Wider Europe
Policy Brief
July 31, 2009
Summary: Ever since the war in the
former Yugoslavia came to an end,
the international community has
sought to establish new political
and constitutional arrangements
for Bosnia and Herzegovina that
would bring the country together
within a framework of democracy
and the rule of law. Today, Bosnia
and Herzegovina suffers, as it has
throughout the postwar period,
from a lack of consensus, commu-
nity, legitimacy, organization, effec-
tiveness, and stability in its political
life. This deficiency is impeding its
transition to liberal democracy.
In many ways Bosnia and Herzegov-
ina resembles a mini-Yugoslavia.
“Ethnonationalism” dominates not
just the country’s constitution but
also its governance and its culture.
Because of this it cannot truly be-
come a liberal democracy until its
governance and its political institu-
tions begin to function properly and
in the interests of all its citizens. Be-
cause democracy is more than just
a set of formal institutions, it is time
that the international community
paid greater attention to reforming
both kinds of institutions—formal
and informal—in Bosnia and Her-
zegovina as it continues to seek to
create a true liberal democracy in
that troubled country.
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Recapitulating Yugoslavia: Culture, Politics,
and State-Building in Bosnia and Herzegovina
by Douglas Davidson1
Getting its history wrong is part of being
a nation.
- Ernst Renan
The history of politics in Yugoslavia
between 1919 and 1941 can be under
stood in terms of a succession of
exclusions, withdrawals and attempts to
redefine the terms of reference of political
life, rather than constructive engagement
with issues which were common to a
community whose boundaries, interests
and rules of political conduct were agreed.
- John B. Allcock
In December 1995, diplomats assembled in
London for a Peace Implementation Con-
ference to discuss the future of Bosnia and
Herzegovina. There, they set this goal for
themselves: The establishment of new po-
litical and constitutional arrangements for
Bosnia and Herzegovina that would bring
the country together within a framework of
democracy and the rule of law.
More than 13 years later, this goal remains
elusive, if only because it requires the will-
ing cooperation and collaboration of the
people of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It also
requires proper democratic governance.
Both still seem largely absent. In his book,
Political Order in Changing Societies, the late
Samuel Huntington perhaps explained why:
“The most important political distinction
1
Ambassador Douglas Davidson is a visiting distinguished fellow with the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF). The
views expressed are those of the author and do not represent the views of GMF.
among countries concerns not their form of
government but their degree of govern-
ment. The differences between democracy
and dictatorship are less than the differenc-
es between those countries whose politics
embody consensus, community, legitimacy,
organization, effectiveness, stability, and
those countries whose politics is deficient in
those qualities.”
Bosnia and Herzegovina’s politics is
deficient in almost all those qualities. This
deficiency is impeding its development as
a liberal democracy, the creation of which
is the larger purpose of the international
presence that has now lasted nearly 14
years. Today, Bosnia and Herzegovina has
all the trappings of democracy—too many
perhaps—but form and substance are not
necessarily the same thing. As Christopher
Coyne, in his book, After War: The Political
Economy of Exporting Democracy, explains:
“… ‘democracy’ is often confused with
‘liberal democracy.’ Democracy deals
with the method of selecting government
officials, while liberal democracy deals
with the goals of government: the
protection of individual rights, the rule of
law, and so on. In the absence of
constitutional liberalism, democracy will
not necessarily yield the desired results as
defined by U.S. foreign policy objectives…
Although politicians and policymakers
often state the end goal of reconstruction
efforts as ‘spreading democracy,’ what
Wider Europe
Policy Brief
they implicitly mean is the establishment of liberal democratic
institutions along Western lines—if not in specific design then
at least based upon Western principles. The difference is more
than semantics. Compared to establishing a lasting liberal
democracy, holding elections is relatively easy. During U.S.-led
occupations, elections have been held in Haiti, Bosnia, and
Kosovo. However, it remains far from clear that these countries
would be classified as self-sustaining liberal democracies.”
Why is Bosnia and Herzegovina not yet a self-sustaining liberal
democracy? Surely it is not for lack of effort, time, and money. The
United States alone has spent more than one billion dollars in develop-
ment assistance there over the past 14 years. But it could be because, in
its efforts to build a liberal democracy in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the
international community has not spent enough of its time, money, or
efforts on some important elements of such a democracy. One of these
is political institutions. Another is culture in its broadest sense.
