Power and Progress: International Politics in Transition by Jack Snyder

Author:Jack Snyder [Snyder, Jack]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: International Relations, Political Science, General, History & Theory
ISBN: 9781136467684
Google: pNrFBQAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 17543085
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2012-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Market forces that promote nationalist mythmaking

In summary, under conditions of incipient democratization, the increased openness of public debate often fosters nationalist mythmaking and ethnic conflict because opportunistic governmental and non-governmental elites exploit partial monopolies of supply, segmented demand, and the weakness of regulatory institutions in the marketplace of ideas. We argue that the greater these market imperfections (that is, the greater the rivalry between oligopolistic elites, the greater the consumer segmentation, and the more dependent and partisan are media institutions), then the greater the likelihood for nationalist mythmaking to dominate public discourse, and the greater the likelihood for mythmaking to promote conflict. Conversely, the more perfect the marketplace and the more integrated the public sphere, the less effective is nationalist mythmaking. These hypotheses are probabilistic, not invariant relationships or sufficient causes. This [chapter] does not present a systematic test of all these propositions. As a first step toward evaluating them, however, we examine two hard cases, Yugoslavia and Rwanda, which are often invoked on behalf of the conventional wisdom that governments are largely responsible for nationalist mythmaking and that unconditional free speech is the best antidote.

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