Hybrid Statebuilding: Bosnia

Abstract

The state is the centre-piece around which other elements of liberal peacebuilding are arranged. This chapter examines liberal statebuilding using the example of Bosnia-Herzegovina. It seeks to illustrate the centrality of statebuilding to liberal peacebuilding projects. The chapter argues that liberal statebuilders are unable to benefit from a ‘clean break’; new states are not built afresh. Instead, statebuilders are forced to take on board the legacy of previous political constructions, and to recognise the often unpalatable exigencies of post-war societies, such as the persistence of nationalism in the post-peace accord era. Thus the international peacebuilders empowered by the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords (or General Framework Agreement) did not build the new postwar state of Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH) on fresh foundations. They were merely the latest in a long line of political leaders who sought to ‘create’ a ‘new’ state that would accommodate the region’s competing nationalisms. The result, like the political constructions before it, was a hybrid that reflected past experience, existing boundaries, demography, battlefield gains, international strategic calculations, international legal and economic norms, and emotional decisions on how some actors should be rewarded and others punished. The ‘new’ state of Bosnia-Herzegovina was a distortion of liberal ideas melded with nationalism, realism, and a socialist legacy.

The Bosnian peasant’s chief desire is peace, to plant his fields and reap their produce; this secure, I believe he cares little whether Bosnia be Austrian or Turkish.

M. M. Holbach (1906: 20)

This is not Europe, no matter what the map says.

R. Trevor (1916: 31)

As one gazes upon the different races that she [Austria] is endeavouring to blend together in the name of Bosnians: one wonders if it is possible for human hands to accomplish such a task.

R. Trevor (1916: 70)