Consociational Institutions and Nationalist Party Politics in post-Dayton Bosnia-Herzegovina

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2011
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Haverford College. Department of Political Science
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Thesis
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eng
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Haverford users only
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Abstract
My thesis was an examination of consociationalism in Bosnia-Herzegovina after the signing of the 1995 Dayton Accords that ended the three-year war and established the current Bosnian state. Contrary to some scholarship, I believe that the perpetuation of nationalist parties in Bosnia is not because the Bosnian people are nationalist or because the Balkans are somehow doomed to ethnic conflict. Rather, I argue that the institutional structures of Dayton give an advantage to ethnic-based parties. The strict consociational institutions that define Bosnia almost entirely along ethnic lines at every level of government and in the civil service make it extremely difficult for non-ethnic or non-nationalist parties to win elections. Furthermore, the ruling parties that became entrenched after the war and first elections remained in power for about the first five years after the war. Rival nationalist parties that have employed nationalist outbidding to win elections have replaced some of these since about 2002. The literature I examine deals with power-sharing in divided societies, ethnic conflict, and international state-building. Particularly, I focus on the theory of consociationalism as presented by Arend Lijphart. The literature on ethnic conflict that I examine is concerned with dispelling some misconceptions about the rigidity of ethnic identity. Finally, the state-building literature attempts to analyze some inherent problems with international state-building. Ultimately, however, there is a consensus that state-building in post-conflict divided societies may be the best way to address such issues, rather than letting the conflicts run their course with a winner at the end. The research I did was mainly analyzing tactics and successes of nationalist politics, popular opinions on ethnicity, identity, and inter-ethnic relationships, and a comparison of two more specific cases of alternatives to rigid consociationalism in the Balkans. I found that two particular nationalist parties, the Serb SNSD and the Bosniak SBiH, have used the consociational system to their advantage. The general approach of these parties is to attack their nationalist rivals on their nationalist credentials. At the same time, these parties make "national interests" their top priorities. This usually centers around the existence of the two very autonomous entities in Bosnia, the Republika Srpska (RS) and the Bosniak-Croat Federation (FBiH). The SBiH has attacked its rival, the SDA, as being too willing to compromise on the issue of the RS, which it believes is illegitimate and created from ethnic cleansing and genocide. For its part, the SNSD refuses to negotiate on any issue that would take power away from the RS and its leader, Milorad Dodik, whips up fear of oppression in the Serb people and points to the SBiH as proof that Bosniaks want only to subjugate the Serbs by dismantling "their" entity. Very low voter turn-out and opinion polls during the past elections have shown that all Bosnians are very dismayed with their respective parties. Subsequently, a very low number of people elects them. No true cross-ethnic party has emerged in Bosnia and when nationalist parties try to moderate their stances on certain issues (as the Bosniak SDA and the Serb SDS have sometimes done), they are attacked by their more vociferous nationalist parties as being unable to stand up for their respective nations' interests. The two examples I present of less rigid consociational governments that seem to be faring better in liberalization and democratization are the state of Macedonia and the autonomous district of Brcko in northern Bosnia. Macedonia's consociational laws are more fluid and allow for identities to be self-determined by groups, rather than pre-determined as they are in the Dayton Accords. This has meant that nationalist parties are voted out of office easier in Macedonia when they fail to bring about the reforms people demand. Interestingly, Macedonians of all ethnic groups are generally less tolerant of one another than Bosnians are of one another but the less strict definitions of "groups" has allowed for more effective power-sharing in Macedonia. Brcko is similar in this regard in that the more direct involvement of the Deputy High Representative (a position appointed by the US government to oversee the full implementation of the Dayton Accords) has resulted in more integration and more reforms than in other parts of Bosnia. Though the same nationalist parties win elections in Brcko, the district's progress is a reflection of the different institutions created in Brcko, ones which privilege civil servants' and politicians' abilities and not necessarily their ethnicity. My research and thesis attempt to demonstrate that while Bosnia must have some sort of power-sharing between the three groups, as anything less would surely lead to increased war for territory, rigidity in these power-sharing institutions has had negative consequences. The literature confirms that looser organizing principles of ethnic identity are better for any divided state. Particularly, Lijphart himself believes self-determination of ethnic groups is far superior to pre-determination. What I found was that Bosnians are not nationalist as a group: the continued success of nationalist politics and political stagnation is a result of self-interested, nationalist elites who ethnically outbid one another to remain in power in a state defined along strict ethnic lines.
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