Christine M. Hassenstab

The Importance of Tolerance: Intolerance and Its Consequences in the Yugoslav Successor States

Whether one considers the United States or Russia, the Western hemisphere, Eurasia, or the Southern hemisphere, intolerance undermines equality, negates human rights, and puts minorities at risk. Sabrina Ramet identifies three major forms of chauvinism in the Yugoslav successor states: ethnic/national chauvinism, patriarchal chauvinism, and religious chauvinism. Although manifestations of these forms of chauvinism may be symbiotically intertwined, their overall political impact varies. Here, the argument is advanced that the interaction of these forms of chauvinism and accompanying values interact distinctively in certain states, but not others. Thus, ethnic/national chauvinism involves fear of the ethnic “other” combined with hostility toward difference. Also, intolerance is negatively correlated with educational attainment and positively correlated with religiosity, in most cases. Or, to put it more simply, uneducated religious people are likely to be less tolerant of religious diversity and of sexual minorities than are educated non-religious people. Although intolerance is a global phenomenon and thus certainly found across the post-socialist region, in the case of the Yugoslav successor states, the War of Yugoslav Succession (1991–95) and the War for Kosovo (1998–99) did much to traumatize locals and sow resentment while deepening tendencies to intolerance of members of other ethnic and religious groups. The question of tolerance vs. intolerance in the Yugoslav successor states raises some preliminary questions. To begin with, what do we mean by “tolerance”? Jurgen Habermas neatly distinguishes “tolerance” as a “form of behavior” from “toleration” as “the legal act with which a government grants more or less unrestricted permission to persons to practice their particular religion.” We might extend that definition beyond the juridical sphere to include certain government policies such as socialization themes that promote tolerant attitudes. The association of religious practice and toleration is almost self-evident. To avoid violence, one must tolerate what cannot be compromised. For this reason, Susan Mendus considers skepticism an important reason for justifying toleration. The skeptic affirms tolerance as a basis for liberal democracy and, in particular, an “attitude of neutrality of the state in matters of religion.” Tolerance is not indifference, however. Joseph Raz identifies tolerance as a “distinctive moral virtue” only if it curbs the tendency to suppress what one considers undesirable.

Post-Yugoslav Patterns of Democratization

After more than twenty-five years since the beginning of the transition from authoritarian single-party rule to multi-party politics, there is no doubt that the countries that have emerged from Yugoslavia are democracies. During the years 1989 to 1991, however, this eventual outcome was by no means certain. At that time, the future of democracy in Central and Southeastern Europe was unclear and the countries in the Southeastern tier lagged behind those in Central Europe. Bulgaria and Romania saw a change of leadership in November and December 1989, the former through a palace coup, the latter through a combination of a violent revolution and a coup. Yugoslavia and Albania did not experience any such changes during that year and seemed at first isolated from developments elsewhere. In the absence of Soviet dominance, the combination of the call for democracy and against Soviet influence was less salient and the homegrown legacy of communism appeared to set them apart. However, the communist parties in both countries soon had to agree to allow multi-party elections in 1990 and 1991. If the striking feature of 1989 was the remarkable speed and certainty with which democracy emerged as the sole acceptable political system in Central Europe, doubts lingered in Albania, Bulgaria, and Romania, as well as most Yugoslav republics. Either socialist incumbents, only partially reformed, displayed strong authoritarian traits or new parties often with nationalist ideologies took office with little interest in transforming the states into liberal polities. It would take another move toward democracy through a combination of the ballot box and popular protest movements to shift the countries more decisively toward democracy. However, as this chapter argues, enduring legacies of both communist and post-communist governments have restrained the countries’ consolidation as liberal democracies. While there is a distinct North–South pattern of democratic consolidation, with Slovenia moving quickly toward liberal democracy and Croatia struggling with authoritarianism for a decade before a decisive move toward democracy in 2000, the other post-Yugoslav republics have been struggling with moving toward liberal democracy for different reasons, such as contested statehood (“stateness”) in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo to state capture in Montenegro and authoritarian patterns in Serbia and Macedonia.

The Know Nothing Party: Three Theories about its Rise and Demise

The 19th century was a time of rapid population growth in the United States, and much of it was due to immigration from Europe. In the 1840s and 1850s, the largest proportion of immigrants came from Ireland and Germany, and most were Catholic. The Germans spread across small communities as far west as Wisconsin and Texas, but the Irish concentrated in the larger cities on the eastern seaboard, especially Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. Local third- and fourth-generation Protestant immigrants from England resented the new arrivals and organized “Nativist” associations. Among these was the anti-Catholic American Party, better known as the Know Nothing Party, which enjoyed spectacular success in Massachusetts and other states during 1854–1855. But, by 1862, the party was dead. This article examines how moral panic theory, the theory of persistent cultural patterns and cycles, and revitalization theory may offer insights into the Know Nothing Party. Each of these theories explains both the emergence of the party and its rapid demise, and suggest that each can make a contribution to understanding anti-Catholicism in nineteenth-century America, and the Know Nothing Party in particular.