This section includes book reviews of 600-900 words, as well as some book notes of 100-200 words, on books of particular interest to the members of our group. If members either have a review that they consider of interest to the SG, or a recent book of their own, which they would like to see reviewed in the newsletter, please contact Cas Mudde at: c.mudde@ed.ac.uk.
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Karl Cordell (ed.), Ethnicity and Democratisation in the New Europe, London: Routledge 1999, GBP 50.00, ISBN 0-415-17311-6 (hbk), GBP 16.99, ISBN 0-415-17312-4 (pbk).
Reviewed by Stefan Wolff (University of Bath) The topic Cordell and his contributors are addressing is, sadly, a very timely one. International politics over the past decade has been dominated by issues of inter-ethnic relations and ethnopolitical conflict, and, unfortunately, it seems unlikely that this will change in the near future. The book will therefore maintain its relevance in the years to come. This is particularly the case for the first part where, in six chapters, a framework is outlined that helps the reader to conceptualise some of the key issues in the debate on ethnicity and democratisation. In his introductory chapter, Cordell outlines the aims and objectives of the volume and provides a brief, but sound analysis of the background against which the book is set the rise of ethnicity as a mobilising force in the political processes of democratising countries in Central and Eastern Europe, and indeed in Western Europe, too. As is always the case with introductions to edited volumes, they cannot raise all the issues or answer all the questions, and Cordell does not pretend he can, quickly leaving the field to Jeff Richards (Ethnicity and democracy complementary or incompatible concepts?), Philip Payton (Ethnicity in Western Europe today), Chris Gilligan (Citizenhsip, ethnicity and democratisation after the collapse of left and right), Adam Burgess (Critical reflections on the return of national minority rights regulation to East/West European affairs), and David Chandler (The OSCE and the internationalisation of national minority rights). Overall, these five chapters offer interesting perspectives on their chosen subjects, yet the quality with which they do this differs. For example, it seems a rather gross oversimplification when Richards claims that the Second World War "was caused over the Sudetenland, Danzig and the Polish corridor with Hitler seeking to add lost territory and ethnic [Germans] to the German Reich " (p. 19). Burgess provides an excellent account of the double standards that have plagued Western imposition and supervision of minority rights regimes in the inter-war and post-1990 periods, yet he fails to at least wonder whether the fact that "the apocalyptic anticipations of Eurogeddon, upon which the necessity for international supervision of minority treatment was based, proved to be false" (p. 55) was not in part also due to the fact that the situation of minorities in Central and Eastern Europe has become part of the European/international agenda. Chandler, similarly critical of the Western approach to perceived minority problems in the East, analyses in detail the role and (lack of) accomplishments of the OSCE in this process, and concludes that "underneath the veneer of commitment, there is little political will to act when this means upsetting the delicate political status quo in the east or questioning the sovereignty of states in the west" (p. 71-2). This point is well made, and the few exceptions upon which one could challenge Chandler prove the rule rather than anything else. Part two of the book presents ten case studies covering Europe from its southeastern corner (Montserrat Guibernau on Catalan nationalism) to Eurasian Central Asia (Stuart Horsman on the Tajik minority in Uzbekistan). In general, the quality of these case studies is very high both in their descriptive and analytical features. They all offer good empirical material, exemplifying the more theoretical points made in part one. The only critical point one could raise is that the inclusion of Austria (Boris Jesih on the countrys Slovene minority) and even more so of the new ethnic minorities in contemporary
Germany (Sandra Schmidt) does not really fit into the concept of democratisation as regards the time frame considered in each chapter, as both authors mainly deal with periods well after both countries went through their post-war democratisation processes. However, excluding these two case studies on these grounds would have meant to deprive the reader of a very interesting analysis of Austrian minority policy and of a fairly accurate, yet inevitably short, examination of German immigration policy and its underlying motivations. The same holds true for the inclusion of a non-European case, namely Horsmans discussion of the Tajik minority in Uzbekistan. To some extent, the case studies may already be, or soon will become, outdated as they have been overtaken by events on the ground. Yet, their contribution to the overall value of this book is neither comprehensive treatment of specific cases nor delivery of up-to-date empirical material. Rather, it is that they illustrate for the reader that, while the issues often appear to be very different on the surface, the fundamental problems that they exemplify are mostly the same. To echo Cordell in his conclusion, the hope that this volume has made a positive contribution to the contemporary debate on the issues it has sought to address (p. 215) has materialised.
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Judith Devlin, Slavophiles and Commissars: Enemies of Democracy in Modern Russia. Houndmills: Macmillan/New York: St. Martins 1999, 318 pp., GBP 50.00 (hbk), ISBN 0-333-69933-5.
Reviewed by Stephen D. Shenfield This study of Russian nationalist thought and politics covers a span of exactly a decade, from the onset of perestroika in 1986 until the presidential elections of 1996. The book is divided into two parts, entitled respectively Ideasand Politics. The first part consists of three chapters: one on the revival of Russian nationalist ideas within the cultural intelligentsia in the late 1980s, one on the neo-fascist wing of the Russian nationalist movement, and one on the relationship between Russian nationalism and Christian Orthodoxy. The second part analyses in successive chapters a series of important developments in highlevel Russian politics through which the nationalist opposition (or oppositions) evolved: the process leading up to the attempted coup of August 1991, the formation of the National Salvation Front, the rise and decline of Zhirinovsky, the crystallisation of Zyuganovs nationalist communism, and the parliamentary and presidential elections of 1995-96. A great deal of thought and effort has gone into this book. The author presents much valuable information and makes many acute observations and perceptive judgements about Russian politics. She demonstrates the basic continuity between Russian nationalist politics under Gorbachev and in the early post-Soviet period. She also highlights the divisions and weaknesses of the Russian nationalists, and points out the practical irrelevance of their ideas to the real problems facing Russia today. At the same time, she cogently argues that the weakness of the nationalist opposition should not be taken as implying the strength of democracy in Weimar Russia. It would have been interesting if she had pursued this line of thought further, but that would have taken her beyond the parameters of her study. One gets from the book a somewhat better idea of what the various Russian nationalist tendencies have in common than of what divides them from one another. (This remark applies to the treatment of the mainstream tendencies rather than to that of the most extreme and fascist groups.) The differences between the left nationalism of the communists and national-bolsheviks on the one hand and the liberal (in economic if not political terms) nationalism of the LDPR on the other would have been more clearly brought out had the author paid more attention to economic issues. The economic dimension helps to explain the difficulty that the nationalists have in uniting. In the period studied by the author, left nationalism was the most salient variety, so it is natural that her main focus should be upon it. As we now
know, however, the liberal variety was to prove no less important. From a long-term perspective, the slavophile businessman may be even more worthy of scrutiny than the slavophile commissar. The author might be criticised for dealing a little too cursorily with certain other phenomena that have played important roles in the development of post-Soviet Russian nationalism: for instance, the neoCossack revival movement, the issue of Russians in the near abroad, and relations between Russians and non-Russians in the Russian Federation itself. Another deficiency is the lack of any discussion of dissident and semi-official Russian nationalism in the two decades preceding perestroika: the reader is left with the unfortunate impression that the Russian nationalist movement emerged in 1986 out of nowhere. It is a great pity that a manuscript evidently completed in 1996 should appear in print as late as 1999 (although Macmillan is notorious for such feats of sloth). It is not just that recent developments are left out of account. Since 1996 many valuable new sources on Russian politics have become available to the researcher, including a burgeoning array of internet sites, surveys of the regional press, and the impressive series of reference and analytical volumes put out by the Information-Expert Group Panorama. Use of the new sources makes possible a richer, deeper, and less Moscow-centric account of Russian nationalism than this author was able to provide.
