Roadblocks and Expectations in the Process of Bosnia and Herzegovina's Accession to the European Union

The European Union (EU) and Bosnia and Herzegovina have a long and specific relationship dating back to the early 1990s and the break-up of the former Yugoslavia. While the EU didn't present itself in a flattering light during the breakup of the SFRY, after the Dayton Peace Agreement and post-conflict governance, it tried to impose itself as a factor of stability in the eyes of B&H public. The aim of the chapter is to present key elements, problems, and consequences of unsuccessful integration into the EU. After a short presentation of the chronology of relations between B&H and the EU, the authors aim to answer several questions. First, what are the main issues in B&H-EU relations? Second, who is responsible for the stalemate in integration process? Third, how successful is the EU conditionality policy towards B&H?

The Alienation from Citizenship in Bosnia and Herzegovina: From Criticism of the Constitution to Actual Participation

Remaining true to the spirit and logic of the war-torn territories, the Dayton Peace Agreement highlights the interdependence of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s (B&H) 'local' problems with the wider region’s problems, and indeed, global problems. 25 years after the signing of the Dayton Peace Agreement, we have gained a democracy without a people, a democracy with MP’s defined by their ethnicity, who, at their discretion, interpret the will of the people and dispose of the mandate entrusted to them by their convictions. This paper aims to open up the question of whether the Dayton Constitution alienated B&H’s citizens from their political community. Pointing to the process of alienation from citizenship, which is, among other things, caused by a constitutional architecture that does not conceive of the citizen as an abstract category, the author focuses more on the conditions in which voters are denied real political participation. In theoretical terms, this participation would mean not only resistance to ethnonationalism, but also the creation of opportunities for citizens to unite and make political-strategic, and long-term decisions important for the future of B&H.

Bosnia and Herzegovina: From War to Negative Peace

Through the history Bosnia and Herzegovina, as a territory and as a country, has been very unstable and full of ethnical diversity; nowadays not much has changed. It is a new century, there is a new political ideology and new structures; however, the protagonists still have different ethnical backgrounds. Changing the ideology in the area of the Balkans was very difficult and followed by dispute between the people and by a bloody war. To whom the territory belongs, who was first there, and who has more right to claim that territory – these are the main questions with which nationalists and politicians rule over the whole populations. This contribution is focusing on the process of conflict transformation from violence and total war into the reduction of violence. Bosnia and Herzegovina formally applied for EU membership on 15 February 2016, following years of constitutional reforms and commitments with the Dayton Peace Agreement.

A concrete proposal to upgrade the Dayton Peace Agreement

Most observers of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s political situation have focused only on the problems that the Dayton Peace Accord created for the normal functioning of this Southeastern European state, but a workable solution is yet to be proposed. The Accord achieved peace by blocking any ability for effective governing and by diminishing the Bosnian state capacity through an excessive dispersion of power with an uncommon constitutional focus on internationalism, and an erroneous type of pluralism that undermines the normal functioning of a democracy. The solution for these problems is to be found by adjusting the procedural selection of the United Nations High Representative, who is the primary actor directly responsible for the implementation of the Accord, both in terms of the letter and intent of the document, and this paper explains how that change can be made and what problems it will resolve.

A Constitution for Peace: Federalism and Consociationalism in Bosnia and Herzegovina

The present paper draws on the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina, resulted from the Dayton Peace Agreement, in order to explain how the elements of federalism and consociationalism can become important tools in the field of transitional justice. By combining federalism and consociationalism, it will be demonstrated how shared-rule and self-rule can be useful in addressing the demands of territorially concentrated ethnic groups for more autonomy and self-government, while at the same time preserving the territorial integrity of the state. It also explains the role of post-conflict constitutional design processes on their ability to reconcile groups, to address intolerable grievances and to prevent further polarization by providing a common vision of the future of a state.