Today, Bosnia and Herzegovina is a state divided, like Caesar’s Gaul,
into partes tres. Its constitution recognizes three constituent peoples
plus “others” and privileges, as literary critics and social scientists
would say, the former over the latter. The leaders, if not the members,
of these three groups exhibit varying degrees of commitment to their
common state. The language many of these leaders employ in political
and public debates has prompted constant demands from the interna-
tional community that they eschew “nationalist and divisive rhetoric”
as well as attempts to challenge the authority of the High Represen-
tative and the constitutional structures and procedures agreed at
Dayton. Many of these calls seem to have fallen on deaf ears, for such
rhetoric and such challenges continue to occur regularly.
Americans believe by and large in “civic nationalism,” which holds
that everyone who lives within the borders of a state is part of the
nation, whatever their race, ethnicity, or religion. Americans also
believe by and large that Bosnia and Herzegovina should adopt
such a form of nationalism—a belief that is at the heart of the
international intervention in the country. Too many Bosnian and
Herzegovinians, by contrast, seem to prefer another variety of
nationalism, “ethnonationalism,” instead. The basis of this kind of
nationalism is the belief that to be a nation means to share a
common language, faith, and ancestry. With this comes the
conviction that each nation ought to have its own state—a belief that
contributed to the break-up of Yugoslavia.
Benedict Anderson, the author of the influential book, Imagined
Communities, has argued that nationalism, like nationality itself, is a
“cultural artifact.” Ernest Gellner, another influential author on the
subject, has posited a specifically Eastern or Balkan nationalism,
2
in which the rapid transformation of a peasant culture into a literate
culture laid the foundation for “ethnonationalism.” Many contem-
porary authors on nationalism, of which there seems to be no lack,
contend that nationalism itself arose in the 19th century—and in
particular that it sprang from 19th century German romanticism.
But it may be older than that. According to the British classicist Sir
Maurice Bowra, the Greek historian Herodotus once defined the
criteria for being a Greek as follows: “common descent, language,
religion, and culture.” If you were to ask a Serb or a Croat or a
Bosniac in Bosnia and Herzegovina today what makes one a Serb or
a Croat or a Bosniac, you would probably get a similar response.
It is arguable that three of the four factors Herodotus mentions—
descent, language, culture—are to a great extent common to the
three South Slavic constituent peoples of Bosnia and Herzegovina,
though not many will admit this at the moment. But Samuel
Huntington, in The Clash of Civilizations, a book that has perhaps
proved more controversial than the work quoted above, makes this
observation, which applies very well to Bosnia and Herzegovina to-
day: “People define their identity by what they are not.” He goes on
to say: “People do not live by reason alone… In times of rapid social
change established identities dissolve, the self must be redefined,
and new identities created. For people facing the need to deter-
mine Who am I? Where do I belong? religion provides compelling
answers… In this process, people rediscover or create new historical
identities.” As if to prove his point, villages and towns in those parts
of Bosnia and Herzegovina with mixed ethnic populations have in
recent years sprouted large crosses in order to prove that they are
Croat areas. Similarly, in the eastern part of the country brand new
Orthodox churches abound. Sarajevo today has more mosques
than ever—perhaps more than a hundred in a city whose popula-
tion is now mainly, if still in many cases nominally, Muslim. All
these serve as markers of identity and boundary. Where it once
had only one, today, the country also has three official languages—
Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian. That they remain mutually intel-
ligible makes them no less distinct in the minds of those who argue
that they are separate tongues spoken by distinctly different peoples.
The three constitutive peoples of Bosnia and Herzegovina are also
rediscovering or creating new historical identities. Because schools,
newspapers, and television broadcasters divide along ethnic lines,
the means to create these new historical identities are readily at
hand. This is not a new phenomenon, either. Before the war,
political leaders in Yugoslavia, seeking to bolster their power and
increase the territory under their control, used the mass media to
spread fear and to call their people to arms. During the war, schools
in Bosnia and Herzegovina began to split along national lines.
