After Dayton, Dayton? The evolution of an unpopular peace

Abstract

Contrary to conventional wisdom, the Dayton Peace Agreement has been surprisingly flexible and institutions in Bosnia and Herzegovina have evolved significantly over the past decade in both implementing the agreement and moving beyond the agreement in key aspects. While much of this evolution has been driven by the Office of the High Representative (OHR), recent years have seen the rise of domestic constituencies which invest in the institutions and the state set up at Dayton. Much of the criticism of the rigidity of the original peace agreement remains valid, but the gradual success of the institutions it set up or legitimized speaks in favour of a gradual evolution of the institutional system, rather than whole-scale changes.

Research on this subject has been supported by the OSI Continuing International Policy Fellowship and the Post-Doctoral Funding of the Luxembourg Ministry for Education. An earlier draft was presented at the Association for the Study of Nationalities Convention in New York, 2005.

Notes

1. The host of the Sarajevo student radio, Zoran Čatić, sang the following proposal for the wordless national anthem on 25 November 2004: “Zemljo Kulinova, kroz stoljeća mnoga/Nakaradnu stvorismo te bez straha od Boga/Kantona je deset, entiteta dva/Tri su člana Predsjedništva, bezbroj funkcija/Visoki predstavnik je najviši od svih/Dobro nam ga čini svima, pa zasluži stih/Bosno mila mati, Hercegovino,/Oprosti nam mila mati sto postojimo/Ti ćeš zemljo vjećna biti a mi gnojivo.”

2. For more on the Dayton system, see Bieber (2005).

3. I describe parties which appeal to one community as national parties, which includes the Socialdemocratic Party in Bosnia and Herzegovina, whereas nationalist parties endorse an explicit exclusivist–nationalist programme. In practice the border between these categories is often fluid. For a more detailed discussion on this, see Bieber (2005, pp. 103–107).

4. Zakon o Vijeću ministara, Arts 17, 48, 1997.

5. Constitution of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Art. III 5a, 1995.

6. As the same parties are in power at the state level as in the entities, the key power relationship in strengthening the state level structure is between international organizations and some of the nationalist political parties, rather than between state and entities.

7. For more on this, see Bieber (2004, pp. 74–87).

8. Constitutional Court, Case No. U 5/98-III, 30.6-1.7.2000, para. 120.

9. This rule (or similar requirements) was introduced earlier for the police forces.

10. For a discussion of the constitutional debate, see Balić & Izmirlija (2004, pp. 49–63) and Jukić (2004, pp. 68–70).

11. Although the proposal favours reform on the basis of the existing constitution, the extent of the proposed changes has to be considered as a fundamental departure from the Dayton institutional framework.

12. According to UNDP data, less than a third (9/2005: 27.5%) of Bosnian citizens believe that only ethnic parties can protect the interest of the ethnic groups, while at the same time no single party receives significant electoral support outside its core ethnic support base (UNDP, 2005, p. 78).

13. Personal Communication with Donald Horowitz, 22 October 2002, on file with the author.

14. Some earlier debates were triggered by a proposal of the European Stability Initiative (ESI, 2004a; 2004b).

15. Reported in Pečanin (2002, p. 60).

16. The extensive international efforts required to pressure the RS to agree to police reforms and to link the place to the state level demonstrates the limits of strengthening the state.