Discursive democracy and the challenge of state building in divided societies: reckoning with symbolic capital in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Abstract

Current approaches to democratic state building place serious conceptual limits on policy options. A democratic future for Bosnia's people will require far more searching engagement with identity formation and its politicization than reform efforts have so far contemplated. Theories of discursive democracy illuminate how this might be possible. We deploy the discursive idea of symbolic capital to show how one might identify the lines along which people in Bosnia could constitute meaningful, internally legitimated political communities – or that would indicate the experiment was not worth attempting. Unless advocates of democratic state building can articulate, rather than assume, a sufficiency of common ground among the populations' multiple, overlapping and conflicting identities, they may have to revert to the default of separate political communities.

Keywords:

• discursive democracy
• state building
• Bosnia
• symbolic capital

Acknowledgements

The authors especially thank Jeffrey C. Isaac, Rudy Professor of Political Science at Indiana University, Bloomington, for his sustained support, spirited encouragement, and intellectual contribution throughout the development of this project, both as colleague and director of the Indiana Democracy Consortium. Thanks also to John Hulsey for critiquing an early draft, and to Dr. Florian Bieber and two anonymous reviewers for their many helpful suggestions for revision. The authors received financial support from the Indiana Democracy Consortium for presentations of earlier versions of the paper at the 2009 annual meeting of the Association for the Study of Nationalities and the 2008 “Challenges to Democratic Governance in CEE and the Balkans” conference of the Center for the Study of Imperfections in Democracy at Central European University.

Notes

The names of the authors are listed alphabetically; each contributed equally to the paper.

Pickering (discussing Bosnians' “social capital”).

“Dayton Accords” is the name usually given to the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina with Annexes, signed in Paris but negotiated under American auspices in late 1995. The Constitution of Bosnia is Annex Four of the Dayton Accords.

Formally, Bosnia is not a federal system, and the term is controversial in domestic discourse. Bose describes Bosnia as a “multi-tiered … confederation, an asymmetric union” (242).

See Caspersen's comparison of consociational and “integrative” elements of post-war institutions in Bosnia (569).

Thanks to John Hulsey for the kernel of this point.

This does not mean there is a consensus; indeed, our point is precisely that Bosnians do not agree on the causes of Dayton's dysfunction or how to repair it. “Failure” is a complicated claim: Within the framework of Dayton, considerable centralization of competencies at the state level has occurred, including customs, taxation, war crimes prosecution and a unified military, while the Brčko District has achieved a great measure of integration (Dahlman and Tuathail, “Bosnia's Third Geopolitical Space”). Dayton is also credited with maintaining peace, a prerequisite to any post-conflict state building. Whatever Dayton's accomplishments, even its defenders now generally consider that it needs considerable reform; few maintain that Bosnia's current governance can continue indefinitely.

See Lippman, arguing that “Bosnia … could not accurately be called a ‘state’ today. Political, social, economic and cultural divisions all combine to prevent the reconstruction of a healthy, functioning country” (17).

A survey on the 10th anniversary of Dayton found that 72.6% of Bosnians agreed that “the current constitution of Bosnia-Herzegovina does not work,” with a range from 77.2% for Bosniaks to 64.0% for Croats (Tuathail, O'Loughlin, and Djipa 67). Opinions of Dayton itself were more mixed; 19.7% of Bosnians answered that “Dayton has generally been positive and should not be altered” (but 41.5% of Serbs); 37.5% answered that “Dayton was necessary to end the war, but now BiH needs a new constitution to prepare for the EU” (63.2% of Bosniaks); only 10.8% answered that “Dayton has generally been negative and should be abolished” (only 3.8% of Serbs, but 18.7% of Croats) (Tuathail, O'Loughlin, and Djipa 72).

Tuathail, O'Loughlin, and Djipa, and Tuathail and O'Loughlin provide excellent surveys of the contingent historical origins and recent shifts in these identities.

These are typological distinctions; in practice, post-conflict projects mix consociational and universalist features, and some consociational models incorporate opportunities to renegotiate communal divisions of authority (Bieber, “The Challenge of Democracy”).

Fearon and Laitin.

Brubaker 45 (ethnic groups are not “things in the world, but perspectives on the world”).

Hale (discussing the presence of alternative identities as contributing to separatist sentiment).

The last census, conducted in 1991, gave the following percentages: 43% “Muslim by nationality”, 34% Serb, 17% Croat, 5.6% Yugoslav, 2.3% other (Zavod za statistiku).

See International Crisis Group, Bosnia. There are areas of Serb majority in the western federation and a few opštine in eastern Republika Srpska with significant returned populations of Bosniaks. Individuals returned, or not, for complex reasons, involving concerns about safety, the receptivity of the local majority, and economic calculations (Tuathail and O'Loughlin 11; Dahlman and Tuathail “Broken Bosnia”).

