Essence of Political Manipulation: Emotion, Institutions and Greek Foreign Policy (review)

The collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 released the genie of ethnic nationalism from the bottle that communism had trapped it in throughout the Cold War. Centrifugal nationalist forces caused the collapse of the Soviet Union and devastated the Yugoslav federation with a series of civil conflicts that lasted almost a decade. The effects of the end of the Cold War era, however, not only were visible internally in communist countries but also affected entire regions in which newly formed countries would be formed, such as the Balkans and Central Asia. As a result of the imminent collapse of the Yugoslav federation, a newly created state tentatively titled the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) was formed and almost immediately faced the hostility and uneasiness of its neighbors.

Nikos Zahariadis asks, "What is in a name?" while reviewing Greece's foreign policy toward FYROM during the 1990s. Greece's persistent objections to the name that the southern Yugoslav republic took made FYROM look increasingly fragile and nonviable. The Greeks undertook an aggressive campaign to expose what they believe to be FYROM's irredentist campaign against Greece's northern province, Macedonia. Public opinion in Greece was nearly uniform in its rejection of the use of the name Macedonia by its neighbors, and the political climate was not conducive to negotiations. At that time the government of Greece was weak (it had a parliamentary majority of one representative) and the opposition was fearlessly taking the government to task on the issue of Macedonia. Eventually, because of the intensity of the issue, the government collapsed and a new government was formed that followed a rather adversarial policy against FYROM by imposing an embargo. The change in leadership of the Greek government because of the death of Andreas Papandreou led to a change of foreign policy direction with increased cooperation between the two nations. Obviously, fifteen years later, the naming of Greece's northern neighbor remains a tough issue for the Greeks, who have chosen not to pursue it further, keeping the issue open while not suffering the electoral fallout internally.

Two immediate observations come to mind regarding the behavior of Greek foreign- policy makers. First, it appears that there was a wave-like interaction between the two states alternating between confrontation and cooperation. Second, there was tremendous internal political discord, which cut across political parties. Zahariadis's book shows tremendous insight into the internal (as opposed to external) factors of foreign- policy making. The author also deals with the wave-like behavior created by internal sociopolitical factors. He clearly highlights what conditions make for more cooperation or more confrontation. Moreover, the author introduces the role of emotion in creating foreign policy that uniquely and effectively produces remarkable explanatory results.

First, the book introduces the issues and acknowledges the theories that have so far attempted to explain foreign-policy making, namely, the rational institutionalist theory and the two-level games theory. Crucially for Zahariadis, he deviates from the beaten path to employ a public policy aspect in his explanation by using the multiple-streams approach, thus highlighting the limitations of domestic-level explanatory variables of the other two approaches. Neither approach sees foreign-policy making for what it is, largely a domestic priority, while the author provides a detailed explanation of why it is so and how it works, by the use of manipulation of the policy-making process. Governments manipulate the process in order to shape foreign policy. Emotions and institutions are intermediaries on the way to a favorite policy, so to speak. Plenty of evidence from a policy that did not work very well for the Greek government is given to support the book's thesis. All of Greece's leaders since 1991 manipulated the process to get what they wanted for internal political reasons, and at the end they were left with policies in which "process triumphed over substance," as the author notes. [End Page 109...