. Resources are also needed to carry outthe tasks. To counter a given reinterpretation of historical memories, for example,actively involved actors need public media resources that would convey their messageto a variety of social groups.

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tion remained in the hands of one group of social actors—the army and

its supporters—and led to a social construction of violence.

145. For a comparative study of the evolution of democratization in Algeria andSouth Africa, see Arfi, "Democratization and Communal Politics."

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Documents

Badredine Arfi - Ethnic Fear, The Social Construction of Insecurity (1998)