See International Crisis Group, Bosnia's Incomplete Transition: “The Bosniak community is evenly and bitterly divided over [attitudes to Republika Srpska, replacement of the Dayton Constitution, and the role of the international community]” (6).

Results in post-war elections since 1996 have returned consistent majorities for nationalist parties or parties with a clear ethnic affiliation (SETimes). The only significant example of cross-ethnic voting is Bosniak support, through the Social Democratic Party, for the current Croat member of the state presidency (International Crisis Group, Bosnia's Incomplete Transition 10).

The electoral process has been revised frequently since 1996, often with the express or implicit purpose of encouraging cross-ethnic voting or ensuring multi-ethnic representation (Bose 204–41). This in no way suggests that nationalist parties are incapable of cooperating.

For example, individuals surveyed across Bosnia in 2005 reported a willingness to accept minority returns (Tuathail, O'Loughlin, and Djipa 16) and many of those who reclaimed property continued to live in it, with rates as high as 87% in Brčko and 82% in Mostar, although these areas have “their own micro-geographies of settlement segregation” (Tuathail and O'Loughlin 18).

In a 2005 survey, 63% of Bosnian Serbs agreed or strongly agreed that “ethnic relations in my locality will improve when all nationalities are separated into territories that belong only to them.” Comparative ratios were 48% for Bosniaks and 67% for Bosnian Croats (Tuathail and O'Loughlin 18–19).

Electoral choices are hardly the only means of assessing symbolic capital, but they are useful, have the advantage of being consequential – that is, expressing actual decisions (not mere opinions), and of special interest precisely because they have been the focus of so much effort by the international community. One cannot say with confidence what votes for nationalist parties mean to Bosnians, but it would be implausible to interpret the electoral outcomes as affirmative evidence that they support an integral state.

See Malcolm 51–69, 125–26.

See O'Loughlin and Tuathail 25–26 (discussing correlations between religiosity and preference for separatism across ethnic groups in Bosnia).

All Bosnians speak the same language, shared with the populations of Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro. Regional variations are highly mutually intelligible with similar literary forms. The most significant variations do not track with markers such as religion or ethnicity or historical political units; this is changing as a result of the segregation across territory and within school systems whose curricula accentuate linguistic difference. The three variants are still a single language by any non-political criterion, but the Burkean question is not how objective the variation is, but whether individuals ascribe political relevance to it.

See Donia and Fine; Hoare. There was a separate Bosnian Church and a kingdom centered on Bosnia during the Middle Ages, and under the Ottoman Empire the territory of Bosnia evinced a discernible continuity. The Habsburgs governed Bosnia as a separate province, and it retained a separate territorial identity through most of the Royal Yugoslav and Titoist periods. This historical identity is frequently noted as a basis for the current state. These claims were complex: recollections of regional identity also track with memories of a social system dominated by Muslim landlords and a (tolerant) hierarchy of ethno-religious groups (Malcolm 119–34). The recent war weakened such claims. For an example of the complex effects of local memories on broader conflicts, see Sudetic.

Bosnians have little sense of shared citizenship. “There is no agreement on the future, and elite mistrust reflects a genuine absence of social trust” (International Crisis Group, Bosnia's Incomplete Transition 2). On the other hand, “[w]hile originally not widely accepted, the flag and the symbols [imposed by the OHR] have become part of the everyday life in Bosnia and Herzegovina” (Bieber, “After Dayton, Dayton?” 15) – symbols that can lead to transformations in shared political identity (see Anderson). Other symbols – such as the image of Marshal Tito – appear in Bosniak areas, but not in Croat or Serb areas.

The European Court of Human Rights has recently ruled that elements of the constituent peoples' electoral prerogatives violate European human rights (Sejdić and Finci). See also Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina or full reference to “Constituent Peoples” Decision of the Constitutional Court.

An example is the wartime destruction of the Ferhadija Mosque in Banja Luka and post-war resistance to rebuilding this landmark. A generation in Banja Luka is growing up for which “Ferhadija” is an empty field and construction site. Many mosques have been rebuilt or built in the Republika Srpska since the war, generally with foreign assistance (Riedlmayer).

See Sebastián 18, linking police reform to “moving closer to Europe.” We discuss this orientation at length in Waters, “Assuming Bosnia” 53ff.

Bosnians' perceptions of the EU vary considerably: “the vast majority of the electorate … supports the idea of European integration” (Mus). However, this sentiment is demographically complicated, with Bosniaks far more in favor of European integration than Serbs (International Crisis Group, Bosnia's Incomplete Transition 19). The previous High Representative noted that EU membership structurally favors the interests of Bosniaks, inasmuch as it encourages the centralization of state power (Joseph and Hitchner).

On racial and genetic makeup, see Marjanovic et al.; see also Malcolm.

Bakke et al. (surveying social distance among Bosnians and not finding “clear attitudinal cleavages” across ethnic groups).

See Bieber, “The Challenge of Democracy,” describing models for protecting ethnic interests without entrenching vetoes.