Divided Nations and European Integration.

• Author: Moreh, Chris
• Position: Book review

Divided Nations and European Integration

Edited by Tristan James Mabry, John McGarry, Margaret Moore and Brendan O'Leary

Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013, 416 pages, $79.95, ISBN 9780812244977.

Divided Nations and European Integration is a coherent collection of essays analyzing the effects of expanding European institutions on the politics of nations divided by state borders. As the editors stress, they use the term "divided nation" to refer primarily to "one that contains leaders and organizations that minimally aspire to establish or reestablish closer linkages between the segments of their nation partitioned among states" (p. 5). Such divided nations exist--and have often been at the center of conflict--throughout the European continent, from Ireland to the easternmost provinces of Turkey, and it has often been assumed that integration processes through institutions like the European Union, the Council of Europe, and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), may provide better accommodation for such nations and reduce the potential for conflict. Although the impressive amount of empirical data presented throughout the book offers insights into a variety of different processes, the general assessment of the volume is that such assumptions and expectations regarding Europeanization have been somewhat exaggerated, and "internal state history and politics have so far played the most important causal roles in shaping the fates of 'divided nations'" (p. 384).

The volume consists of ten chapters framed by a valuable "Introduction"--a state of the art essay in its own right rather than an outline of the subsequent chapters--and a substantial Conclusion (pp. 341-391), both by McGarry and O'Leary, two of the editors. Chapters One and Two --authored by Moore and Mabry respectively, the other two members of the editorial group--are more general thematic contributions discussing the challenge posed by divided nations to theories of justice on the one hand, and the language politics of such nations on the other. The remaining middle chapters are ethno-national and geographic case studies of kin-state activism in Hungary, Romania, and Russia (Zsuzsa Csergo and James M. Goldgeier, Ch. 3), Basques (Zoe Bray and Michael Keating, Ch. 4), Albanians (Alexandra Channer, Ch. 5), Kurds (David Romano, Ch. 6), Croats and Serbs in Bosnia (Marsaili Fraser, Ch. 7), Irish (Etain Tannam, Ch. 8), Germany (Stefan Wolff, Ch. 9)...