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1 0 7 Basic concepts of complexity science offer a powerful way to explain the movement toward or away from understanding and coping with ethnic and other problems in emerging countries. These concepts do not contradict explanations rooted in democratization but enrich them and offer linkages to other fields of knowledge. They start with a wider lens than democratization but include it. The concept of societal fitness, a major concern of complexity science, subsumes political, economic, and cultural strengths. The precise weight of each strength in shaping societal fitness becomes an important but secondary question. The Dangers of Transition The diverse experiences of states in zones A, B, C, D, E, and F raise questions about the key postulate of liberal peace theory: that established democracies seldom if ever make war on one another (Doyle 1997; Elman 1997; Brown 1996). Is the theory not falsified by the intermittent fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan, each of which—independent since 1991—has claimed to be democratic? Or by the fighting between Georgia, on the one hand, and Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Russia on the other? And what about the occasional stresses bordering on a new cold war between Russia and the United States with its allies? Seeking to show the limits of liberal peace theory, Jack Snyder (2000) explained the presence or absence of ethnic peace by treating democratization chapter six How Complexity Concepts Explain Past and Present Fitness 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 1 0 8 C O M P L E X I T Y S C I E N C E A N D W OR L D A F FA I R S as the key independent variable. Thus, he attributed the absence of ethnic violence in Estonia since 1991 to successful democratization. Ethnic calm in Uzbekistan, on the other hand, resulted from an efficient dictatorship. Between these extremes was the persistent ethnic strife pitting Armenians against Azeris and Georgians against their neighbors. Snyder traced these ethnic conflicts, as well as the wars between Russia and Chechnya, to partial but unsuccessful democratizations. To explain the successes and failures of democratization Jack Snyder considered many economic and cultural as well as political variables. For example, he weighed the impact of early versus middle or late economic development. The violent ways of Serbian nationalists, he argued (Snyder 2000, 207), reflected their society’s early but partial democratization—manipulated by rival dynasties while fighting the Ottomans and later by President Tito. Snyder’s broad treatment helps us to grasp the context but it leaves the reader unsure which factor, if any, determines whether there is ethnic calm or conflict. Taking partial democratization as a source of nationalist violence is the more complicated because, Snyder conceded, it can cut in opposite directions. President Boris Yeltsin sent Russian troops into Chechnya in 1994 hoping to rebuild his popularity by appealing to nationalist sentiment. Instead, partially democratized Russians objected to this campaign and pressed the Kremlin to end it. “Thus, Russia’s fragile democratic institutions could be mobilized in crisis against imperial excesses, but they were less effective in scrutinizing nationalist mythmaking on a day-to-day basis” (Snyder 2000, 236–37). Snyder’s leitmotif of democratization—whether successful, partial, or nonexistent—serves as a heuristic organizing principle for assessing a wide range of past and present cases of political and economic development. But this approach embodies a tautology: “Successful democracy equals ethnic peace.” We can know that democracy has taken root because there is no ethnic conflict; where ethnic strife appears, democracy is shallow. The independent variable becomes the same as the dependent. Contrary to Snyder and Mansfield (2005), the harmony and vibrancy of countries in Eurasia’s zone A appear to confirm liberal peace theory. Consolidated democracies do not fight one another and tend to rely on established methods of conflict resolution to deal with internal disputes. Societies in zone A achieved high levels of fitness on many fronts after the demise of the Soviet empire and Yugoslavia. Success in one domain helped them cope with problems in others. Ethnic peace made it easier to raise living standards, consolidate democracy, and nourish creativity. Economic advances in Estonia, for example, make it easier for Tallinn to provide welfare benefits for Russian speakers residing in Estonia but who were not citizens. On the other hand, countries in zones B, C, D, and E displayed low levels of overall fitness even though many possessed material assets lacking...

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