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Jean Hardisty, Mobilizing Resentment. Conservative Resurgence from the John Birch Society to the Promise Keepers Boston: Beacon Press, 1999, 297 pp., ÂŁ 25.00 (hbk), ISBN 0-8070-4316-8.
Reviewed by Martin Durham ( University of Wolverhampton) Studies of the American right, whether they know it or not, have examined three different groupings. The first, and easily the most significant, is the conservative movement, typified by such publications as National Review and such politicians as Barry Goldwater and Newt Gingrich. Sometimes described as if it was synonymous with one of its more recent components, the Christian Right, American conservatism actually encompasses social conservatives, economic conservatives and libertarians in a broad unity which more than once has seemed in danger of coming apart. If much attention has been given to what can be usefully described as the mainstream right, there has also been much written on the white supremacist and anti-Semitic right. Exemplified by such organisations as Aryan Nations and the National Alliance, this constellation of often highly minuscule groups has all too often been collapsed together with a third strand. Lying between the mainstream and the extreme is a more difficult to demarcate grouping which shares the extreme rights conspiracism but not its racism. The subject of much comment in the sixties during the heyday of its best-known component, the John Birch Society, the radical rights most important manifestation in recent years has been a large section (but not the whole) of the militia movement. Not only are the mainstream, extreme and radical right to be distinguished, but, as we have already seen with the first grouping, within each strand there are further sub-groupings. Jean Hardistys book represents a valuable contribution to exploring a number of aspects of this complex milieu. The overtly extreme right is not her concern. Instead, her focus is on the mainstream right which, she argues, has exploited racial resentments and demonised sexual minorities. A new racism, which opposes anti-racist measures as violations of a colour-blind equality of opportunity, has become extremely powerful while some, such as the libertarian Charles Murray, have sought to revive the pernicious myths of racial differences in intelligence. The most important form of conservatism in recent years, the Christian Right, has been particularly active both in anti-feminism and opposition to gay rights but other anti-feminists have emerged in such organisations as the Independent Women's Forum and the Women's Freedom Network.
While Hardisty is interesting in a number of areas her most distinct contribution is in drawing attention to the importance of libertarianism. Just as the Womens Freedom Network argues within a libertarian framework, so too do the advocates of what has come to be called paleo-libertarianism. This grouping, which sees itself as championing individual freedom and community autonomy against the assaults of the liberal state, has found allies among so-called paleoconservatives who decry not only multiculturalism at home but American involvement overseas, a stance most associated with the recurring bids for election to the Presidency launched by Pat Buchanan. Libertarianism wields an influence too among the ferociously anti-statist footsoldiers of the militias. Covering as much ground as she does, much remains unsaid, and both her last point and some others (for instance her observation that, after a long period of decline, the John Birch Society has in recent years enjoyed an upturn in its fortunes) deserve to be discussed in greater detail elsewhere. But if some elements of the account would benefit from elaboration, others are open to challenge. Is the Christian Right, as she suggests, to be seen as the dominant mode of conservatism, when both its legislative record and its ability to find a presidential candidate who shares its aspirations have proved so unimpressive? Is the notion of a new racism, which in Britain or France has been applied to an argument which claims not to believe in white supremacy but in irreducible difference, useful to the conservative claim that only merit should decide outcomes? And is it helpful to extend the boundaries of paleoconservatism, a specific grouping within the broader conservative movement, beyond figures such as Buchanan or publications such as the monthly magazine Chronicles into other sections of the right, so that the term encompasses the libertarian Charles Murray, the mainstream right talk-show host Rush Limbaugh and the anti-abortion black conservative Alan Keyes? This hesitancy about drawing too many under the paleoconservative canopy links to a final point. For Hardisty, the mainstream right is itself extreme. It is an argument that can be found in a number of other recent discussions of the American right - and for a Standing Group on Extremism and Democracy how we can best apply such a term may be the most important question of all.
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Kate Hudson, European Communism since 1989. Towards a New European Left?, Houndmills/Basingstoke: Macmillan 2000, 256 pp., ÂŁ 45.00 (hbk), ISBN 0-333-77342-X.
Reviewed by Cyrille Guiat (Heriot-Watt University) Kate Hudsons very detailed and informative comparative study of communist and postcommunist parties in Europe is both ambitious in its coverage and stimulating in its central argument. The book is organised in three main parts. Part I, The Long Evolution of the European Left, is in fact an historical overview of the left in Western and Eastern Europe prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Part II, The Recomposition of the West European Left since 1989, retraces the recent fortunes of the French Communist Party (PCF), the Party of Communist Refoundation (PRC, Italy), The United Left (IU, Spain), and the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS, Germany). Part III, Postcommunists in Power in Central and Eastern Europe, includes a comparative chapter on the former Soviet bloc and four case studies on Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Poland. The authors main contention (see in particular the Introduction) is that, contrary to many predictions on the seemingly inevitable demise of Communist parties after the collapse of really existing socialism in 1989/1991, many Communist parties and their left wing successors (e.g. splinter parties that did not become social democratic parties, such as the PRC in Italy) have not only survived, but have also undergone successful metamorphosis. The result of this rapid process of change is the emergence of a New European Left: "This can be defined as a converging political current of communist parties, former communist parties and other parties to the left of social democracy, which (...) are playing an increasingly
pivotal role in the politics of a series of European states" (p. 6). To add weight to her argument, Hudson shows that these parties have started to build strong international ties with each other, with an EP grouping founded in 1994 (the United European Left-Nordic Green Left) and the New European Left Forum, founded in 1991. In her various case studies, Hudson provides a useful if very descriptive wealth of details on the complex, recent histories of these parties, emphasising their many internal conflicts and contradictions which have resulted in numerous schisms. Whilst the argument made by Hudson is refreshing in some cases, a number of her contentions are highly debatable, not least because of the noticeable, ideological bias which undermines the whole book. Thus, the overview of European history since 1945 portrays the Soviet Union in a rather questionable fashion: "the Soviet Union bore the brunt of the war with Nazi Germany and succeeded in defeating it" (p. 22); "The original aim of the Soviet Union was not to establish communist regimes in Eastern Europe" (p. 36). On the other hand, the USA are depicted as being solely responsible for the onslaught of the Cold War and the partition of Europe, as well as for the ultimate demise of the Soviet Union forty years later. Similarly, many would question the claims that the Soviet Union "subsidised" the Eastern bloc, which was substantially different from the US imposed "capitalist colonialism" which prevailed in Western Europe (p. 37), or that the former Soviet Union was "an egalitarian society" before 1991 (p. 58)! In a few words, the book suggests that capitalism and its chief exponents (the US, the IMF, the World Bank and so on) are the primary cause of, inter alia, the demise of the Soviet bloc and the