Nations, etc. – had they not existed in the first place. Yet behind the tritenesslurks a great deal of truth. The world is a highly imperfect place, and interna-tional law and international organizations have emerged to ameliorate its short-comings. International organizations are often bloated and inefficient, and theyprovide employment to a perhaps disproportionately large number of bureaucraticmediocrities. And it is certainly also possible to agree with the contention thatmany international organizations suffer from severe deficiencies in terms of legit-imacy and transparency, even as they preach the gospel of democracy andenlightened global governance. Yet Parish does not seem to understand that defi-cient solutions are often preferable to no solutions at all. Dissenting opinions areas a rule in this book either ignored or swept to the side, denigrated in the pro-cess as belonging to the self-serving industry of scholars that parasitically feedsoff the bloated and fantastical mechanisms of international justice. While Parishis fond of drawing comparisons in which domestic law and institutions outshinetheir international counterparts, examples of the sort of problems that he high-lights could easily be found in all national governments, judicial systems andbureaucracies. It is, however, doubtful that anyone would propose shutting downthe workings of these institutions.

In conclusion, Parish’s book can only be said to disappoint. Readers seeking atrenchant and well-reasoned critique of international law and international organiza-tions should look elsewhere. This is very disconcerting, particularly given the pro-vocative and, by comparison, cogent arguments made by Parish in his earliercritiques of the international community’s role in the former Yugoslavia.

Christian Axboe NielsenDepartment of Culture and Society,

Aarhus University, Midtbyen, Aarhus, Denmarkchristian.a.nielsen@hum.au.dk

� 2013, Christian Axboe Nielsenhttp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14683857.2013.773185

Strategic rebellion: ethnic conflict in FYR Macedonia and the Balkans, byPavlos I. Koktsidis, Bern, Peter Lang, 2012, 261 pp., (paperback), ISBN 978-3-0343-0148-0 and £35 (ebook), ISBN 978-3-0353-0260-8

In Strategic Rebellion, the author introduces the very term advocating the neces-sity of combining grievance and greed theories in international conflict analysis.According to Koktsidis, relative deprivation alone does not necessarily drive tothe outburst of an ethnic conflict. Rather, ‘the act of disobedience stemming fromresentment towards authority’ materializes when a number of other parameters arealso in place thus rendering violence a ‘calculated or rationalist’ reaction. Thesestrategic parameters often include the availability of resources, military or other,the adequate internal political organization of the insurgents as well as other‘regional constraints or incentives’. The reason the author employs the term stra-tegic rebellion is to highlight the significance of distinguishing ‘reason from emo-tion in the deliberate and calculated character of modern-day insurgencies’. Thecase study employed by the author to vindicate his theoretical argument concerns

112 Book reviews

the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. An emphasis is given on the vio-lent intrastate ethnic crisis that erupted in 2001, almost a decade after its declara-tion of independence from the Former Yugoslavia. The author investigated indetail the historical process leading to the crisis of 2001 in FYROM in his effortto substantiate his theoretical inquiry aiming at putting the two theories, regardingthe generation of a violent conflict (grievance vs. greed) into a comprehensiveframework. The first theoretical perspective, supported by a number of analysts,advocates that consistent and enduring social exclusion (deprivation) experiencedby a social – ethnic group create grievances that, sooner rather than later, wouldevolve into a violent reaction. The second theoretical perspective (greed) main-tains that it is the material gains and rewards sought by private entrepreneurs thatlie behind violent conflicts. These political entrepreneurs, (221) ‘acquire and max-imize resources through plundering, corruption and expropriation’. The authorindeed succeeds in demonstrating that the crisis of 2001 in FYROM was notonly the result of the seriously disappointed Albanians which did not enjoy theirminority rights being utterly deprived from the socio-economic political system oftheir country. Rather, regional circumstances and more specifically, the strategicenvironment, previously missing, that provided the sufficient condition for theeruption of the violent conflict. More specifically, after the initial theoretical anal-ysis to support his main arguments, the author in chapter two elaborates on theway in which the Albanian grievances were established in the post-Yugoslav era.This chapter presents those elements that substantiate relative deprivation stem-ming from the strong impact that the socio-economic decline had on the attitudesof the Albanian community. The author establishes that the marginalization of theAlbanian community had already a structural element, almost of a self-inflictednature, which was certainly deteriorated by the consequent oppression of the Sko-pje government during its Yugoslav era. The third chapter analyses the way inwhich those grievances accumulated in the first decade as an independent state,thus mounting the radicalization of the Albanian community. This chapter is oneof the strongest in the book, containing also prime research material from localpolitical leaders. It measures some indices of political oppression, from constitu-tional, to educational and linguistic discrimination, to political and economicdeprivation, as well as occasions of ‘state and institutional misconduct and mal-treatment’ (111). In effect, the author establishes vividly the constant effort of theSlav-Macedonian majority governments to conduct what the Albanian communityhas termed ‘ethnic engineering’ in favor of the ‘Slav-Macedonian’ people (89). Itseems not surprising that this would have generated strong Albanian grievancesand at times violent reactions. In the following chapter, Koktsidis examines thestrategic environment that in fact gave impetus to the 2001 crisis. Accordingly,the author, through a well-documented analysis, asserts (114) that ‘[N]aturally, theconflict in Kosovo presented a time-bomb that was pending to explode for overa decade, providing the human and material resources and the logistical supportfor a local insurgency in FYR Macedonia’. The weakness of the Skopje govern-ment and its inability to control certain regions mainly in the Tetovo area was anadditional factor precipitating violent conflict since it created assumptions toinsurgents that rewards would be attainable after a successful military reaction.The latter was considered almost predestined since the Slav Macedonian govern-ment was deprived from military capabilities to counter serious attacks. In addi-tion to these, according to the author, questions from regional states regarding

