![Sample our Area Studies journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5922/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Area-Studies.jpg"})
Abstract
Designed as a provisional draft constitution, Annex 4 of the Dayton Peace Agreement has functioned as the constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina since 1995, and is likely to continue to do so for some time. While it has achieved the immediate goal of cessation of hostilities, under the Annex 4 state institutions have grown that are dysfunctional and parasitic while imposing a counterproductive ethnifying dynamic on political activity. International oversight, intended to mollify these anticipated effects, has been weak and uneven, and frequently intensifies conflicts it was meant to moderate. This has led to a growing gulf between the political class and citizens, expressed in protests and in a growing movement to circumvent official institutions. In this regard, citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina have demonstrated democratic potential well beyond the level demonstrated by their representatives or international overseers. Twenty years after its introduction, the role of the Annex 4 Constitution has become more to inhibit these democratic developments than to encourage them.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. The General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina was signed on 14 December 1995. The full text is available at a variety of sites, including the site of the Office of the High Representative, http://www.ohr.int/dpa/default.asp?content_id=380.
2. As a part of the official stance dividing all elements of social life into three exclusive ethnonational categories, Bosnia and Herzegovina has three official languages: Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian. The differences between these three languages are largely either imperceptible or comparable to distinctions of accent and dialect existing within most languages. See Kordić (Citation2010).
3. The most succinct statement of the principle comes from the French colonel David Galula (Citation[1964] 2006), ‘At any time during the process, the insurgent may make peace offers, provided there is more to gain by negotiating than by fighting'.
4. This reversal of the famous dictum by Clausewitz was proposed by Michel Foucault in ‘Two Lectures’, in Foucault (C. Gordon ed.), Power/Knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings, 1972–1977 (NY: Pantheon Citation1980, 90).
5. I adopt with appreciation the term used by Paula Pickering (Citation2007) to refer to the leaders of political structures entrenched by Dayton: ‘ethnifying elites’.
6. There have been a number of studies of the functioning of corruption in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina, among the most useful of which are Divjak and Pugh (Citation2008), Donais (Citation2010), and several of the essays collected in Arsenijević (Citation2014), including those by Ibrišimović, Kurtović and Mujanović.
7. In 2010 the Center for Investigative Reporting in Sarajevo enumerated the level and sources of income for political officials in the country. A summary is available as Center for Investigative Reporting, ‘Cushy Political Job: 100,000 KM Salary, Extras and No Votes Needed’. https://www.cin.ba/en/godisnja-zarada-parlamentaraca-100-000-km-i-bez-osvojenog-glasa-2/. A 2013 study by the GEA Centre for Research and Studies found that Bosnian MPs, with salaries at 600% of the national average, were the best-paid officials in Europe in relation to the general population. GEA; ‘Plate poslanika i delegata u parlamentu bez premca u Evropi’, http://www.gea.ba/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/analiza_poslanickih_primanja_u_bih.pdf.
8. The right to continued enjoyment of multiple salaries is known informally as ‘bijeli hljeb’ (white bread), and was an object of sustained contention in the anti-elite protests in 2014.
9. The composition of the House of Peoples itself is a response to a decision of the Constitutional Court on the status of ‘constituent nations’, on which political parties subsequently conducted negotiations, with a resolution imposed by OHR in 2002. See OHR Legal Department, ‘Agreement on the implementation of the constituent peoples’ decision of the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina’, 27 March 2002, available at: http://www.ohr.int/ohr-dept/legal/const/default.asp?content_id=7274.
10. A census was conducted in 2013, but the results of the census have not been published.
11. The full text of the decision is available as European Court of Human Rights, Case of Sejdić and Finci vs. Bosnia and Herzegovina, 27,996/06 and 34,836/06, 22 December 2009, http://hudoc.echr.coe.int/sites/eng/pages/search.aspx?i=001-96,491#{"itemid":["001-96,491"]}. The quotation appearing above occurs in paragraph 44 of the decision.
