ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces a set of conceptual tools borrowed from contentious politics research that enable the capturing and greater understanding of the complex post-conflict statebuilding processes. It focuses on the strategic aspects of statebuilding interactions in setting the conceptual framework for the analysis. The chapter reveals an array of different international understandings of the Bosnian war and its aftermath, as well as the new state and the role of the international actors in building it. Contentious politics scholars study disruptive, extra institutional, political behavior, ranging from protests to revolutions. The deployment of mechanisms developed by contentious politics scholars is premised on the objective of understanding how local agency operates and interacts with external statebuilding agencies. If the international political opportunity structures are crucial to understanding the complex relationship between external and internal statebuilding agendas, mobilizing structures and framing are equally important in terms of understanding how contentious practices are organized, legitimated and sustained.
