2009 10 01 book reviews

This section provides review coverage of recent contributions to research into various aspects of ‘extremism and democracy’. We include shorter book notes (150-300 words) and as well as more substantial reviews (600-900 words) of books that are of particular interest to group members. In addition to providing a broad range of reviews the team also welcome suggestions for future book reviews (including your own) or ideas for review symposia. If you would like to review a title please contact the reviews editor: Sarah de Lange (Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute and University of Amsterdam, email: sarah.delange@eui.eu and s.l.delange@uva.nl). The current issue of e-Extremecontains reviews of the books listed bellow. Please click on the title of the book to directly navigate to the book review you are interested in.

Tore Bjørgo and John Horgan, Leaving Terrorism Behind: Individual and Collective Disengagement, Routledge, 2008, 328 pp., ISBN: 978-0-415-77668-4.

David D. Laitin, Nations, States, and Violence, Oxford University Press, 2007, 168 pp., ISBN 978-0199228232I.

Leigh A. Payne, Unsettling Accounts: Neither Truth nor Reconciliation in Confessions of State Violence, Duke University Press, 2007, 392 pp., ISBN 0-82234082-8 (pbk), 0-8223-4061-5 (hbk).

Tore Bjørgo and John Horgan, Leaving Terrorism Behind: Individual and Collective Disengagement, Routledge, 2008, 328 pp., ISBN: 978-0-415-77668-4.

Reviewed by Natasha Kingston (University of Bath)

Leaving Terrorism Behind is an edited volume which focuses on the understanding of both individual and group disengagement from terrorism. As editors, Bjørgo and Horgan are looking to fill the gap in the literature on terrorism; whilst there is a wealth of information available on the effort to prevent radicalisation which leads to terrorism the matter of disengagement and deradicalisation continues to be overlooked.

Based on empirical data concerning case studies in Italy, Northern Ireland and the Basque Country, Egypt, Norway, Sweden, Germany, Columbia, Yemen, a broader South East Asian case, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, the contributors are concerned about “the slow pace with which the academic terrorism studies community has engaged in research on how and why terrorism ends” (p. 17). Organised into three parts, the book opens with an introduction by the editors in which the motivation behind the project, as well as their aims and objectives for the volume, are outlined. Part One addresses the processes by which disengagement takes place, and it begins with some theoretical work written by both Horgan and Bjørgo, as well as Cronin’s fascinating insight into “what…scholars know about how terrorist movements end” (p. 49). The author employs a genuinely vast range of case studies, ranging from Chechen rebels to the Real Irish Republican Army, and the resulting portrait captures some of the vital questions at the core of the disengagement debate. This is followed by Della Porta’s sociological analysis of the Italian case (from the infamous Brigate Rosse to the lesserknown but nonetheless ruthless Brigada Lo Muscio). The author’s deliberation on the environmental opportunities, organisational dynamics, and the micro dynamics offer an original and intriguing snapshot of Italian terrorist disengagement, and make a legitimate contribution to the neglected section of the literature available on Italian terror.

Part Two offers an outline of disengagement programmes, ranging from the northern European case (i.e. Norway, Sweden and Germany), Columbia, and beyond.

The first chapter written by Bjørgo, Van Donselaar and Grunenberg is of particular note, as programmes for terrorism disengagement in Scandinavia and Germany (in terms of neo-Nazis and violence oriented right-wing extremists, p.135) were particularly ambitious and rather successful as an attempt was made to pay attention to “those youths who had already joined and become part of such groups, as if they were beyond relief” (p. 135). The conclusions drawn up by Bjørgo and Horgan summarise the editors’ own considerations on the debate, based on the case studies employed by all of the contributors, and offer the reader some final concepts and questions upon which to

reflect. This, along with the wealth of information offered by such a broad range of empirical data and case studies, make for a captivating read.

David D. Laitin, Nations, States, and Violence, Oxford University Press, 2007, 168 pp., ISBN 978-0199228232I.

Reviewed by Luis De La Calle (European University Institute)

David Laitin is one of the most outstanding scholars in the field of comparative politics.

Since his first book published in 1977, Laitin’s research enterprises have been extremely influential in setting the academic agenda on topics related to ethnicity, identity and violence. Always open to broadening his agenda, Laitin’s combination of encyclopaedic knowledge with the most innovative methods –such as game theory, statistics, experiments and field surveys- has yielded fruitful outcomes.

In his last book, Laitin attempts to reach the non-specialist reader with a general overview of his research on the cultural foundations of nations. As he discusses some of the topics related to nationalism most intrigue the public -such as the apparent emergence of new nations from the scratch or the supposed nationalist propensity to violence- the success of the book is almost granted. Still, it will be found wanting for academic audiences, because of three reasons. Firstly, the book almost completely misses the role of political power on the foundations of nations and culture. Secondly, the analysis of the link between violence and nationalism is simple and limited to civil wars. And finally, the policy implications Laitin lays out offer almost no policy guide to accommodate nationalism, since his liberal-democratic approach says nothing about the right jurisdiction to take decisions on cultural issues.

The book is open with a puzzle: if nationalism is so pernicious, why do we observe such a low level of nationalist violence? Despite of the public belief on the perils of nationalism, Laitin takes advantage of previous research co-authored with James Fearon on the determinants of civil war to rule out the influence of nationalism (in this case, ethnic fractionalization) on violence. According to them, the main predictors of civil war onset are state capacity -proxied by GDP per capita- and some particular ecological conditions –such as the existence of large mountainous terrain within the country. From this finding, Laitin contends that nationalism is not as destructive as people think. Still, Laitin’s conclusion runs faster than his findings. Firstly, he does not use alternative measures of ethnic fractionalization that have rendered more successful in showing the connection –see, for instance, Wilkinson and Chandra’s 2008 article on Comparative Political Studies. Secondly, some authors have shown that the number of

ethnic groups within a country does have an influence on the state propensity to make concessions. If the number is large, then the state will not concede and this will force these groups into violence. Finally, although there is large anecdotal evidence relating territorially-concentrated groups aiming to achieve political autonomy and violence (what Laitin calls the “sons-of-the-soil” mechanism), this link has not been properly tested yet.