Wider Europe
Policy Brief
Schools and universities, arts and culture, and the mass media were
the very institutions that Titoist Yugoslavia once used to create brat-
stvo i jedinstvo—brotherhood and unity—and a sense of Yugoslavi-
an identity. Andrew Baruch Wachtel, in his book Making a Nation,
Breaking a Nation, discusses the four ways that the partisans of Yu-
goslavia attempted to advance their idea of national unity: linguistic
policy; the promulgation of a Yugoslav literary and artistic canon;
educational policy, particularly relating to the teaching of literature
and history; and the production of new literary and artistic works
that incorporated a Yugoslav point of view. Nationalist communi-
ties in Bosnia-Herzegovina, having clearly learned the lessons of the
recent past, are now employing these same means to advance their
particular and narrower concept of “national” unity. In this way,
they are doing their own version of nation-building, which is work-
ing directly against the international community’s attempts to build
a stable and cohesive state in postwar Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Culture, in other words, counts. In Bosnia and Herzegovina it is,
in effect, counting backwards, working against attempts to build a
“liberal democracy.” As Christopher Coyne notes:
“In his analysis of Central and Eastern Europe, the economist
Svetozar Pejovich concluded that the transition from
communism to capitalism is not merely a technical issue.
In other words, the same expenditure of resources in different
transition efforts will yield different outcomes. Similar reasoning
applies to the case of reconstruction. Why is this the case? To
borrow a phrase from Pejovich, ‘It’s the culture, stupid.’
...From this viewpoint, a society’s culture is the existing array of
values, customs, traditions, belief systems, and other mores
passed from one generation to the next. By this definition,
culture is an ‘informal institution,’ which means that it is not
formally mandated but coexists with formal institutions such
as constitutions and written laws… Culture constrains the
actions of individuals and the various organizational forms that
individuals can achieve within a given set of political institutions.
In other words, the creation of a wide array of organizations—
political groups (parties, councils, senates), economic bodies
(families and firms), and social bodies (associations)—will be
constrained by the existing endowment of culture…
Culture is perhaps the greatest constraint on reconstruction
efforts… In other words, controllable variables matter, but only
up to a point. The same level of resources—monetary aid,
troops, organization of elections, and so on—as was invested in
West Germany and Japan in 1945 will generate a drastically
different outcome in Afghanistan and Iraq in 2005. This is
3
due to the fact that these countries have different endowments
of culture—capital and knowledge that constrain the
effectiveness of these resources.”
Democracy is, as Coyne suggests, more than just a set of “formal
institutions”—elections and parliaments and government minis-
tries. It also consists of the culture that informs and guides these
institutions. Bosnia and Herzegovina has unfortunately inherited
from Yugoslavia the conviction, which is embedded in its con-
stitution and its governing structures, that individual rights are a
function of “national” rights. Bosnia and Herzegovina is thus still a
constitutional republic composed of three constituent peoples or
nations, where group rights take precedence over individual.
Attempts to alter this through constitutional changes have not
succeeded. The Dayton settlement, which reified if not ratified the
notion of territory as contiguous with ethnicity, along with postwar
population shifts, have only strengthened this notion. This was,
ironically, more or less the goal of those who prompted the war in
the first place. Nevertheless, the process of ethnic homogenization
is not complete and may never be. Even if it is, within its inter-
nationally-recognized borders Bosnia and Herzegovina will still
remain a multi-national and multi-confessional, though not really a
“multicultural” state.
The key to building a Bosnian-Herzegovinian state whose politics
embody consensus, community, legitimacy, organization, effective-
ness, and stability—a state, in other words, ready to join such bodies
as the European Union and to strengthen regional security—lies in
changing the way the people who inhabit the country think about
the country they inhabit. The key, in other words, is to encourage
a sense of “Bosnian” identity or at least a common commitment to
making the country’s common institutions function in everyone’s
interest. Today, this sense and this commitment is hard to find.
