Between contribution and disengagement: Post-conflict elections and the OSCE role in the normalization of armed groups and militarized political parties in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Tajikistan, and Kosovo

2007 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 192-207
Author(s):  
Fabio Oliva
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Bosnia And Herzegovina ◽  
Armed Groups ◽  
Post Conflict

scholarly journals Armed Group Transition from Rebel to Government

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Avis
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Armed Groups ◽  
War Termination ◽  
Negotiated Settlement ◽  
Protracted Conflict ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Peace Agreements ◽  
Conflict Settings ◽  
Post War

Governments and political parties with an armed history are not unusual, yet how these groups function during and after the transition from conflict has largely been ignored by the existing literature. Many former armed groups have assumed power in a variety of contexts. Whilst this process is often associated with brokered peace agreements that encourage former combatants to transform into political parties, mobilise voters, and ultimately stand for elections, this is not always the case. What is less clearly understood is how war termination by insurgent victory shapes patterns of post-war politics. This rapid literature review collates available evidence of transitions made by armed groups to government. The literature collated presents a mixed picture, with transitions mediated by an array of contextual factors that are location and group specific. Case studies are drawn from a range of contexts where armed groups have assumed some influence over government (these include those via negotiated settlement, victory and in contexts of ongoing protracted conflict). The review provides a series of readings and case studies that are of use in understanding how armed groups may transition in “post-conflict” settings.

Post-Conflict Cooperation in Multi-Ethnic Local communities of Bosnia and Herzegovina: A Qualitative Comparative analysis of Diaspora's Role

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 31-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jasmin Hasić
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Bosnia And Herzegovina ◽  
Qualitative Comparative Analysis ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Comparative Case Study ◽  
Local Institutions ◽  
Local Elites ◽  
Case Study Analysis ◽  
Post Conflict

How are diaspora involvement in peacebuilding and elite cooperation in multi-ethnic municipalities complementary? This article examines how local elites perceive and respond to conflict-generated diaspora's role in peacebuilding in nine post-conflict multi-ethnic municipalities of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and whether these perceptions can determine types of inter-ethnic cooperation within local institutions. Using a systematic comparative case study analysis utilising ideal-type fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (QCA), I derive four types of relationships. The results indicate that local elites, experiencing various levels of direct and indirect interaction with diaspora communities, perceive diaspora's role in the process as constraining their own cooperation prospects. The analysis also demonstrates that local elites perceive diaspora as insufficiently competent and imperfectly coordinated to tackle major challenges in local peacebuilding frameworks and that diaspora actions do not significantly affect the reform of current dynamics and practices of intra-ethnic cooperation among elites.

scholarly journals Endorsers, challengers or builders? Political parties’ diaspora outreach in a post-conflict state

2018 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 384-399 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Koinova
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Party Building ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Opposition Parties

How do parties in government and opposition in a contested post-conflict state reach out to their diasporas abroad? Do their policies overlap or differ, and if so why? Scholarly accounts of sending states’ outreach towards diasporas have paid little attention to the variety of actors and processes within sending states, and have grouped states with contested sovereignty in the same cluster as states for which sovereignty is not a salient issue. This article focuses on one of these contested states, Kosovo, and on the party engagement with diasporas abroad that has emerged there. I conceptualize three types of extraterritorial party outreach – state-endorsing, state-challenging, and party-building. I argue that parties that emerge from secessionism and warfare are more likely to reach out to the diaspora through a state-endorsing or party-building approach, depending on whether they are in government or opposition. Parties that are newly institutionalized in the post-conflict polity seek to engage the diaspora through a state-endorsing or state-challenging approach.

scholarly journals How and Why Armed Groups Participate in Elections

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 710-727 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aila M. Matanock ◽  
Paul Staniland
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Electoral Politics ◽  
Systematic Research ◽  
Armed Groups ◽  
Democratic Practice ◽  
New Concepts ◽  
Electoral Strategies ◽  
Develop Theory ◽  
Comparative Case Studies ◽  
Complex Relationships

Armed actors are often involved in electoral politics, from the fusing of ballots and bullets in armed political parties to insurgents covertly backing politicians. We develop new concepts and theory to better understand these complex relationships between violent actors and democratic practice. We first offer a novel conceptualization of armed groups’ electoral strategies that systematically maps out variation in the organizational directness and public openness of groups’ involvement in elections. We then use comparative case studies to develop theory about the conditions under which each of these electoral strategies is most likely, and what can trigger changes between them. The interaction of armed groups’ power and expectations of popular support with governments’ policies of toleration or repression determines the strategies of electoral participation that groups pursue. These concepts and arguments lay the foundation for a systematic research agenda on when and how “normal” and armed politics become intertwined.

Bosnian voices from the bottom of the well: Genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity and victims’ right to remedies

2021 ◽  
pp. 026975802110464
Author(s):  
Alma Begicevic
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Bosnia And Herzegovina ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Peace Treaty ◽  
Close Family Member ◽  
Cultural Rights ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
Post War ◽  
The One

Human rights advocates call for reparation as an important step to acknowledge and repair historical injustice and mass harms. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, victims of war continue to seek monetary reparation for non-pecuniary damages caused by genocide: murder, injury to human body and dignity, and harms inflicted upon a close family member. They seek legal remedies using national, foreign, and international human rights judicial venues. Drawing from qualitative, ethnographic research data and archival documents, the article examines legal claims and public discourse regarding reparation and makes a case for a reconceptualization of reparation by including victim voices. The article concludes that despite being absent from the post-conflict victims’ reparation programs in Bosnia and Herzegovina, monetary reparation has assumed a social valuation attribute. On the one hand, it is a victim’s call for retributive, legal conceptions of justice – that someone who escaped international and national criminal justice programs pays. On the other hand, it is a tool to draw attention to Bosnian victims’ present civil and political exclusions that came with the international post-conflict peace treaty. While the post-war reconstruction focused on international trials, democratization, restorative justice, and state building programs, it also restricted socio-economic and cultural rights by redefining the citizenship and dismantling the welfare state. Reparation is a debt owed to victims.

A Different Form of Intervention? Revisiting the Role of Researchers in Post-war Contexts

2020 ◽  
pp. 171-184
Author(s):  
Daniela Lai
Keyword(s):  
Bosnia And Herzegovina ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Intervention Research ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Military

This chapter deals with Daniela Lai's argument on the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which explains how some forms of distance between researcher and researched are created by academic research and seen as a form of intervention. It focuses on the consequences of research-as-intervention and intervention by academia that shape the very field it sets out to research. It also discusses how the over-research of certain areas of Bosnian society are experienced due to academic biases that lead to distancing. The chapter looks into another form of distancing that concerns communities, groups, and topics that are sidelined by intervention research for not being the focus of the military and political interventions. It also addresses why there are people, places, and problems that are absent and distant from fieldwork-based research in most over-researched post-conflict societies.

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