catastrophic economic situation faced by the CEECs since the early 1990s, which in turn led to the electoral re-emergence of postcommunist parties in those countries: "what was commenced after 1989 was so damaging for so many people, that they have begun to do something about it" (p. 15)... Leaving the evident Marxist-Leninist bias aside, Hudsons book leaves many crucial questions virtually unaddressed, most importantly that of the definition, in ideological and organisational terms, of the "New European Left". Thus, the author writes of the Spanish United Left (IU) that it is a model for the left in Europe, because it is "anti-capitalist and green and socially progressive, united and pluralistic, realistic yet principled" (p. 125). In many other places, we read that these parties define themselves as "democratic socialist" forces. One is tempted to ask what they stand for? What is democratic socialism? These stimulating interrogations remain largely unanswered, as does the crucial issue of the organisation of these parties, and especially how problematic was, in many cases, the jettisoning of the Leninist legacy of democratic centralism. In fact, it is possible to argue against Hudson and propose that most of these parties remain very fragile political forces, especially in Western Europe. After seventy years of ideological guidance and organisational monolithism, in 1991 they unexpectedly faced a situation where they had to change rapidly or disappear from mainstream politics. Most have achieved the former by adopting an ideological mixture reminiscent of their old dogmas, to which they have added environmental politics, anti-Maastricht and anti-globalisation feelings and societal issues such as gay and minority rights, as in the case of the French Communist Party. What Hudson overlooks is the fact that nearly all have suffered considerable weakening in organisational terms, partly because of their Leninist legacy, which meant that internal democracy and discussion was unknown to them in the early 1990s. This resulted in the many schisms experienced by all the parties studied by Hudson, and would suggest that a rather bleak future lies ahead for them.
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Christian Joppke, Immigration and the Nation-State. The United States, Germany, and Great Britain, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999, 356 pp., ÂŁ 16.99, ISBN 0-19-829540-5 (pbk).
Reviewed by Ruud Koopmans (Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin fĂźr Sozialforschung)
In Immigration and the Nation-State Christian Joppke critically examines the postnationalist thesis that processes of globalisation and transnationalisation have fundamentally undermined the nation-state as the central unit of political organisation, by comparing post-war immigration politics in the United States (a classical immigration country), Germany (a prime example of the guestworker model of immigration), and Great Britain (an example of postcolonial immigration). Joppkes analysis is not built on new empirical material apart from some sparsely used interview material but he does display an admirable mastery of the relevant literature and published source material while keeping the larger picture in mind, which has often been overlooked in case studies. The book consists of two parts, the first dealing with immigration and sovereignty, the second with migrant integration and (multicultural) citizenship. The books greatest strengths clearly lie in the first part, where Joppke convincingly shows how expansive immigration in the United States and Germany was not a result of these states loss of sovereignty as a result of the encroachment of postnational rights and discourses, but of domestic pressures by business, ethnic, and other interests, as well as constitutional individual rights that were enforced by an independent and strong judiciary. Great Britain, with its powerful administration, lack of a constitutional tradition and a generally weak judiciary serves as a powerful counterexample here. Contrary to its liberal race relations regime for those migrants who are already there, Britain has been remarkably successful in enforcing a restrictive immigration regime that has kept immigration and asylum-seeking well below the Western European average. By distinguishing the immigration and integration policy fields, Joppke avoids the blurring of these distinct fields that pervades much of the scientific literature and public debate. Liberal immigration rights and policies may well co-exist with restrictive integration policies that deny migrants access to the political community (see Germany), and vice versa liberal access to citizenship for migrants and their descendants may coincide with pretty effective zero immigration policies (see Great Britain). In doing so, he offers a welcome relativisation of Britains often all-too rosy self-acclaimed reputation as the European champion of liberal immigration and race relations politics, and Germanys sometimes undeserved reputation as particularly exclusive and restrictive with regard to immigrants. The second part of the book, which deals with integration politics, is less convincing. While the first part is guided by a clear theoretical argument against the postnational relativisation of the nation-state, the second part does not rise much above case description, which moreover is not always accurate. In his introduction to the second part, Joppke claims that, regarding integration and citizenship, "one cannot say more about it than what one finds in specific contexts and constellations" (p. 142). The only strong generalisation to be made would be that "(a)ll three [nations] have been instances of multicultural integration, which shuns the assimilation of immigrants" (p. 146). Here Joppke first misses the important impacts of access to citizenship on migrants integration and identities. Germanys regime of foreigners rights may not be as restrictive as is often claimed, but due to the difficult access to citizenship which has only recently been liberalised most migrants and their German-born descendants have legally remained foreigners and have as a consequence also retained strong homeland-oriented identities. In the United States and Britain, by contrast, special alien legislation applies to only a small part of (recent, first-generation) migrants, while the majority have legally and symbolically become citizens entitled to full equality. Moreover, thus far,multicultural issues such as equal representation of minorities in politics or the police force, or the role of Islam in the educational system long on the agenda in countries such as Britain or the Netherlands have hardly begun to command attention in Germany as a result of the simple fact that there are still very few German nationals with a different cultural background who could claim such a full cultural equality. Therefore, the use of the term multicultural citizenship in the case of Germany is for the moment a clear misnomer, at least if this is to mean anything more than the mere symbolic usage of the term as a form of tolerance for other cultures. As Joppke himself admits, "German multiculturalism has rarely been more than rhetoric". By contrast, Joppke is eager to point out the limitations of British multiculturalism and anti-discrimination policies, for instance calling the 1965 Race Relations Act "narrow in scope" (p. 228). This may not be incorrect compared to later British legislation and to more far-reaching forms of multiculturalism, but still offers more than German ethnic minorities (with the notable exception of Jews) have so far been able to achieve.
A final limitation of the book is that it is very much a study of top-down immigration and integration politics. We learn much about formal legislation, policies, and the role played by institutions and elite actors, but little about interventions from below, both by migrants themselves, and by extreme right and xenophobic groups. Given their increasingly important role in the immigration field, these collective actors deserved more attention. A thorough analysis of this bottom-up dimension of immigration and integration politics would however have been a topic for a monograph of its own. By offering what he does, especially in putting the nation-state and national institutional arrangements firmly back on the agenda, Joppkes study makes a welcome and important enough contribution to ongoing debates to deserve a wide readership.
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Yves Mény and Yves Surel, Par le peuple, pour le peuple. Le populisme et les démocraties, Paris: Fayard, 2000, 326 pp., ISBN 2213-60077-5.
