From Voting to Violence: Democratization and Nationalist Conflict

By Jack L. Snyder

Book Overview

A trenchant analysis of the attempts to mediate the transition from oppression to freedom, and a warning of the potentially disastrous challenges that face burgeoning democracies. With the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989, many proclaimed the triumph of liberal democracy as they watched democratization sweep through formerly authoritarian countries in Latin America, Eastern Europe, and East Asia. Yet the 1990s turned out to be a decade marked by chronic nationalist conflict, and the sense of democratic triumph turned to frustration. In From Voting to Violence , Jack Snyder shows how democratization can actually exacerbate nationalist fervor and ethnic conflict if the conditions permitting a successful transition are not in place. Arguing that international organizations can cause conflict rather than averting it in their rush to establish democratic governments and punish outgoing leaders, he prescribes policies that will make transitions less dangerous and allow fledgling democracies to flourish. In the light of such tragic examples as Weimar Germany and contemporary Bosnia--each drawn into a spiral of ethnic hatred and civil war by political leaders manipulating nationalist sentiments--From Voting to Violence questions the sometimes rash optimism of liberal democracy that would rush to democracy at the cost of freedom.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393048810
• ISBN13: 9780393048810
• Release Date: April 2000
• Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 1.56 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.8" x 1.3" x 6.5"

Customer Reviews

"Run, it's democray!"

This is no doubt one of the best books on democracy. It is at least as good as Hungtington's Political orders in changing societies, and The third wave. The author sees democracy as "conditionally good", or democracy is good because it is strategically conditional. The book, however, fails to go further to see that democracy is in fact only "culturally conditional". The God of universal democracy was dead, but too many people are unable or unwilling to accept it.

democracy isn't a panacea!

synder's book breaks down the fallacies of imposing democracy as the cure-all to violent ethnic conflict. the book is quite easy to read, even for folks with no political science background. snyder is particularly effective at laying down a systematic framework as to why emerging democratization often leads to violence, and then provides case studies that illustrate his points clearly. snyder isn't anti-democratization, but he is very wary when the process is started without certain institutions and conditions in place. if the bush administration read this book prior to invading iraq, we might have been able to avoid that catastrophe entirely.

Excellent

What makes this a great political science book is not merely the provocative counterintuitive claim regarding democratization (specifically partial democractization) offered by the author, but the solid, systematic and CLEAR (!) theoretical and empirical cases offer in support. A pleasure to read and a valuable contribution to scholarship and policy-making alike.