What drives the politics of majority nationalism during crises and peace mediations? In this innovative work on the comparative politics of majority nationalism, Neophytos Loizides answers this important question—for both policy-makers and scholars—by investigating how peacemakers succeed or fail in transforming the language of ethnic nationalism and war in their communities. Politics of Majority Nationalism focuses on the Middle East and the Balkans to explore crises, stalemates and peace mediations involving Turkey and Greece and including EU, Kurdish, Cypriot, Syrian and (Slav) Macedonian i ... More

What drives the politics of majority nationalism during crises and peace mediations? In this innovative work on the comparative politics of majority nationalism, Neophytos Loizides answers this important question—for both policy-makers and scholars—by investigating how peacemakers succeed or fail in transforming the language of ethnic nationalism and war in their communities. Politics of Majority Nationalism focuses on the Middle East and the Balkans to explore crises, stalemates and peace mediations involving Turkey and Greece and including EU, Kurdish, Cypriot, Syrian and (Slav) Macedonian issues. In addition to employing a novel mixed-method research design to study frames, crisis behavior, and mediation analysis, the book also extends its arguments to the post-communist transitions in Serbia, Georgia and Ukraine. Drawing on new datasets, elite interviews, and parliamentary debates, the book analyzes and explains the under-emphasized linkages between institutions, symbols, and framing processes that enable or restrict the choice of peace. Exploring systematically, and for the first time, the politics of majority nationalism in its various manifestations, Loizides shows how ethnopolitical frames influence crisis behavior, protracted stalemates, and ultimately the choice of peace. He provides a comprehensive account of the failures and successes of accommodation mechanisms in the Middle East and the Balkans, identifies the ideational pre-conditions of peace and conflict—including how ideas become institutionalized in both national and regional environments—and identifies for mediators and policy-makers a set of tools to use when communicating peace messages to local and national constituencies.