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Winner of the 2005 Best Book Award in European Politics and Society given by the European Politics and Society Section of the American Political Science Association

Cowinner of the 2006 Council for European Studies First Book Award

“The wars in Bosnia-Herzegovina and in neighboring Croatia and Kosovo grabbed the attention of the western world not only because of their ferocity and their geographic location, but also because of their timing. This violence erupted at the exact moment when the cold war confrontation was drawing to a close, when westerners were claiming their liberal values as triumphant, in a country that had only a few years earlier been seen as very well placed to join the west. In trying to account for this outburst, most western journalists, academics, and policymakers have resorted to the language of the premodern: tribalism, ethnic hatreds, cultural inadequacy, irrationality; in short, the Balkans as the antithesis of the modern west. Yet one of the most striking aspects of the wars in Yugoslavia is the extent to which the images purveyed in the western press and in much of the academic literature are so at odds with evidence from on the ground.”—from Chapter 1

V. P. Gagnon Jr. believes that the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s were reactionary moves designed to thwart populations that were threatening the existing structures of political and economic power. He begins with facts at odds with the essentialist view of ethnic identity, such as high intermarriage rates and the very high percentage of draft-resisters. These statistics do not comport comfortably with the notion that these wars were the result of ancient blood hatreds or of nationalist leaders using ethnicity to mobilize people into conflict.

Yugoslavia in the late 1980s was, in Gagnon’s view, on the verge of large-scale sociopolitical and economic change. He shows that political and economic elites in Belgrade and Zagreb first created and then manipulated violent conflict along ethnic lines as a way to short-circuit the dynamics of political change. This strategy of violence was thus a means for these threatened elites to demobilize the population. Gagnon’s noteworthy and rather controversial argument provides us with a substantially new way of understanding the politics of ethnicity.

Reviews

“Gagnon challenges some widespread notions about the dangerous linkage between ethnicity and the upsurge of violence in the post–Cold War world, and he does it crisply and with plenty of carefully marshaled data.”—Robert Legvold, Foreign Affairs, March/April 2005

“Gagnon presents an impressive and very original ‘social constructivist’ analysis of the recent wars in Bosnia and Croatia. In refuting approaches that assume deeply felt ethnic hatreds, the author contends that Yugoslav elites responded to the end of the Cold War by pursuing strategies that would ensure their hold on power and privilege. . . . This is a must-read for those who want a deeper understanding of the conflict processes in the former Yugoslavia.”—S. Majstorovic, Choice, September 2005

“Beautifully researched and written . . . an excellent volume that makes an important and timely contribution to our understanding of the collapse of Yugoslavia.”—International Affairs, 81:2
“This book is going to make waves for all the right reasons. The argument—the use of nationalism by leaders to demobilize publics, especially those supporting democratic reform—is original and important. Basing his arguments on considerable evidence, V. P. Gagnon invites us to think seriously about demobilization, which is critical in all kinds of political settings, and he challenges the assumption that nationalist leaders invariably have large numbers of nationalist followers.”—Valerie Bunce, Aaron Binenkorb Chair of International Studies and Chair of the Government Department, Cornell University, and author of Subversive Institutions: The Design and Destruction of Socialism and the State

“Although the Dayton accords were signed years ago, the conflict among Serbs, Croats, and Muslims remains one of the central cases for those studying conflict and identity issues. With its inclusion of many primary sources, I believe The Myth of Ethnic War is the best of the social constructivist treatments of the Yugoslav wars and engages the current state of the study of ethnic conflict.”—Roger Petersen, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

“Other books on the subject of the violent breakup of the former Yugoslavia could be described as partial or polemical. V. P. Gagnon adds the crucial dimension of a sustained analysis of the internal political dynamics of nationalism. His powerful argument has important implications well beyond narrow regional studies: contrary to the common view, which depicts nationalism as a euphoria of patriotic ecstasy, Gagnon introduces the productive and suggestive concept of demobilization, by which nationalism operates as a political strategy to empty political space of concrete content and offer license to authoritarian regimes.”—Eric Gordy, author of The Culture of Power in Serbia: Nationalism and the Destruction of Alternatives

About the Author

V. P. Gagnon Jr. is Associate Professor of Politics at Ithaca College.

Table of Contents (.pdf)

Political Science / Europe
Slavic Studies
Race and Ethnicity Studies