Susan Woodward has claimed that, just before the war broke out:
“All the evidence suggested that there was majority support for a
Bosnian identity and survival, from public opinion polls on
the constitutional debates up to 1990, the civic initiatives,
editorial policy in leading mass media, intellectuals’ projects for
a Bosnia based on individual citizenship and rights, and antiwar
rallies in the fall of 1991 and March-April 1992…”
But she also notes that “… in contrast to the other republics,
Bosnia-Herzegovina had no political force to represent the republic
as a whole against outsiders or its idea of multicultural identity and
civilization, any more than Yugoslavia itself had.” Attempts to build
such a political force, which normally go under the rubric of “civil
Wider Europe

Policy Brief
society,” have gone on ever since war’s end. The German Marshall history and religion and even geography as well as kind of news that
Fund of the United States, through grants issued by its Balkans Trust even the publicly-funded broadcasters are disseminating. There is
for Democracy, is still attempting to do so, as are the United States ample evidence that nationalism can be overcome and even reversed
Agency for International Development, the European Commission, in this way. As Professor Wachtel notes: “It is certain… that no one
and many others. Even the OSCE Mission to Bosnia and Herze- at the turn of the nineteenth century would have identified him or
govina, which has an entire department dedicated solely to “democ- herself as a Yugoslav, whereas studies in the 1960s showed that the
ratization,” has been trying its best to create some semblance of such majority of the country’s citizens held some form of Yugoslav national
a civil society since war’s end as well. Over time considerable sums identity.” Clearly, the cultural means that Yugoslavia used create
of money have gone into these efforts. At the moment, it is difficult this national consciousness worked—for a while at least. Wachtel’s
to argument that the benefits have justified the cost. book traces the way in which the steady devolution of cultural and
educational policy to the republics in the end diminished this sense of
This is not to say, as many do, that civil society does not exist in Yugoslavianness and thus fostered and even hastened the break-up of
Bosnia and Herzegovina. It does, though perhaps not in the forms Yugoslavia. We should probably try to avoid repeating that experience
in which the organizations listed above and many others would another time in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
like to see it. Victims groups of all kinds, for instance, are active and
influential. The amount of the budget of the Federation of Bosnia and
Herzegovina that goes to disabled war veterans, which seems now to Douglas Davidson, Distinguished Visiting Fellow, GMF
be a fairly fluid concept, is considerable. Like politicians everywhere,
Douglas Davidson comes to GMF from four years as head of the
those in Bosnia and Herzegovina listen to and respond to well-
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s (OSCE)
organized interest groups. The money they appropriate follows.
Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina. A career member of the U.S.
Unfortunately such groups do not encourage a more robust and cohe-
Senior Foreign Service, his previous assignments include the North-
sive democratic state. They contribute to its fragmentation instead.
west Frontier of Pakistan, the White House as an assistant press
secretary for foreign affairs in the administration of President George
This suggests that it may be time for the international community to
H. W. Bush, and the State Department’s Senior Seminar, a year-long
shift its focus in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Even as development agen-
executive leadership and management training program. He has lately
cies and non-governmental organizations continue to try to build civil
amassed extensive experience in the Balkans, which include several
society, most international organizations and bilateral embassies con-
visits to war-time Sarajevo in 1994 and 1995; assignments to the
tinue to deal mainly with leading political figures, whose positions as
American embassies in Zagreb and Belgrade; and service as the first
heads of political parties, which tend to be contiguous with national
director of the Department of Media Affairs of the newly established
groupings, often outweigh in importance their positions, if indeed
OSCE Mission in Kosovo, which formed part of the UN Interim
they have any, in government. It may be time for these international
Administrative Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), and, concurrently, the
political actors—or their development arms—to concentrate on the
province’s first Temporary Media Commissioner.
workings of political institutions with the same intensity. After all,
formal institution-building is largely complete. Although the country
still lacks a unified police force, it has a many institutions that Dayton About GMF
did not create—ministries, a state court, even a single armed forces
The German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF) is a nonpar-
and defense ministry—and thus most of the necessary trappings of a
tisan American public policy and grantmaking institution dedicated
modern liberal democratic state. But Bosnia and Herzegovina cannot
to promoting greater cooperation and understanding between North
progress without political institutions that function well. To achieve
America and Europe. GMF does this by supporting individuals and
such a state will probably require outside players to devote more at-
institutions working on transatlantic issues, by convening leaders to
tention not just to building institutions but also to seeking to ensure
discuss the most pressing transatlantic themes, and by examining
that the ones they have built work as they are supposed to. Bosnia and
ways in which transatlantic cooperation can address a variety of global
Herzegovina does not need more governance, but it certainly needs
policy challenges. Founded in 1972 through a gift from Germany as a
what Huntington calls a greater degree of governance.
permanent memorial to Marshall Plan assistance, GMF maintains a
strong presence on both sides of the Atlantic. In addition to its head-
Such a thing may also require greater attention to the building
quarters in Washington, DC, GMF has seven offices in Europe: Berlin,
blocks of national culture—the way schools teach literature and
Bratislava, Paris, Brussels, Belgrade, Ankara, and Bucharest.