Reviewed by Hanspeter Kriesi (University of Geneva) This is a very interesting book, which takes the contemporary phenomenon of populism seriously and puts it in a wider perspective. As the recent debate about the access to power of Haiders party in Austria has shown, there is widespread confusion about this phenomenon. Observers readily denounce as populist movements those which they dislike politically. Europes reaction to the Austrian events illustrates the intellectual poverty of such a position. This book serves as an antidote to such strategically motivated reactions and provides conceptual tools for a more circumspect approach to populism. It has the form of an extended essay. As such it is not always as systematic as one might have wished, but always very stimulating and wide-ranging in its perspective. The authors starting point is an analysis of the ambiguities of representative democracy, which provides the key to their understanding of the populist phenomenon. There exists a tension in contemporary liberal democracies between the (radical) democratic principle that insists on the peoples power, and the (moderating) liberal principle, which privileges division of power and checks and balances. This tension corresponds to a tension between populism (a democratic appeal to the people) and constitutionalism (a liberal appeal to the rule of law). They note that the liberal principle has been gaining weight over the past years, to the detriment of the democratic principle. The democratic control of the political process and politics in general have been losing ground to the markets, the constitutional courts and other kinds of independent regulatory bodies such as the central banks and all kinds of quangos and self-regulating bodies. If these new regulatory modes have certain qualities, they lack democratic legitimation. As a result, the current mode of functioning of contemporary representative democracy is far removed from the ideal of (direct) government by the people. Mény and Surel go on to identify general trends, which have contributed to the recent development of populism in Western Europe: the erosion of the traditional system of intermediation, and most notably of the political parties, the growing personalisation of power and the increasing weight of the media and, in particular of "videopolitics". They then present a more detailed conceptualisation of "populism". The core of the populist ideology has, according to Mény and Surel, three elements: a) the people constitute the foundation of the community, b) its superior legitimacy is flouted by some actors or processes, which have to be denounced, and c) the peoples place in society has to be re-established. The term "people", however, refers to different notions, it is indeterminate. The authors identify at least three conceptions of the term: a political, economical and cultural one: the people as sovereign, the people as a class, and the people as a nation. One of the originalities of populism is precisely its tendency to play with the ambiguity of the term "people": populisms meaning varies with the understanding given to the "imagined community", i.e. the people, to which it applies. This is also the reason why there is a populism on the left, just as there is a populism on the right.
In their search for the macro-sociological basis of contemporary populism, the authors find it difficult to identify the cleavage(s) which correspond(s) to its rise. As far as its political form is concerned, the authors insist on the hybrid character of populist parties: at one and the same time they are part of the system and denounce its functioning; moreover, they remind us constantly of the primacy of the people against the established elites, but maintain that they are capable of authentically representing the people. The authors speculate that the prime function of populist parties is to maintain marginalised social groups inside (or, more precisely, at the margins) of the political system. They generally attribute to populist parties the "tribunal" function, which Georges Lavau attributed to the French communist party in the sixties: the communists allowed the plebeians anger to be represented within the political system. Finally, two factors facilitate the development of populist parties: a) a new elite, and especially a charismatic leader, taking control of a party and allowing it to federate organisations which previously competed with each other, and, above all, b) a crisis of the political system which accelerates the recomposition of existing alliances. In their conclusion, the authors turn against an interpretation of populism which reduces it to a residual phenomenon. They insist that populism is an ideology in its own right, even if it is rather simple-minded and vague. As an appeal to the people, populism serves as a constant reminder that, in a democratic system, the people cannot be neglected by its leaders. If the populist leaders are often pathetic, their popular base expresses real anguish and grief, which cannot be ignored. What constitutes the specificity of contemporary populism is its definition of the community in question, its criteria of inclusion and exclusion, which are clearly linked to nationalism. If populism is a constant in democratic societies, its current mobilisation by the radical right seems to be a conjunctural phenomenon. Contemporary populism, so the authors claim, may be beneficial not for the solutions it proposes, but for the problems it signalises. Its solution of a communitarian withdrawal does not meet any of the challenges of globalisation. But the question it poses is vital: how to restitute to democracy what has tended to escape its grasp over the last twenty years under the double pressure of the market and globalisation? On the global level, the "people" as the mythical point of reference of democracy still awaits its construction. If we reject the tribal populism, we have to contribute to the construction of a global citizenship, a cosmopolitan democracy. The question is, whether this quest for a cosmopolitan democracy is in any way realistic given the populist dynamics in contemporary democracies, which, as the authors argue, reach far beyond the populist parties in the narrower sense of the term.
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Cas Mudde, The Ideology of the Extreme Right, Manchester; New York: Manchester University Press, 2000, 212 pp., GBP 40.00 (hbk), ISBN 0-7190-5793-0.
Reviewed by Roger Griffin (Oxford Brookes University) It is heartening to find someone prepared to take a machete to the thick academic verbiage whose tendrils threaten to choke the concept extreme right, and a pair of secateurs to the abundant ideological shoots propagated by parties associated with the term as a way of giving it a new lease of life. Having taken stock of the debate up till the late 1990s Cas Mudde sets up the hypothesis of a family of extreme right political parties whose affinity is discernible above all in a common core ideology. He then presents five thoroughly researched case studies: the German Republikaner, the Deutsche Volksunion, the Belgian Vlaams Blok, the Dutch Centrumdemocraten andCentrumpartij 86. The concluding chapter argues that on the basis of what has emerged, the ideological DNA which conditions membership of the family of extreme right parties is made up of four genes: nationalism, welfare-chauvinism, xenophobia and a strong stand on law and order.
