ABSTRACT
Post-conflict peacebuilding is, or should be, at least as much about the reconstitution of societies as it is about the reconstruction of states. Particularly since intrastate conflicts are inevitably social as well as political crises, re-establishing the social foundations of a post-conflict political community is an essential element of moving from conflict to sustainable peace. In the absence of new social arrangements, socially insecure individuals and communities seek out sources of security wherever they can find them, and in post-conflict contexts this can replicate the very social, ethnic, and political cleavages across which the war was fought, reinforce those social structures responsible for the conflict, and ultimately undermine the statebuilding process. Post-Dayton Bosnia’s experience with democratic elections is very much a case in point, as traumatized electorates – voting within an electoral system which is hardly designed to reward political moderation – have rather consistently returned to power those political forces responsible for the war. In other words, in the absence of alternative sources of security, electorates have sought security in the same brands of ethnic nationalism that have generated so much insecurity and misery since the early 1990s.
