Member state-building versus peacebuilding: the contradictions of EU state-building in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Abstract

This article explores the European Union's (EU's) intervention in Bosnia and the problems it has encountered so far in promoting a ‘functioning state’ and compliance with EU reforms. Drawing on the second generation of Europeanisation literature, this state of affairs can be explained as a result of high domestic adoption costs and normative inconsistencies in the application of conditionality on the part of the EU. However, this view assumes that the EU's efforts in Bosnia are intrinsically coherent and that in order for the EU to successfully promote its conditions, what is required are just some fine-tuning and more ‘cooperative’ local elites. This article contends that, in effect, the EU's enlargement policy, and in particular, its state-building agenda, is undermined by a series of internal contradictions: between the EU's technocratic approach and the politics of state-building; between state-strengthening and state-weakening dynamics associated with the EU's intervention; between the external promotion of EU demands and local ownership; and more generally, between member state-building and peacebuilding. It is only if these contradictions are acknowledged and better understood that we can begin to comprehend the potential but also the limitations of Europeanisation in Bosnia.

Keywords:

• Europeanisation
• state-building
• Bosnia and Herzegovina
• European Union
• accession
• conditionality

Acknowledgements

I express my gratitude to Michelle Cini, Gemma Collantes-Celador, Magnus Feldmann, Nieves Pérez Solórzano-Borragán, Alex Prichard and the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. I also thank the interviewees for their invaluable contribution to this research. Responsibility for any errors and omissions lies with the author alone.

Notes

For a more detailed discussion of alternative explanatory models and scope conditions, see Juncos (2011).

Interviews with Commission officials, Brussels, March–April 2007.

According to Cox (1981), ‘problem-solving’ theory ‘takes the world as it finds it, with the prevailing social and power relationships and the institutions into which they are organised, as the given framework for action [and it aims to] make these relationships and institutions work smoothly by dealing effectively with particular sources of trouble’ (pp. 128–129).

Interviews with EUPM, EUSR and Commission officials, Sarajevo and Brussels, 2005–2009.

Interview with a Commission official, Brussels, 28 November 2005.

Interviews with Commission officials, Brussels, 2005–2007.

Interview with an EUSR official, Sarajevo, July 2005.

This was acknowledged by Bosnian officials (interviews in Sarajevo, 2005, and Brussels, 2007) and was also mentioned by several EUPM, EUSR and Commission officials in interviews with the author, Brussels and Sarajevo, 2007–2009.

These low percentages contrast with the approval rates of international actors: 65% of Bosnians approving the job being done by the EUPM, 60% by the EU and 51% by the High Representative (United Nations Development Programme 2010, pp. 27–29).

Between 2000 and 2006, EU assistance to the Western Balkans was channelled through CARDS.

Candidate countries can also receive funding under the categories of regional development, human resources development and rural development (Delegation of the European Union to Bosnia and Herzegovina 2011).

I am grateful to one of the reviewers for this point.

In a recent speech, RS President Milorad Dodik stated that ‘we cannot accept the EU integration process being used for the radical change of the constitutional arrangement and for the centralisation of the country. Republika Srpska is the guarantor of our existence, identity and prosperity in these parts where our people have lived for centuries’ (Daily.tportal.hr 2011).

The consequences of the technocratic approach adopted by the EU were analysed in the previous section.

Interview with a Commission official, Brussels, 28 November 2005.

Interview with an EUSR/OHR official, 28 July 2005.

On the police reform, see Juncos (2011); on the constitutional reform, see Sebastian (2009).

Interviews with EU officials, Brussels and Sarajevo, 2005–2007.

Interview with a Commission official, 28 November 2005. This view was supported by other interviews with Commission officials, Brussels, April–May 2007.

Weak local ownership has also characterised other policy areas, such as the fight against organised crime and visa policies (Juncos 2009).

Interview with a Bosnian official, Brussels, 24 April 2007.

The term member state-building was first used in Knaus and Cox (2005).

Interview with a Bosnian official, Brussels, 24 April 2007.

Of a total of €303.2 million for the period 2009–2011, €15.9 million has been allocated to Cross-Border Cooperation (European Commission 2009b, p. 14).

Greece opposes the use of the name Macedonia, historically associated with Greece and the name of a northern Greek region. Instead, it has favoured the name Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

For Cox (1981, p. 129), critical theory ‘does not take institutions and social and power relations for granted, but calls them into question by concerning itself with their origins and how and whether they might be in the process of changing’.