The fruits of Muddes pruning do not end there. From his analysis emerge two important sub-groups of extreme right party, ethnic nationalist and state nationalist, and the provisional but important inference that some parties widely associated with the extreme right (e.g. the Scandinavian Progress Parties) are more properly seen as neo-conservative. Two appendices, offering a list of extreme right parties in Western Europe and an extensive bibliography, enhance the value of the book to any serious student of right-wing challenges to modern democracy. Suddenly the concept extreme right seems viable again, at least in a parliamentary context. It is identified with a genus of politics recognisable by an electoral platform, which it does not require an MA in sociology, economics or postmodernism to understand. The triffid has become a house plant. Certainly it makes a pleasant change to encounter a study of extreme right parties which puts some living ideological flesh on the abstract structural skeleton to which they are stripped by most books on the subject. Moreover, Mudde is to be congratulated on providing such a lucid summary of the rival taxonomies, and on wielding Occams razor so effectively that he reduces to a mere four the definitional components of the extreme right-wing party, thus avoiding the cumbersome shopping-lists of features on which the cogency of other approaches has all too often hinged. The elimination of anti-democracy from the minimum is particularly welcome, since the appeal of parties such as the Front National or the Freiheitliche Partei Ă–sterreichs to electorates inured against revolutionary (and hence fascist) solutions is arguably that they really do want to retain civil society, as long as its advantages are enjoyed only by the nations aboriginal people and not by foreigners. In many senses, then, this book reverses the usual connotations of the colloquialism clear as mud. It offers a handy ideological yardstick for establishing whether or not a party should be classified as extreme right. However, such clarity and handiness are won at the price of a draconian simplification of the topic. For one thing, there is a shortfall worthy of a party politician between what the books title promises, nothing less than a study of the ideology of the extreme right, and what it delivers: a comparative study of the programmes of five parties. Moreover, Mudde has decided to concentrate exclusively on Western Europes established democracies, something which since 1989 is surely not a self-evident limitation. This means that the particular taxonomic issues raised by ultra-nationalistic parties in the former Soviet Empire are not even alluded to, despite their crucial importance to road-testing any new model of the extreme right. What further weakens the pragmatic value of the sample to comparative studies is that out of the restricted but still highly variegated choice of parties available to him -- which includes the neo-Nazi British National Party, the ethno-regionalist Lega Nord, and the postfascist Alleanza Nazionale -- he has chosen the very five Western European ones whose political platforms are the most similar. If Mudde does not exactly live dangerously in his choice of case studies, he displays a similar selfrestraint in his methodological musings. As Wittgenstein established some decades ago, the taxonomic sophistication of thefamily metaphor is that it allows a category of phenomena to be identified, not all of which necessarily share even a single definitional component of the sometimes vast number of descriptive features encompassed by the whole group. I suspect that when the full gamut of realities, party and non-party, conventionally subsumed under the term extreme right are conceived as a family in this sense then it will be realised that something of the sort is happening taxonomically here as well, with some phenomena turning out to be distant cousins rather than brothers and sisters in terms of shared criteria. Another methodological weakness is that by not underlining the ideal typical nature of all generic concepts he has fallen into the fallacy of circularity: the case studies have been selected on the basis that they embody a particular concept, and are then used to define that concept (a hermeneutic vicious circle which blighted the search for the fascist minimum for decades). What Mudde really offers his colleagues is an engagingly neat but perhaps over-manicured ideal type of the term extreme right-wing party whose heuristic value can only emerge over time when other researchers apply it outside the confines of the political garden he has chosen and venture into the thick undergrowth associated with the term in other climes. I suspect that, like some good wines, this theory will not travel well far outside the Low Countries, but it is still well worth laying in a bottle for the library.
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John D. Nagle and Alison Mahr, Democracy and Democratization. London: Sage 1999, 335 pp., GBP 49.50, ISBN 0-7619-5678-6 (hbk) / GBP 16.99, ISBN 0-7619-5679 4 (pbk).
Reviewed by Luke March (University of Edinburgh) This wide-ranging text engages in comparative analysis of the post-1989 transformations in East-Central Europe and aims to set them in a wider European and global context. To this end the big three of Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic provide the main focus of attention, as relatively successful democratisers which can provide lessons and models for other transitional nations (p. 2). This core group dominates the authors attention, although other East-Central European and post-Soviet countries are referred to, and the last of the books three parts broadens the scope to draw comparisons with democratisation in Southern Europe, Latin America and Asia. Part 1 has two foci. Chapter 1 draws sober lessons from the past treatment of democratisation by comparative politics and claims that this treatment was long driven by Cold War policy concerns and a Eurocentric view of political development. The authors particular bugbear is the Schumpeterian elite theory of democracy with its attention to political leadership and attenuated concerns with the citizen. They argue throughout, in the main convincingly, both for a more inclusive vision of democracy and for a version of democratisation which incorporates the nuances of nations, cultures and history. Accordingly, chapter 2 succinctly analyses the historical legacies provided by the regions past, stressing both the historical diversity of the region and the current opportunities for democracy, favourable as never before. Part 2 (chapters 3-8) provides the backbone for the book, providing in-depth comparative analysis of a panoply of political and socio-economic developments in the big three since 1989. The authors tackle in turn: changing conceptualisations of the increasingly complex and problematic transition process; the definition of and the emergence of civil society; debates and options over economic reform and the nature of the new economies; the problems of and opportunities for interest group articulation; party and electoral politics and finally elite-citizen relations in the new democracies. The authors again highlight national diversity and the historical continuity in much political development to date. Finally, part 3 (chapters 9-12) widens the focus. The Southern European transitions are used to reflect on the potential for tight elite control of systemic restructuring during transition. Latin American examples highlight the possibility of an IMF and export-dependent future, and elucidate the perils of presidentialism. Then East Asian countries are pinpointed as a challenging version of 'illiberal democracy', which (at least until 1997-8) promised an economically successful model of transition to semi-democracy. While drawing parallels for East-Central Europe, these chapters highlight the regional specificity of the experiences they compare. In the final chapter, the authors reflect on the geopolitics of the new ECE democracies and their relationship with the EU, international organisations and 'globalising capitalism', which they see as putting liberal economics and a Schumpeterian view of democracy before real civic involvement in the driving seat of political change. The danger for such an ambitious text is to avoid being too complex for the beginner, and too simple for the expert, and this problem does arise. The novice reader may prefer more coverage of basic conceptualisations and varieties of democracy in chapter 1 to augment the discussion of comparative politics therein, and would certainly benefit from more explicit structure in navigating the wealth of occasionally repetitive detail in later chapters. Why, for example, is there coverage of civil society in both chapters 4 and 8? The expert may be less satisfied with the brief, broad comparisons offered in chapters 9-11, and demand more conceptual rigour overall. For example, chapter 3, despite being called conceptualizations of transition, does not really critique the concept directly and deals with perceptions of political change rather than conceptual analysis.
However, this is a very valuable book, rich in detail, wide in scope, and always interesting in its insights. The central comparison of the core states is excellent, and overall there is much of use to teachers and students. The main argument, favouring a more citizen-orientated and social democratic democracy as a result of democratisation, is persuasive and while this is now scarcely an uncommon argument, it is still one that demands policy-makers' fullest attention.
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Britta Obszerninks and Matthias Schmidt, DVU im Aufwärtstrend Gefahr für die Demokratie?: Fakten, Analysen, Gegenstrategien (=Agenda Politik vol. 14), Münster: Agenda-Verlag 1998, 141 pp, DM 25.00, ISBN 3-89688-030-0.