The second section of the book looks at the cultural foundations of nations.

Largely motivated by the emergence of new “nations” in the former-soviet republics as well as in old “nation-state” European countries, Laitin wonders how nations could be born and die so quickly. To cope with this, “primordial” definitions of nations are no longer useful, since they would not allow for national switches. Laitin fills this gap with a new definition by which a nation is “a population with a coordinated set of beliefs about their cultural identities whose representatives claim ownership of a state for them by dint of that coordination” (p.40-41). There are two interesting things about this definition. On the one hand, nations have a cultural foundation: cultures contain the attributes that people use to interpret the circumstances of social life, but they also incorporate “common knowledge beliefs” about what is good and bad.

On the other hand, nations are about “coordination”. Due to communication costs, all members of a nation have a preference for having a unique common trait that favors group-identification and facilitates their exchanges. But sometimes several traits (languages) are available. When this happens, tipping models come into place, because the decision a particular individual takes on what language s/he will learn is related to the decisions the rest of group members have taken on the same decision. Thus, the more individuals have opted for one particular trait/language -out of individual motivations, such as economic gains and out-group desirability-, the less incentives the rest of members will have to opt for another trait/language. These tipping models explain well long periods of stability, but also sudden collapses and emergences of other national groups motivated by the decay of a language and its replacement by a more thriving one. The argument sounds correct as a heuristic device, but the examples Laitin draws on rarely fit the story. Thus, neither in Catalonia nor in the Baltic countries did non-natives started to study the local language out of individual motivations. In the two cases, a key omitted variable, state intervention, forced immigrants to learn the language in order to get full citizenship rights.

Finally, Laitin moves from findings to recommendations. In the absence of “natural” nation-states, the recipe for state longevity consists in setting up “multinational” institutions to accommodate internal demands for recognition. Laitin’s “liberal democratic” view to sub-state national accommodation assumes that the promotion of regional cultures (mainly language) must be supported as long as: (i) there is a majority of voters in the polity in favor; and (ii) the language is large enough as to make sense to recover it. However, it is plainly clear the problems this approach raises. Firstly, nonterritorially concentrated linguistic minorities would be unable to become protected.

Secondly, there are jurisdictional problems as well. What is the right polity to take compulsory decisions on language learning?

In brief, Laitin sketches his research agenda, but he does not go in-depth. Given the small size of the book, the interested reader will have to look up the original sources, where the author elaborates more carefully about all these points. Still, the book is worth reading, since it offers refreshing arguments as well as promising avenues for further research.

Leigh A. Payne, Unsettling Accounts: Neither Truth nor Reconciliation in Confessions of State Violence, Duke University Press, 2007, 392 pp., ISBN 0-82234082-8 (pbk), 0-8223-4061-5 (hbk).

Reviewed by Consuelo Cruz (Tufts University)

The body politic remembers. States and peoples build commemorative monuments and unfurl parades, aiming to engrave across historical time their triumphs and their losses.

They aim for epic scale -- recall the quaint bombast of a small town band -- as they confront the immeasurable. Who can fairly gauge the valor of doomed soldiers, or the stoic sacrifice of toiling founders? Large and heroic is an easier subject for memorializers than the intimate and hidden. It is clearer how the human spirit soars -and plunges -- on an open battlefield than in a secret cell. In the former setting, just to name one facilitating factor, survivors will likely tell competing stories of courage and brutality, dignity and horror. This is important because out of clashing narratives there typically emerge dominant accounts. In the secret cell, in contrast, an encounter of momentous importance to the body politic may well take place, but chances are that this encounter, covert for good reason, is to be confined to silence, the cradle of oblivion.

In the last decade, comparative politics and international relations scholars have addressed rigorously the politics of silence and voice, remembrance and forgetfulness.

They have identified the sources, specified the mechanisms, and traced the ramifications of memory construction. In the process, they have improved our understanding of the impact that changed conditions - most notably democratization can have on the chances of open contestation versus silence, and on the types of memories that endure or perish. At the cutting edge of scholarship, not surprisingly, we find some of the most exciting work, among them is Leigh Payne’sUnsettling Accounts.

This book covers the critical cases of Brazil, South Africa, Chile and Argentina, focusing on confessions by perpetrators of intimate and hidden forms of state violence; torture, murder and disappearances. The book’s many valuable contributions include a typology of such confessions and a dynamic analysis of their reverberations through the public sphere. But the book’s outstanding contribution is its successful attempt to situate these

confessions in the context of deliberative democracy. Politicians, civil society groups, and theorists of democracy remain at odds about how best to deal with abuses perpetrated by defunct authoritarian states in divided societies. On one side stand the (apparent) majority who worry that acrimonious debates will erode democratic speech and undermine political stability. On the other stand those (a minority it seems) who advocate conflict resolution through truth. The dilemma is often treated as insoluble. But in a turn at once creative and pragmatic, Payne forges a third way which she terms “contentious coexistence�; a pro-democratic solution that hinges on the airing of competing view points. The good news for young democracies is that this is a public sphere solution that does not require elaborate institutions. The bad news is that its non-institutional character may not be sustainable over the long run. But to the latter, Payne might reply, justly, that where the truth lies is in its contestation.