12. The full text of the decision is available as European Court of Human Rights, Case of Zornić vs. Bosnia and Herzegovina, 3681/06, 15 July 2014, http://hudoc.echr.coe.int/sites/eng/pages/search.aspx?i=001-145,566#{"itemid":["001-145,566"]}.
13. Željko Komšić left the Social Democratic Party in 2012, when he was still a member of the presidency.
14. Occasionally parties from Republika Srpska will make use of the resentment originating from some ethnocratic Croat parties in the Federation, who argue that if one ethnonational formation received an autonomous territory, another formation should receive one too.
15. The relationship is further complicated by the fact that Dayton approved the holding of dual citizenship by ethnic Serb and Croat citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and that the election law in Croatia provides both voting rights and designated parliamentary representation to the ‘diaspora’ (formally, by means of the XI electoral district). Diaspora voters, largely in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but also from some other countries with large ethnic Croat populations (Australia, Germany …) regularly vote for HDZ and other parties of the nationally oriented political right in large majorities, a tendency which sometimes has the effect of distorting election results in Croatia.
16. See Office of the High Representative, ‘12/10/1997: PIC Bonn Conclusions’, available online at http://www.ohr.int/?post_type=post&p=54,137&lang=en.
17. Documentation published by Buka magazine ties the failure to agree to blockage by RS authorities. Unsigned, ‘Dokumenti: Vlada RS, mladi SNSD i Erasmus program’, Buka, 17 December 2013, available at: http://www.6yka.com/novost/48,333/dokumenti-vlada-rs-mladi-snsd-i-erasmus-program.
18. The petition is available at: https://www.change.org/p/vijeće-ministara-bosne-i-hercegovine-peticija-za-uključenje-bih-u-erasmus-program-eu?share_id=dkWKwArbjE&utm_campaign=autopublish&utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=share_petition#share.
19. Unsigned, ‘Bosnia’s New Deal With IMF in Jeopardy’, World Bulletin, 30 June 2015, available at: http://www.worldbulletin.net/balkans/161,514/bosnias-new-deal-with-imf-in-jeopardy.
20. The demands of the movement in detail, as well as a selection of news and essays related to the JMBG protests, are collected at the site http://www.jmbg.org.
21. Aside from a small number of solidarity marches, there was little participation in protests in the Republika Srpska, a point that was used for propaganda purposes by RS authorities (as it was officially interpreted to indicate that workers in RS must be more satisfied).
22. The plenums are discussed in depth by myself and others in the essays collected in Arsenijević (ed.) (Citation2014). Many of the documents produced by protests and plenums are collected in translation online at: https://bhprotestfiles.wordpress.com.
23. From the mission statement of Balkan Flood Relief Direct, available at: http://www.balkanfloodrelief.org/portfolio/balkan-flood-relief-direct/.
24. Lejla Deronja Suljić, Muris Bulić, Denis Telić and Asmir Ćilimković. 2014. Poplave u BiH: Elementarne i/ili institucionalnaneefikasnost. Tuzla: Centri civilnih inicijativa. Available at: http://www.cci.ba/dokumenti/Analiza_B5.pdf.
25. Employment figures are available at: http://www.solanatuzla.com/bosanski/A_opci_podaci.pdf.
26. I last visited the site in June 2015.
27. Al Jazeera, ‘Radnici Dite pokrenuli proizvodne pogone’, 4 June 2015. Available at: http://balkans.aljazeera.net/vijesti/radnici-dite-pokrenuli-proizvodne-pogone.
28. Maja Nikolić, ‘Kako su radnici iz Tuzle ponovo pokrenuli svoje fabrike’, Radio Slobodna Europa, 12 June 2015. Available at: http://www.slobodnaevropa.org/content/dita-i-aida-kako-su-radnici-ponovo-pokrenuli-svoje-fabrike/27068800.html.