Reviewed by Andreas Umland (Ural State University) This concise study of the political performance of the Deutsche Volksunion (German Peoples Union) in the 1980s and 1990s is a welcome update on the development of contemporary German right-wing extremist party politics. Such a synopsis became necessary as Freys notorious party unexpectedly managed to attract 12.9% of the vote in the state elections in the East German Land Saxony-Anhalt in April 1998. In terms of percentage, the DVUs success constituted the largest electoral victory of a rightwing extremist party in Germany since 1945. Against the background of a general consolidation of an extra-parliamentary and largely non-party, but deeply entrenched and wide-spread ultra-nationalist network in the New Länder of the former GDR, it seemed, for a while, as if the DVU may have a serious chance to leave the ghetto of obscurity in which it had subsisted hitherto, and to use Eastern Germany as a spring-board to federal-level politics. Ever since the establishment of Le Pen's Front National, Fini's Alleanza Nationale or Haider's Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs as permanent and relevant segments of the party spectra of their countries in the 1990s, observers of German right-wing extremism have been fearing a similar development in the largest West European country. However, the relative failure of the DVU and other parties of the extreme right in the federal, European, regional and local elections in Germany since Spring 1998, seems to indicate that a parallel development is not (yet) materialising. The coming years will show whether German federal-level politics has indeed become immune to organised ultra-nationalism, or whether the extreme right merely lacks an appropriate leader, able to unite the various parties and other groupings in the way Le Pen managed to do in France. For the time being, the relative political impotence of German right-wing extremism remains a puzzle. This study of the DVU-strongholds provides a well-researched building block for a possible explanation of the failure of the German extreme right so far. Apart from its stunning success in Saxony-Anhalt in 1998, there are a number of features that make the DVU peculiar in the German political scene. Above all, the party is headed by the Bavarian publisher, Dr.jur. Gerhard Frey, whose wealth was estimated by a former DVU-member at about DM 500 million in the mid-1990s (p. 26). Frey presides over a large publishing empire selling books, newspapers, audio and video material, and souvenirs devoted to German nationalist themes. Despite being based in Catholic Munich, the party has had its biggest electoral successes in Germanys Northern Protestant Länder and cities (Bremen, Bremerhaven, SchleswigHolstein, Hamburg, Saxony-Anhalt). What makes the party also distinct is its international activity, most notably its partnership with the so-called Liberal-Democratic Party of Russia led by Vladimir Zhirinovskii. Yet, the study also makes it clear that the DVU may represent less of a threat to the German political system than the above characteristics would suggest. Its eccentric leader rules the party like a business operation with dictatorial methods. No real party spirit has been reported. Although election campaigning in the media and through direct mailing is well organised and financed, there is little personal contact between the party and its electorate. The DVU ideology remains within the limits of an archaic
ethnic Deutschtümelei. Almost all of the partys few visible activists are unimpressive, if not dubious, personalities. The work of the DVU deputies in the North German regional and local legislatures is tightly supervised by the Munich head-quarters. It is difficult to imagine that, even under beneficial circumstances, Frey could assume a role comparable to that of Le Pen, or that the DVU would survive Frey's disengagement from politics (though his son, Gerhard Frey, Jr. might take over). Given Freys lack of charisma and political vision, the feebleness of the DVU as a political party, and the organisations dearth of intellectual acumen, the existence of the DVU might even be seen in one sense, as beneficial to the German party system. Over the last twenty years, the DVU has contributed substantially to various rifts within the spectrum of German far right parties, and a division of voters and resources in elections. On several occasions, various far right parties (DVU, REP, NPD) competed against each other, leaving each below the 5 percent threshold, although the combined vote for them was, in some cases, more and would have ensured representation in the legislatures. It seems that the most important aspect of Freys activity is thus, not the build-up and leadership of the DVU, but rather the dissemination of ultra-nationalist ideas via his publishing empire, and his links to, and support of, East European right-wing extremists, above all Vladimir Zhirinovskii. Although the DVU will continue to be hampered by Freys detrimental style of leadership, it is worth keeping an eye on the organisation and its leader -- if only for the considerable material resources they command. Obszerninks and Schmidts study constitutes a pertinent and useful addition to the literature on German right-wing extremism.
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Jonathan Olsen, Nature and Nationalism. Right-Wing Ecology and the Politics of Identity in Contemporary Germany, London: Macmillan 1999, 198 pp., GBP 30.00 (hbk), ISBN 0-333-80220-9.
Reviewed by Hans Brinks In his admirable study Nature and Nationalism. Right-Wing Ecology and the Politics of Identity in Contemporary Germany Jonathan Olsen shows that environmental ideology is not by definition part of the left domain nor is it "neither left nor right" (Anna Bramwell). It is a misconception to think that Green and left politics are natural allies. Green views go all the way back to the Romantic Movement when naturalism and the awakening German nationalism became inextricably bound up with each other. German (neo) romanticists viewed the German nation as a community of people who were "rooted in the soil" (Gemeinschaft) and reacted against French-inspired Enlightenment nationalism which, so they argued, was an artificial creation. According to these romanticists nature provided a political blueprint for the good society. About the turn of the century these völkisch ideas were put forward by the Wandervögel, the Heimat-movement, and all sorts of esoteric societies which were later absorbed by National Socialism. Green politics also held an important position in post-war right-wing movements. What parties and groupings like the National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD), the German Peoples Union (DVU), the Republicans (REP), the Independent Ecologists of Germany (UÖD) and the Eco-Union (Öko-Union) have in common, just like their (neo) romantic precursors to a certain extent, is the idea that people, just like animals and plants, belong in their natural environment and constitute a unique biotope. In fact they regard a nation as a closed eco system which one should keep pure through the exclusion of the alien or foreign. Therefore right-wing ecologists advocate "ethnic-pluralism" which in fact is nothing but a system of Apartheid in which every "ethnic group" is entitled to its own territory. To achieve this they support a so called "liberation nationalism". Multiculturalism is emphatically rejected because they regard it as a pollution of society. Such ideas are not confined to right-wing parties. In the "asylum debate" in the late 1980s and early 1990s most German politicians but especially the conservatives used right-wing
ecological language to insinuate the imminent pollution of Germanys ethnic homogeneity: "floods of refugees", "swarms", "locusts", "rising tide", "untamed stream", "wave of foreigners" and so on. Olsen also demonstrates convincingly that environmental ideology is not "neither right nor left", as appears from the example of the German Greens. In the 1970s Germanys environmental movement consisted of the New Left, ultra conservatives, and the New Right. Among the leading lights of the early Greens were right-wingers like Herbert Gruhl, August Hausleiter and Rudolf Bahro. After the New Left had expelled most right-wing ideologues from the party, the Greens laboured for the cause of the multicultural society. However, this did not mean that New Right influence within the party had disappeared. Quite the contrary. This was not that surprising as, despite huge differences, the left and the right had much ground in common. Olsen quotes a manifesto of the New Left from 1981 which clearly expresses this striking relationship: "From Fascism we tear away the myths which it has violated, concepts like friendship; Heimat, nature, which it defiled; from the nobility, its lost feeling of respect, politeness, and Minne (romantic love); from the church, its most beautiful daughter, mysticismWe are hungry, in us there is a burning desire for myths" (p.89). It was against this background that a man like Rudolf Bahro made an "intellectual odyssey from a humanistic Marxism to eco-socialism and finally to an authoritarian environmentalism one that implicitly calls for an eco-dictatorship" (p.101). In the late 1980s and early 1990s he even called for a "Green Adolf". After reading Olsens excellent study it becomes clear that, under the flag of pragmatism, the contemporary Greens pursue a policy which is not "beyond left and right" but which contains both traditional left and right elements. Maybe this explains why a rather considerable part of the Green electorate has affinities with right-wing ideas. According to a recent Emnid opinion poll (Der Spiegel 7-8-2000) the percentage of BĂźndnis 90/Green voters who "under certain circumstances" are willing to vote for a right-wing party (DVU, NPD or REP) is 16 per cent; a score which is only exceeded by the PDS (17 per cent). During the last decade die GrĂźnen have indeed continuously shifted to the right and according to many left-wingers the party has betrayed virtually every principle it had stood for since its founding. Jutta Ditfurth quit the Greens in 1991 in disgust and argued during a TV-debate that she regretted being among the partys co-founders. A party that calls itself Green must indeed dispose of a good share of pragmatism if it wants to justify humanitarian intervention in foreign lands, as it did in Kosovo with the benefit of grenades which contained depleted uranium. One also needs dialectical skills to justify a war which turns huge parts of the local eco system into toxic wasteland and which poisons waterways. Such policies are all the more striking since at a time when the Greens called for military action all combatants on the spot supported a liberation nationalism.
