Pandaemonium: Ethnicity in International Politics

Rating:
Summary: Flawed book on important subject
Review: The idea behind this book is a good one: Moynihan attempts to bring light to the ethnic troubles that plagued the world at the time of publication in the early 1990s (which seem to have become even more acute now) by delving into some of the origins of this problem. He essentially focuses on two themes: ethnicity, ethnic identity and the persistence and predominance of ethnic loyalties (as opposed to class loyalties); and national self-determination, particularly how to define this term and the international legal conundrums this concept has caused since it first became a part of mainstream political parlance about a century ago. In its initial sections, the book does succeed in shedding some light on the role of ethnicity and self-determination in the political history of the last hundred or so years, and how essential they have been to international relations, even if often ingored by mainstream scholarship-especially during the cold war-which tended to focus almost exclusively on ideology and political "realism" a la Henry Kissenger (which, as Moynihan points out, was far from realistic). Perhaps the best thing about this book is that is offers a good introduction to the problems of ethnicity in international politics, and provides an excellent reference list of sources for further reading on the subject. As an introduction, however, it suffers from being superficial at times. At times it seems as though Moynihan implicitly accepts the "primordial" thesis on ethnicity and nationalism, for he cites without critical commentary the all-too-common lament of many journalists and other armchair experts who bewail the "ancient ethnic hatreds" burning in some remote corners of the world. He doesn't really look into the fact that ethnicity politics and the ensuing nationalism tend to be the product of contemporary political agitation which often have little to do with historical fact. Although he mentions the general multiethnic harmony of certain pre-nationalist communities, e.g. in Central Europe, he doesn't really go anywhere with this. This the general fault of this book: its disjointed approach. At times Moynihan goes into excessive detail on certain examples while skimming over other cases. In addition, the text is riddled with extensive quotations (some as long as two to three pages) of other works or his own previous works on this subject. Since the book was based on a lecture delivered at Oxford in 1991, I can only assume that he rather hurriedly adapted the text for publication. This is unfortunate, for this could have been a really top-notch work on a very important subject.