Critique of Symbolic Politics

When we come to think of the major conflicts since the end of the cold war, a large number of them are deeply linked with ethnic identity and claims for territories or autonomy inside a territory. Yet, even more surprising could be the conflicts that would have been supposed to create war but settled peacefully. Among the former, we can find large scale genocide as in the case of Rwanda where in the latter, we find the abnormal case of Hungary and its Diasporas. When trying to explain the occurrence of one specific conflict or the fact that the conflict didn’t escalate, scholars disagree on the paradigm that is effective and adequate. One the one hand, we have Fearon and other scholars saying that ethnic conflicts are driven by a rational choice, while on the other hand, Kaufman argues that it is more a matter of symbolic politics. In this text, it will be argued that ethnic conflicts are indeed part of a rational choice and that Kaufman’s ideas, while good in themselves, are limited and missed some of the particularities of this kind of conflict and of International relations in general. This text will start by defining both theories and will then argument for the former while attacking the latter.
To begin, before we get to argue whether rational choice is more appropriate than symbolic politics, the two paradigms must be defined.
The rational choice paradigm is an extension of the realist perspective, arguing that we live in a self-help environment due to the anarchic world and the lack of impartial power. In this paradigm, the individual is considered to be rational and trying to maximize his utility (in this context, his security). Since war is costly, it is assumed that the preferred settlement of the conflict is by bargaining. In the same line of ideas, the realist perspective explains that it is possible to be rational while still miscalculating, as Jervis would argue. This is due mostly to failure of information on both sides of the conflict leading to... [continues]

Read full essay