ABSTRACT
The question of whether Bosnia is doomed to partition or can survive as
one state – and in what form – largely depends on its institutions and citi-
zens’ commitment to them. Because conflict inevitably hardens the identities
of those involved, mistrust among local parties complicates the process of
institution building. Having endured three and a half years of fierce fight-
ing, it is to be expected that local groups fear each others’ intentions, and are very wary that one group might exploit the peace process to impose its
own vision of the future with the sponsorship of international agencies. This
imposes strong restrictions on the range of acceptable institutions that the
local parties, at least initially, are willing to accept. Most of the Bosniak
leadership has considered the DPA as a ‘floor’, that is, a document to be
built on in order to strengthen central institutions. Both Serb and Croat
nationalist parties have a diametrically opposite view, considering the DPA
as the ‘ceiling’ that should not be further developed, and preferring the development of local autonomies and stronger ties with neighbouring
Croatia and Serbia. This preference makes the Bosniaks nervous because of
the spectre of a Poland-like scenario in which Serbia and Croatia agree to
partition the territory lying between the two. When different groups within
the polity have radically different opinions over the acceptable boundaries
of the political community, and different preferences about issues of alle-
giance and identity, the nature of the institutions becomes the heart of the
political struggle. In these circumstances, the survival of the state depends on a careful
balance of different views held by local parties. An elaborate set of checks
and balances, grounded in the theory of consociationalism, was created at
Dayton to guarantee the political representation of each national group at
the institutional level, to protect groups’ rights to self-government and to
promote inter-ethnic compromise. Ethnic quotas ensure group representa-
tion at all levels of government and in the statewide public administration.
Each group is also granted the right to veto decisions that might violate its own ‘vital interest’, while a proportional electoral system guarantees that all
major groups in society are politically represented. There are strong reasons
to suggest that this consociational framework was the only feasible model
for Bosnia at the time of the signing of the DPA in 1995, and some argue
that it still remains the only realistic institutional option for the country
(Allcock 2004; Bose 2006).