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Sabrina Ramet (ed.), The Radical Right in Central and Eastern Europe Since 1989. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press 1999, 383 pp., GBP 40.20 / USD 65.00 (hbk) or GBP 13.90/USD 22.50 (pbk).
Reviewed by Anna Grzymala-Busse (Yale University)
Given the proliferation of right-wing parties and social movements in post-communist East and Central Europe (the radical right has appeared in one guise or another in every country), this book is both a timely and fascinating account of these forces. In the introduction to the volume, Sabrina Ramet lays out the theoretical framework and defines radical right-wing forces as "organized intolerance"their four shared characteristics are the espousal of intolerance of the Other, hostility to popular sovereignty, contempt for the Enlightenment emphasis on rationality and individualism, and an emphasis on a return to "traditional" values, often manufactured by the movement itself. Within this framework, the subsequent chapters examine in turn each of the postcommunist countries, with the rather unfortunate exception of the Czech Republic (where the Republicans have been among the most persistent and pernicious right-wing forces), and Albania. Given the radical collapse of one regime and the daunting rise of a new one, it is perhaps surprising that radical right-wing forces are not more popular in the region. After all, given the vicissitudes of the "triple transition" and very real social and economic costs borne by the populace, we would expect the parties to receive more than the few percentage they seem to be able to consistently muster in most of these countries (Croatia and Russia, with their strong radical right-nationalist forces, being the most glaring exceptions). Yet the radical right movements seem as numerous as weak. This surprisingly low popular support begs a broader question that underlies the public and scholarly fascination with the radical right-wingwhen does the radical right "matter," endangering the democratic system and its institutions, and when is it a more benign "pressure valve," allowing protest to escape without actually threatening the political systems viability? To take an example from the volume, the Slovak SNS and the Slovene SDPS share ideology, are both on the verge of becoming anti-system parties, and both have commanded around 10% of the vote. Yet the former is not considered as dangerous as the latter by their respective analysts in the volume. Perhaps one way to consistently evaluate the parties would be to focus on a) the dynamics of party support over time (a steady increase would be more worrisome than either a decrease or oscillation), b) the social basis of support (is it those who would otherwise be disenchanted with politics, or is it median or middle class voters, who support the party?), c) the parties ideological flexibility (which could gain them both support and coalition potential, as Roman Solchanyk suggests in his discussion of the Ukraine), and d) their existing access to political decisionmaking (e.g., national office may in fact be less powerful than local control, depending on the political institutions in place). The Ramet volume illuminates another difficulty of studying the radical rightcategorisation. It is not clear why populist parties and their leaders, for example, should be included under the rubric of "radical right wing." There is also an important distinction to be made between the irrefutability of radical right-wing rhetoric, and the rationality of joining such a movementas Roger Griffin argues in the Conclusion, such movements address very real individual and collective needs for identity, roots, and making sense of politics. As David Ost points out in his chapter on Poland, the exclusion of workers from political decisionmaking, for example, has led many of them to embrace such politics. To simply label the radical right "irrational" is to ignore this distinction and discourage the analysis of the reasons for joining and adhering to these ideologies. These difficulties encountered in the study of the radical right are not unique to this volume, nor should they keep the reader from appreciating the wide range and depth of the analyses. For those who study East and Central European party politics, its radical right, or protest movements, this volume is clearly a valuable contribution.
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Britta Waldschmidt-Nelson, Martin Luther King & Malcolm X. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag 2000, 192 pp., DM 16.90 (pbk), ISBN 3-596-14662-3.
Reviewed by Cas Mudde (University of Edinburgh) This book in the Fischer-series Gegenspieler (Opponents) presents a double portrait of the two most th influential black leaders in American (20 Century) history: Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. The author, a lecturer in American cultural history at the University of Munich, presents the biographies of the two leaders in a chronological order, with sections on Malcolm X following sections on King. The book is very well written, both for an academic and non-academic audience (a typical German Sachbuch). Though nothing new is mentioned about the two individuals, at least for those familiar with the topic, the extra value of the book is in the comparison and interrelation between the two. The author particularly emphasises the developments in both leaders ideas: while Malcolm X moderated his views just before his violent death, most notably his well-documented renunciation of black racism, King, in contrast, radicalised just before his assassination, becoming more sceptical about his integrationist approach. This meant that at the time of their deaths incidentally, both died at the age of 39 the two men held fairly similar views. This said, one main difference remained: Kingsnon-violent resistance versus Malcolm Xs with all means necessary. Ironically, the two men met just once in their lives, at a time when they were still very much apart in their views. Moreover, it was only after Malcolm Xs death that King radicalised. The final chapter of the book deals with the legacy of the two leaders. Both still hold a prominent position within American society, although they are mainly remembered for their early period. The moderate, prointegration Martin Luther King remains a symbol among liberal Americans (and others) of all colours, while the extremist, black separatist Malcolm X has made a comeback as a cult figure among the black urbanised youth, as well as in his former organisation, the Nation of Islam (which, ironically, was involved in his killing).
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Derek Wall, Earth First! and the Anti-Roads Movement. Radical Environmentalism and Comparative Social Movements. London: Routledge 1999, 219 pp, GBP 15.99, ISBN 0-415-19064-9 (pbk).
