ABSTRACT
There is a consensus about Dayton – that is repeated so often it is virtually a mantra of international officials – that the 1995 peace agreement was a treaty ‘designed to end a war, not to build a state’. This chapter seeks to establish that this consensus is based on a myth and that the Dayton agreement has, in fact, facilitated external regulation, rather than restricting it. It briefly considers the disputed origins of the Dayton agreement, after which the post-Dayton developments are briefly analysed in two stages. The first period is 1995–99, during which time the powers of the PIC High Representative were extended, but with little clear policy direction or end point for the ad hoc international administration. The second period, 2000–2005, saw a gradual transformation of external regulative mechanisms under the leadership of the EU, which laid a comprehensive framework for European ‘ownership’ of the post-Dayton process.
