The Bosnian Paradox: On the Causes of Post-War Inequality and Barriers to Its Recognition and Reduction

Abstract

The Bosnian case is particularly intriguing for a theory of conflict based on the risks inherent in horizontal inequalities (HIs) — whether as a motive for civil war or as a threat to post-war stability. Bosnia’s pre-war government, as a federal unit of socialist Yugoslavia, guaranteed political equality among its ethno-national groups, including quotas for all public sector employment. Socialist principles of social and economic equality protected women and subsidized the welfare and development budgets of poorer towns and regions. Its post-war government, designed by outsiders as a solution to ethnic conflict, guarantees political equality among its three ethno-national groups on the basis of even more extensive, ethnically defined institutions, group rights, and power-sharing rules.¹ The first system did not prevent war. The second has not prevented rising post-war inequality, ethnic exclusion, and group discrimination. According to a large research literature and many significant foreign and Bosnian political actors, the externally imposed ‘Dayton constitution’ has made post-war Bosnia-Herzegovina more unstable by institutionalizing group differences, ethnicizing social relations, and building ethnic conflict into government decision-making. If so, this chapter will argue, that instability will not be a result of inequality.