Bosnia and Herzegovina: Unifying Armed Forces in a Divided State

Bosnia and Herzegovina emerged as an independent state in 1995 after a bloody civil war that accompanied the dissolution of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The new state faced the task of democratizing its political system and constructing its civil–military relations in the context of postconflict reconstruction and reconciliation, while working within the challenging parameters established by the Dayton Peace Agreement. In order to maintain a unified state of Bosnia and Herzegovina but at the same time create conditions in which Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs could coexist, the international community, which directed the terms of the Dayton Peace Agreement, divided the state internally into two entities and allocated public offices equally among the three ethnic groups, creating thus a convoluted power-sharing structure which continues to dominate the country’s political developments. In addition, the terms of the peace agreement established an extensive presence of the international community to oversee and to a large extent dictate the country’s postwar reforms and implementation of various aspects of the peace agreement. As a result of the context in which it reached statehood, the terms of the peace agreement, and regional circumstances, Bosnia and Herzegovina’s civil–military relations since independence have been shaped by three factors: sustained ethnic divisions among the three constituent peoples; continued, and sometimes forceful, presence of the international community; and the country’s desire for international integration, particularly potential membership in the European Union and NATO. For almost a decade after the war, Bosnia and Herzegovina lacked state-level defense institutions. In fact, the Dayton Peace Agreement allowed the three ethnic groups to maintain their wartime armed forces, leading to the maintenance of three separate militaries, each commanded and controlled by the corresponding ethnic group. Only after a decade of separate existence were the armed forces united and central institutions for their control established. This unification, however, would not have been possible without the international community’s actions and incentives. The continued presence of the Office of the High Representative, coupled with the country’s desire to satisfy the conditions of membership in the European Union and NATO, have led to the establishment of formal institutional structures for democratic civil–military relations and the unification of its ethnic-based armed forces into one military force. At the same time, while the armed forces have been unified and formal institutional structures for civilian control over the armed forces established, Bosnia and Herzegovina’s civil–military relations have yet to be classified as democratic because the formal powers of the civilian leadership have yet to be fully realized.

The Dayton democracy model and its impact on the Bosnian State

The Dayton Peace Agreement (DPA) ended the war inBosnia-Herzegovina (B&H) and created a new constitutional order. The very first unique feature of DPA is its 10th Annex which provides one person (The High Representative of the International Community in B&H) with enormous powers (legislative, judicial, and executive) which is granted to him by this Annex. In this respect, a new concept of interventionism is introduced to justify the involvement of external factors in internal affairs of B&H. The ‘prescribedDayton democracy’ from outside is not really a democracy in a full sense,because it has put the war elites in charge, with questionable legitimacy, who are under foreign influence. The DPA formalised and emphasised this conceptof ‘ethnicalisation’ of the constitutional system, by putting the constituent peoples at the very core of Bosnian statehood. This constituent people’sconcept created an ethnic based power sharing that did not function until today. State-building in B&H has been drastically slowed down by internaldisagreement, fostered by the consociatal model of democracy. Such ‘constitutional and democracy model’ impacts significantly the stability of theBosnian state.

Interlude

This interlude outlines the contours of international authority created in the response to the Bosnian war of the 1990s. The remaking of international institutions in response to Bosnia's war and its postwar peace heralded the coming-into-being of the “international community” as the dominant protagonist of a post-Cold War order structured around the values of peace, democracy, the rule of law, humanitarian solidarity, and the inviolability of human rights. This order was presented as more or less universally valid. The universal validity of this post-Cold War model bestowed two main roles and sets of hierarchical relations on the agents of intervention: that of mediator above and between conflicting parties, and that of civilizing missionary or educator of not fully modern people(s). Successfully occupying either role required a constant demonstration of neutrality. However, working out what it meant to be “neutral” in the everyday encounters of international intervention across relations of difference was often a vexing and unpredictable endeavor. The interlude then looks at postwar Bosnia's political settlement and explains why refugee return became such an important site of intervention encounters. It also considers the Dayton Peace Agreement.

The Essence of Analogy: Conflict Termination and State-building Lessons from Bosnia-Herzegovina to Syria

From the perspective of Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH) today, the legacy of the Dayton Peace Agreement (DPA) remains mixed. The dominant view is that the DPA is the origin of its political impasse, economic stagnation, and failed nation-building. Yet, it is indisputable that DPA has been successful in preventing the recurrence of a major violent ethnic conflict in BiH. More recently, the failures of Syrian peace talks to yield a durable settlement have evoked the lessons from the DPA. However, most analyses have concluded the parallels with the Bosnian war and its resolution are misplaced given the complexity and severity of the war in Syria. This article argues for a more nuanced approach to distilling the Dayton legacy, particularly when it is employed as a historical analogy. It highlights the usefulness of the DPA as an analogy for successful conflict termination, while offering lessons about the pitfalls of externally imposed consociational arrangements.