Reviewed by Cas Mudde (University of Edinburgh) Contrary to environmentalism in general, and Green parties in particular, radical environmentalist movements have received only modest attention in academic literature. This despite their high media profile and increasing radicalisation and violence in various Western countries (e.g., the Earth Liberation Front). In addition, radical environmentalists play a leading role in the newly emerging anti-globalisation movement, whose actions in, for example, Seattle sent an important reminder of the continuing disruptive potential of 'the left'. This book is therefore highly welcome, as it deals with the most important radical environmentalist movement in Europe, Earth First! (UK), as well as with its relations with the broader anti-roads movement, including Reclaim the Streets. Its author, Derek Wall, is introduced as "an Honorary Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Social and Political Movements, University of Kent at Canterbury, a green activist and a local Green Party councillor". This double identity makes for a somewhat mixed agenda, which is openly expressed in the first chapter of the book: "I feel that (...) social movement theory can be used to
investigate how protest networks grow (...), so as to aid green activists to better understand how they can mobilise others to create a new society" (p.8). As far as the academic content is concerned, Wall uses a "critical-realist approach" (p.9ff), meaning that "some conclusions are [considered] more satisfactory or 'real' than others" and that "both 'nature' and 'society'" are investigated (p.12). His analysis is based largely on interviews with some thirty leading EF! (UK) activists, later divided into two groups (founding members and later joiners). In addition, Wall read movement literature and 'reassessed his own experience as an activist' (p.15). It is not surprising then, that the distance from the topic often seems (too) limited. Moreover, the interviews seem to have been conducted in an unstructured manner, without a clear research question in mind, often leading to unconvincing (because of limited structure and numbers) 'proof'. Only the sub-question 'how do people become political activists?' is answered in a fairly convincing way. In line with the social movement literature Wall finds that "activist participation in EF! (UK) (...) is rooted in a process combining previous activism, political and friendship networks, personal political sympathy and biographical availability" (p.113). On the positive side, this book does provide valuable and often original information about the radical environmentalist movement, most notably EF! (UK), as well as about the broader anti-roads movement. It also provides, often revealing insights into the minds of the leading activists of EF! (UK) -- which could also have led to a fascinating socio-psychological study, but unfortunately that was not the authors intention. On the downside, the author fails to provide a systematic analysis of the topic, this is particularly true of the interconnections between the different groups within the broader movement as well as relations with the political system. Also, the lack of emotional distance from both the topic and the interviewees mean that the book is lacking in critical analysis of its sources -- activists are generally taken at their word and very little attention is paid to possible personal agendas of the interviewees. In conclusion, this book should be seen as the first rather than the definitive study of the history, goals, and activists of Earth First! (UK) and, though to a lesser extent, the international EF! 'network' and the broader anti-roads movement. The book is let down by the lack of academic rigour, both in collecting and in interpreting the data. Hopefully, though, the various challenging suggestions in the book will inspire others to take up (truly) academic research on these interesting movements, just as has happened to the study of Green parties in the mid-1980s.
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Justin Watson, The Christian Coalition: Dreams of Restoration, Demands for Recognition, London: Macmillan Press, 1999, 320p, ÂŁ 17.99 (pbk), ISBN 0-333-772-318.
Reviewed by Duane Oldfield (Knox College) Watsons book aims to answer a seemingly simple question about Americas most prominent Christian right group: What does the Christian Coalition want? Is its true aim theocratic, the restoration of a lost evangelical hegemony? Or is the Coalition simply the representative of a minority culture, demanding recognition and respect in a pluralistic society? The book begins with a brief historical account of American evangelicalism and the Christian right before narrowing in on the Coalition itself. Chapter 3 provides intellectual and political biographies of the Coalitions two leading public figures, Pat Robertson and Ralph Reed. Chapter 4 describes the groups organisational development. The heart of the book lies in the next two chapters. Chapter 5 assesses restorationist themes in the Coalitions publications and pronouncements. Invoking a golden age when the United States was, purportedly, a "Christian nation," the groups leaders lament that we have strayed from the countrys religious foundations and are paying a terrible social price. The Coalition, as Watson
demonstrates, is by no means of one mind when it comes to the timing of this golden age or to what a restoration of it would entail. Christian reconstructionists, part of an intellectual current with some ties to the Coalition, openly call for theocratic rule based on Old Testament law. The reconstructionists go well beyond the Coalitions leaders, but even in the milder form, espoused by Reed, restorationist themes are likely to prove troubling to outsiders. A very different, and potentially less threatening, current in Coalition rhetoric is described in chapter 6. The Coalitions "demand for recognition" is not about the restoration of a once dominant groups cultural hegemony. Instead it is a demand for the rights and respect due an oppressed minority. Ralph Reed, in particular, is fond of comparing "people of faith" to African Americans and the Christian Right to the Civil Rights movement. The author emphasises the parallels between the Coalitions demands for recognition and the arguments of American proponents of multiculturalism. The comparison gets strained at times, but the underlying point is a sound one. The Coalitions demand for recognition has much in common with the identity politics generally associated with the left. Like movements arising out of racial or sexual minority populations, the Coalition attempts to provide its members with an inspiring self-understanding and insists on recognition and respect from outsiders. The strength of Watsons account lies in its refusal to analyse away either current in the Coalitions rhetoric. In Watsons words: "They want their place at the table AND they want everyone at the table to agree with them. They want a Christian nation AND religious freedom. As contradictory as it may seem, they want to have their cake AND eat it too" (p. 175). The author convincingly argues that the Coalitions demands for recognition should not simply be dismissed as a public relations gimmick, a pluralistic mask concealing an underlying theocratic agenda. Nor, however, should we dismiss the Coalitions repeated articulation of restorationist themes. Sincerely made pluralistic arguments can coexist with logically inconsistent but equally sincere dreams of Christian hegemony. American evangelicals have long been torn between strategies that accommodate modernity and those that resist it. For the Christian Coalition, both strategies carry serious risks. Resistance in the name of a Christian nation risks defeat and irrelevance. Accommodation to cultural pluralism risks dilution of the ideals that brought the movement into politics. Its strengths notwithstanding, the study does have serious weaknesses. The data it is based on is relatively narrow, consisting primarily of the writings and public statements of top movement leaders. There is no evidence here of the interviews with movement leaders or members that could have made this a richer, more nuanced, study. More data about rank and file members and lower level leaders could also have given us a better perspective on the statements of Reed and Robertson. To what extent were their statements evidence of a shared world view within the Coalition and to what extent were these statements rooted in their personal histories and idiosyncrasies? How deeply rooted, for example, was the relatively moderate language about recognition so prominently advanced by Ralph Reed. My impression is that the themes Reed promoted have become significantly less prominent in Coalition publications since his departure to pursue a career as a political consultant. Restricting his focus to a single organisation within a single country allows Watson to develop his argument in depth, but that depth comes at a price. Readers will likely long for a comparative perspective on the phenomena he describes. Within an American context, Watsons single organisation focus leaves out the interplay amongst various organisations within the Christian right. The Coalitions appeals need to be understood in the light of the organisations competition for support within the broader movements base. Equally important to understanding the Coalitions rhetorical strategies is its relationship to the Republican Party. As the Christian right organisation most heavily involved in electoral politics, the Coalitions language is tailored to a party audience as well as to group members. Finally, Watson runs into a problem endemic to studies of contemporary politics. Events have outstripped the book, even the afterword added to the most recent edition. Ralph Reed has left the Coalition as, in short order, have his successors. Robertson remains the dominant figure, but, beset by infighting, reorganisations, and budget woes, the Coalition appears to be a shadow of its once mighty self.
Overall, this is a limited study, but, within its limits, a very valuable one. Readers should come away with an appreciation for the complexities and contradictions of a much discussed, but too often misunderstood, organisation.