Southeast European and Black Sea Studies 113

some of the constituent components of the state of FYROM, most particularly,regarding the name and the nation, stemming from Greece and Bulgaria, respec-tively, seem to have aggravated the radicalization of the Albanians who consid-ered this as a further weakness on which they could further exploit. The eruptionof the 2001 crisis in FYROM is analysed in chapter five, as well the way inwhich the international community, working mainly through the heads of NATOand the EU, activated coercive diplomacy to end and manage the crisis. Thenotion of strategic coercion has been used in this analysis to indicate that certainpressures as well as incentives towards the warring factions can end a small- ormedium-scale conflict. The author is right to highlight that a large portion of thesuccess of coercive diplomacy rested on the fact that there was a real coherencein the international efforts to terminate the conflict. Thus, he continues his ‘griev-ance vs greed’ inquiry in his effort to fully assess the point at which the sourcesof conflict are fully addressed. He quickly discovers that even after the OhridAgreement, grievances did not cease thus offering a ‘negative peace’ to the coun-try. Precisely because the settlement reflected a reality that was never communi-cated effectively to the Slav Macedonian public opinion, the grievances this timealso involved Slav Macedonians. Considering that the Ohrid Agreement was abad settlement providing unequal Albanian prerogatives, it had to change or notto be fully implemented. By the same token, the Albanian minority, satisfied bythe rights offered to them, seem to have increased their demands for further pre-rogatives, at times seeking political treatment on an equal basis with the SlavMacedonians. Through an analysis of the post-settlement period, Koktsidis, in hiseffort to monitor the factors terminating the conflict, he discovers the opposite.Accordingly, he shows that coercive measures can be effective only for a short-term management of a conflict. If sustainable peaceful solutions are sought, then‘imposed settlements’ do not appear as the best recipe. For, they encourage long-term resentment amongst the warring factions thus generating a backlash effect ofthe entire international involvement. For this reason, Koktsidis rightly concludesthat ‘peace settlements that were built on pressure, power and tactical objectives,carried out by parties irrelevant to the conflict itself, tend to produce fragileresults and recycle grievances’ (229). The difficulties, notwithstanding, of tryingto present affectively such a composite theoretical argumentation, the author hasmanaged to vindicate his theoretical inquiry through a balanced and well-docu-mented analysis. There are however, some minor, almost invisible omissions,such as some references which do not appear in the bibliography (Klok 1999),or some references that should have existed (i.e. Regarding NATO’s decision tointervene on 28 May 1998, 144). Irrespectively, the book shall be considered acompulsory reading for those interested in crisis management, both academicsand practitioners.

Fotini BellouDepartment of International and European Studies, University of Macedonia

Thessaloniki, Greecefbellou@uom.gr

� 2013, Fotini Bellouhttp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14683857.2013.773188

114 Book reviews