What makes or breaks revisionist states? Ontological security and historical revisionism in Serbia

Abstract

While state revisionism is well studied in International Relations, historical revisionism as a form of state revisionism has received significantly less attention, particularly in small states who are perceived to have diminished capacity and resources to engage in aggressive revisionist behaviors. This article focuses on denialist historical revisionism whereby political actors deny, trivialize, or minimize the qualification of or responsibility for certain atrocities contrary to the international consensus about them to investigate how revisionism develops from less to more aggressive forms for small states for which such practices might be too costly, both materially and reputationally. To do so, the article traces the trajectory of state-sponsored historical revisionism, including genocide denial, in Serbia and explores the factors that influence this trajectory. It adopts a relational approach to ontological security to observe historical revisionism as a mismatch between an actor’s self-identity versus how the same actor believes the international community sees it considering the international consensus. Integrating both state–society relations and susceptibility to external recognition into the analysis, the article argues that whether or not small states like Serbia are emboldened to pursue more aggressive historical revisionist tactics necessitates a degree of both external and internal validation. More precisely, it requires securing and (mis)using traces of validation of the key aspects of the actor’s favored self-identity from both outside sources of the international consensus, and domestic sources such as civil society, demonstrating creativity in agency. The article contributes to the studies of both (historical) revisionism and small states in International Relations.