From Voting to Violence examines the ways in which democratization can exacerbate nationalist fervor and ethnic conflict if the conditions promoting a successful transition are not in place. The book argues that international organizations sometimes cause more conflict than they avert in their rush to establish democratic governments and punish outgoing leaders. Snyder closes by prescribing policies that can make democratic transitions less dangerous and allow fledgling democracies to flourish.

Jack L. Snyder is the Robert and Renee Belfer Professor of International Relations in the Department of Political Science and the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University. He holds a Ph.D. from Columbia. His books include Electing to Fight: Why Emerging Democracies Go to War, coauthored with Edward D. Mansfield (MIT Press, 2007) and From Voting to Violence: Democratization and Nationalist Conflict (W.W. Norton, 2000). His articles on such topics as crisis diplomacy, democratization and war, nationalism, imperial overstretch, war crimes tribunals versus amnesties, international relations theory after September 11, and anarchy and culture have appeared in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, International Organization, International Security, and World Politics. Professor Snyder teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on nationalism, comparative methods, and grand strategy. Professor Snyder is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and an elected member of Columbia's Arts and Sciences Policy and Planning Committee. He is the editor of the Norton Series in World Politics.