Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 The EC's recognition policy: origins and terms of reference
- 2 Recognition of states: legal thinking and historic practice
- 3 International law, international relations and the recognition of states
- 4 EC recognition of new states in Yugoslavia: the strategic consequences
- 5 Political conditionality and conflict management
- Conclusion
- Appendices
- Bibliography
- Index
Conclusion
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 The EC's recognition policy: origins and terms of reference
- 2 Recognition of states: legal thinking and historic practice
- 3 International law, international relations and the recognition of states
- 4 EC recognition of new states in Yugoslavia: the strategic consequences
- 5 Political conditionality and conflict management
- Conclusion
- Appendices
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Writing in 1861, John Stuart Mill expressed a general pessimism about the capacity of pluralistic societies for representative government: ‘Free institutions are next to impossible in a country made up of different nationalities’, Mill argued. ‘Among a people without fellow-feeling, especially if they read and speak different languages, the united public opinion, necessary to the working of representative government, cannot exist.’
In its response to the collapse of communist Europe and the emergence of new states in its wake, the European Community took a very different view of pluralistic societies in relation to ‘free institutions’. Not only was it possible for such societies to function democratically, the EC maintained, but a democratic Europe at the end of the twentieth century required pluralism. For where multinational societies might predominate – as they do in much of East-Central Europe – states wishing to achieve the relative homogeneity that Mill's logic seemed to recommend could only do so through the elimination of ethnic differences. The use of violent means for such a purpose, including the forcible redrawing of boundaries, was, however, anathema to the EC. Even non-coercive instruments, such as assimilation, could be problematic in an era when it was accepted that minority communities were entitled to preserve their distinctiveness consistent with the right to self-determination.
The EC's conditional recognition of new states in Yugoslavia reflected this belief in both the possibility and the imperative for the maintenance of pluralistic societies in Europe.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Europe and the Recognition of New States in Yugoslavia , pp. 180 - 186Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005