Book Review: Nationalism and the Rule of Law: Lessons from the Balkans and Beyond

Nationalism and the Rule of Law: Lessons from the Balkans and Beyond by Iavor Rangelov. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2014. 224 pp, £60 hardcover 9781107012196, $76 e-book 9781107596009

It may not be the most obvious question: what is the relationship between nationalism and the rule of law? But as we know from recent events in the Balkans, the Middle East and elsewhere, how these phenomena interact is not merely an academic concern but has clear implications for international politics, democratization, and peace. Iavor Rangelov explores these issues theoretically and empirically. But instead of providing a predetermined set of expectations, the book illuminates their tensions and contradictions, demonstrating how one can undermine the other, and ultimately how they can transform behavior and discourse. Put simply, this book looks at how ideas about nations and nationalism, which inherently divide people into “us” and “them,” interact with legal mechanisms that exist, ostensibly, to ensure that everyone is treated the same.

Part I of the book develops an analytical framework for exploring these issues, narrowing on ethnic citizenship, transitional justice, and international criminal justice. Instead of emphasizing one form of differentiated membership defined in ethnic terms and enshrined in law, one of the objectives of the chapter on ethnic citizenship is to demonstrate both the variations and persistence of these practices throughout history and in different contexts. The chapter does provide many historical examples, but it is a bit surprising that so many recent examples are overlooked. Nonetheless, it demonstrates that ethnic citizenship, though often ignored, is a worthwhile lens for interrogating these relationships in the 21st century.

The chapters on transitional justice and international criminal justice focus on how different legal institutions and practices address the darkest sides of nationalism. At least for Rangelov, transitional justice uses only domestic laws and mechanisms to come to terms with the past, while international criminal justice employs international instruments and primarily international law and criminal courts. In both spheres, however, the tensions and contradictions between nationalism and the rule of law are obvious but not immutable, because they provide opportunities to open up and renegotiate questions of national identity and state legitimacy, encouraging what Rangelov calls pluralization. In the domestic context, pluralization happens through domestic laws, the judiciary and public debates that challenge nationalist discourse. Internationally, this happens through regionalization, and bottom-up processes, as well as in the legal domain. Although these legal instruments risk more nationalist mobilization, the central point of these chapters is to make the case that they can simultaneously encourage pluralization that transforms nationalism in a productive way.

Part II looks at how these legal manifestations have interacted with nationalism in Slovenia, Croatia, and Serbia respectively. Less has been written on Slovenia and for this reason, I found this chapter the most interesting of the case studies. Slovenia is also seen as the success story, the one country in the former Yugoslavia that escaped nationalism’s curse. This chapter dispels this myth, exploring Slovenian nationalism, how it emerged after the country’s independence, and how diffuse forms of discrimination are embodied in the country’s laws. Since there has been little bloodshed in this country, I suspect that few readers will know about the residents of Slovenia who were effectively “erased” and considered illegal aliens after Slovenia became independent in 1991. And while European institutions are a “constitutional mosaic” of overlapping and sometimes competing legal norms, they have not resolved these problems in Slovenia or elsewhere.

The chapters on Croatia and Serbia, while useful for the purposes of this book, have been addressed by others more thoroughly and do not, at least for me, cover much new ground. The chapter on Croatia spends a lot more time than I think is needed addressing the legacies of World War II and how this shaped nationalist politics in the 1990s. Thus, instead of serving the interests of justice, the Croatian judiciary used law to engage in nation- and state-building. What is more interesting and deserving of greater attention is the alleged shift to deliberative transitional justice around 2005, and why and how this happened.

The most has been written on the politics of Serbia, though the focus usually is the tensions between nationalism and rule of law and specifically how the creation of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) created opposition within Serbia, and how transitional justice writ large was hijacked by leaders to advance their own agendas. This chapter takes a different position and focuses on the ongoing process of pluralization of public discourse, politics and the rule of law. Providing more details on the actors involved, the chapter does a good job identifying the transformative role of institutions like the War Crimes Chamber, the Humanitarian Law Center, as well as the EU.

By the end of the book, I am quite convinced that the tensions between nationalism and the rule of law are neither uniform nor permanent and even in the most unlikely situations, their interaction can be harnessed to transform nationalist ideas. What I was not convinced of and wanted to read more about were the actual mechanisms or agents that facilitate or stand in the way of pluralization. Moreover, I am entirely clear why Rangelov separated transitional justice from international criminal justice in the way that he did; frankly, I have a hard time distinguishing the discrete effects of these mechanisms, especially in Croatia and Serbia.

Without a doubt, the book asks questions that are of utmost importance to academics and policymakers, but how the book is structured and written might discourage such a diverse audience. Because of the questions asked, the book needs to engage a lot of different literature; at times, Rangelov does a good job explaining how it is connected but at other times, he uses literature and concepts that are complex and confusing. Given the abundance of literature on nationalism and transitional justice, I appreciate this challenge. However, what I cannot understand is why the author seems so determined to make this a tedious academic book. Given that the author has an abiding interest in this topic and has done interviews that are interesting and reinforce his arguments, this had the potential to be written in a far more engaging, spirited way.

If you are not a political scientist or a student of Balkan politics, you may not be satisfied with this book. This is unfortunate, because the arguments made about pluralization are unique and could be quite useful to policymakers and others. Moreover, the shifting relations between nationalism and the rule of law will not disappear, and finding ways to promote relationships that both recognize differences and treat everyone equally will be crucial in the 21st century.

Patrice C. McMahon is Associate Professor in Political Science at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.