There are many dimensions to ethnic conflict. However, none is as potentially dangerous and insidious as one side’s dehumanization of the other. One needs look no further than the current situation in Kosovo to see how true this can be. The Albanians, who are a minority on the Serb province, are now being turned against by the Serbs who possibly see them as parasites, and as a threat to their realization of a Greater Serbia.

 

          The dehumanization of a particular people is very problematic, as this is often what, a priori, lie at the core of the conflict. Dehumanization, like stereotypes, needs to be dispelled in order that a free “marketplace of ideas” where a supply and demand of free ideas can be generated. This is the crux of the essay, Nationalism and the Marketplace of ideas, written by Jack Snyder and Karen Ballantyne.

 

The authors in their essay use a number of business metaphors -- supply, demand, and marketplace -- all to describe the type of situation that often results in any political system that uses the media. They then describe two particular cases -- that of the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, illustrating the extent to which an unbalanced marketplace of ideas contributed to these two countries degeneration to genocide.

 

          However, they also attempt to shed some light on the ideal type of political system, as exemplified in Great Britain after the Industrial Revolution, when Britain did not qualify as a political democracy, per se, but displayed vestiges of democracy.

 

From the outset, the authors concede that “media manipulation often plays a central role in promoting nationalist and ethnic conflict”[1]. However, they go on to argue that the danger arises when one promotes “unconditional freedom of public debate”. This, they feel, is often likely to “make the problem worse”[2], because in such a situation, “the state and other elites are forced to engage in public debate in order to compete for mass allies in the struggle for power”[3].

 

          As a consequence, this engagement in debate impels these elites to “play the nationalist card.”[4] The authors imply that when this type of situation arises in a society beset by fragmentary politics, the situation can be disastrous. The struggle for power, however, can be placed at an even keel only when “increased debate in the political marketplace” takes place. With increased debate, better outcomes result when there are “mechanisms to correct market imperfections.”[5]

 

          That said, how does one identify the marketplace? According to Snyder and Ballentine, the marketplace consists of “journalists and policy experts”[6], whereas the market institutions are “the media, analytical institutions, and the laws regulating them.”[7], who all vie to play a role in what the authors consider to be the law of supply and demand.

 

          Although this article does not have anything to do with the economics of Rwanda, per se, it does help provide an insight into the concepts used by the authors. Their notion of the law of supply and demand is pertinent in that they describe the "marketplace of ideas" as "based on the description of economic markets provided by standard economic analysis"[8]. They continue that "the structure of the market consists of the degree of concentration of supply, the degree of segmentation of demand, and the strength of institutions regulating market interactions, including those that provide information or regulate advertising."[9]

 

          While all this may appear to be confusing, I think what the authors are trying to maintain is that in each country, no matter what type of political institution it is, a "marketplace of ideas" exists. In that marketplace -- be it in the former Yugoslavia or Rwanda -- the marketplace, no matter how segmented, has a structure. In order to insure that the structure remains intact, there needs to be a good, balanced interaction between the market institutions and the providers of the information in that market.

 

          Another factor that militates against a well-balanced marketplace of ideas, is nationalist mythmaking. To this, the authors argue that “recent incarnations of this phenomenon{of mythmaking} ...include the Hutu ‘hate radio’stations that encouraged genocide against Rwanda’s Tutsi minority, as well as President Slobodan Milosevic’s use of the television monopoly to foster an embattled, surly mentality among Serbs”[10]

 

          Whilst the authors argue that it was television monopoly that contributed to the Serb’s increasing nationalism, they believe that propaganda in the marketplace plays an equally important role in engendering hatred and disequilibrium : “...propaganda is most effective when it taps into the audience’s predispositions when it can link a new idea to attitudes that the audience already holds.”[11]  Thus, they argue, Milosevic was successful because he was able to “mobilize Serbian ethnic sentiment” through “his monopoly over Belgrade television.”[12]

 

          In the case of Rwanda, they contend that it was the officials of President Juvenal Habyarimana’s regime who, “feeling their power endangered, used their monopoly control of mass media and university appointments to create a ‘finely tuned propaganda machine’ that played on Hutu fears of the former Tutsi elite...”[13]

 

          In this respect, the media -- particularly Radio Television Milles Collines -- and radio stations, played an instrumental role in inciting the genocide: “all sources agree that the hate broadcasts played a significant role in the second phase of the killing, after the initial militia sweeps.”[14]

 

          In the final analysis, the authors propose their prescriptions for an integrated marketplace of ideas.

 

          They argue that on the supply side, “the international community may be needed to help break up information monopolies, especially in states with very weak journalistic traditions and a weak, civil society.”[15]

 

          On the demand side, “ethnically segmented markets should be counteracted by the promotion of civic-territorial conceptions of national identity...”[16] In other words, markets that have ethnic problems, ought to have their subsidies directed towards improving the “journalistic quality”[17] rather than paving it into the country -- irrespective of the way it deals with its minorities.

 

          They conclude that “if these conditions do not exist, they need to be created before, or at least along with, the unfettering of speech and political participation.”[18]

 

MY THOUGHTS

 

In my opinion, this article is an interesting one, worthy of further analysis. While heavy with the jargon of supply, demand, inter alia, the analysis of the article can be made more difficult than it is.

 

          Nevertheless, I believe that the author’s do have a point in the theories they are advancing. What I understand from the source is that first of all, it is possible to apply the business terminology -- ie supply, demand, marketplace -- to nationalism. The very fact that the title is called “Nationalism and the Marketplace” does help give one an idea of what the article will focus on.

 

          The authors, in my opinion, do a good job of trying to present the information by consistently applying supply, demand, marketplace and segmentation to the ideas of nationalism. They then attempt to illustrate this interaction between the above factors by showing case studies, such as the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.

 

          These two countries are important in the context as they are two particular cases where (a) democracies broke down, (b) nationalism was heightened, and most dangerously, the intensification of mythmaking took place -- as exemplified by extreme nationalism based on so-called “ancient hatreds”.

 

ekb/pol212-4.rtf/winword6-95/w:1205:3