The 01 October
2007 will have marked one year since the 2006 general
elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina were held. In addition,
it will have marked roughly nine months of the incumbent
government’s rule. It had taken the ruling coalition,
consisting of seven political parties, nearly three months
to negotiate the establishment of the current government. A
state in dire need of a competent and trustworthy leadership
can hardly afford to lose days on political tug-of-wars, let
alone months, yet no party seemed to mind. After all, the
state was “functioning” under the then incumbent caretaker
government. Once the agreement of these seven parties was
made public it was hard to find any common denominator or
any bond that would explain, even remotely, the motive that
had brought them together except for the basic desire to
govern. This is not to say that the government’s program, in
the form presented to the parliament, lacked in ambition
when it came to the numerous problems that needed to be
solved or in, at times amusing, generalizations about the
way how to solve them. Alas, the above glitch is only a
superficial indicator of Bosnia’s intrinsic structural flaw.
Three constituent peoples (Muslims, Serbs and Croats)
inhabit a state consisting of the state level, two entities,
one of which (the Muslim-Croat Federation) consists of ten
cantons, totaling all in all thirteen governments and
parliaments plus the local self-government (municipal)
level. This is, needless to say, financially unsustainable
structure for such a small and poor country. What has the
international community (IC) achieved since the Dayton Peace
Accord was brokered in 1995? Here I point the spotlight
particularly at the Office of the High Representative (OHR).
The OHR is the highest civil authority in Bosnia, armed with
several important powers (i.e. the Bonn
powers which enable the High Representative to impose laws,
remove officials who are acting in obstructionist manner,
levy financial sanctions on political parties etc.). The OHR
was initially scheduled for departure some time during 2007
but this deadline keeps being prolonged, and at some point
in the future is expected to be succeeded and survived by
the European Union Special Representative’s (EUSR) office,
which is expected to operate sans the Bonn
powers and on a smaller scale. So the question is vexed: Is
Bosnia going to become a state one will be able to describe
as self-sustainable, democratic, stable and functional to
any acceptable degree once the OHR closes its doors?
This article
argues that this tormented country will not have become any
more functional than it was under the international tutelage
during all these years. Why? The reason lies in the simple
fact that the IC has been constantly, consistently and
tenaciously reforming the country (which, granted, badly
needed reforming) in the wrong direction. Namely, an entire
decade has been wasted on the attempt to centralize the
state, empower the state government compared to the set of
competencies originally assigned to this level of authority
by the war stopping Dayton Accord, disenfranchise the
entities, which does not present much of a problem in the
case of the Croat-Muslim Federation which struggles to keep
its head and far from amicable relations above the water as
it is, but is a significant problem in the case of the Serb
dominated and almost exclusively Serb populated Entity of
Republika Srpska. The bottom line is that piece by piece,
and thanks to the OHR’s strong mediation and arm twisting
measures, an entire set of entity competencies has been
transferred to the state level (defense issues, state border
service, tax administration portfolio, to name a few). The
current front burner issue is the police reform which is
publicly presented as the deal breaker for the signing of
the EU Stabilization and Association Agreement (SAA). The
Serb entity (politically incorrect term given that the three
constituent peoples are nominally constituent throughout
Bosnia and Herzegovina) is strongly opposing the idea of
surrendering control over its police forces even if this
would result in the suspension of the SAA talks.
This standoff, in combination with the aforementioned
transfer of competencies issues, resulted in homogenization
of the ethnic Serb electorate and turned the last election
campaign, in the Serb entity, into a competition for “the
best protector of Serb interests”.
Programs of political parties in terms of their
position on the political scene (social democracy, ethnic
radicalism, conservatism) were marginalized and disregarded.
Come election time the electorate gave its plebiscitary
support to the most vociferous “defender” of the Serb
interests (The Alliance of Independent Social-democrats).
Numerically smallest Croat electorate split its vote
between its major ethnically colored party, which had claimed
almost exclusive support of the Croat electorate until the
latest election, and its runaway faction which opted for a new
approach and hoped to distance itself from the legally tainted
leader of the original party. Again party programs were of less
importance compared to personalities and egos running these two
parties. This split could also be interpreted as a sign of
frustration in the Croat political body because of its inability
to achieve the status enjoyed by the other two constituent
peoples since numerical inferiority, regardless of
constitutional safeguards, spells political inferiority. The two
most important Muslim political parties, regardless of their
minor differences and election results, share the common
denominator of support for strengthening of the central state
and gradual dismantling of the entities.
So what is the solution for this dysfunctional,
bureaucratic, semi-independent quasi state?
The answer may seem too simple to be believable and it
requires us to revisit the basic political theory. In the case
where cumulative cleavages, and numerous do exist in Bosnia and
Herzegovina (be it national or ethnic, religious, cultural
etc.), are set in a country with unequally distributed
population (i.e. distribution of ethnic and religious groups),
as is the case in Bosnia, the least problematic solution is to
devolve responsibilities, rights and powers to the lower and
even the lowest authority levels given that in this case more of
the people, or to put it more simply more of the citizens, will
have more of their interests satisfied more of the time compared
to the centralized model which is inevitably marked by
majoritarianism. According to the devolution model the state
level would deal with a very few selected tasks (e.g. defense,
foreign affairs), entities would deal with matters for which
local self-government units lack the necessary organizational
and personnel infrastructure, while the cantons (that actually
need to be abolished as they have worn out and overstayed their
welcome and usefulness) and local units of self-government would
deal with all the remaining issues. In addition, the local level
would set the stage for political parties to make-or-break their
positions, to promote and implement their ideas and to prove
their commitment to the declared political programs. Until this
approach is taken, the Office of the High Representative, NATO
and EU bodies will have to remain in the country and continue
with their attempts to resolve this conundrum known as Bosnia.
However, the most likely scenario is the one where the
sound of fanfare will announce the end of the OHR’s reign and
proclaim handover of the majority of its powers to the domestic
authorities. This, most likely showy, display will be probably
accompanied with solemn declarations that the domestic
institutional framework has been established (the fact that it
is everything but functional will be “accidentally” omitted) and
that it is now up to the domestic political parties to reach
consensus on all the remaining relevant issues and bring the
country closer to the European integrations. The “tiny” detail
that uncoerced agreements between political parties in Bosnia
and Herzegovina are very few and far between will not create
much anxiety either in the OHR or the EUSR’s office since this
country is anyway riddled with numerous cases of form taking
precedence over substance.
©
2006 All content property of European Weekly unless where otherwise
accredited
