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The European Union's approach to conflict resolution: Insights from the constitutional reform process in Bosnia and Herzegovina

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Comparative European Politics Aims and scope

Abstract

This article sets out to challenge a core assumption of much of the recent literature on the role of the European Union in conflict resolution, namely that the Union's approach aims at the transformation of conflicts over and above their management. It does so through an analysis of the EU's engagement with the process of constitutional reform in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Making use of discourse analysis of EU policy documents and speeches by key actors, supplemented by interviews with policy-makers in Brussels and in Bosnia, I argue that the EU's approach is based on the acceptance and attempted accommodation of distinct and antagonistic ethnic identities rather than any attempt at their transformation. While EU officials are highly critical of nationalist politicians in Bosnia and praise the efforts of civil society organisations that attempt to overcome ethnic divisions, they nonetheless view Bosnia through an ‘ethnic conflict’ paradigm that sees resistance to constitutional reform by nationalist elites as an inevitable symptom of deeper divisions in Bosnian society. Based on this reading, I conclude that EU conflict resolution policy is much more conservative than those stressing the Union's transformative power in conflict situations envisage.

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Notes

  1. Hereafter referred to simply as Bosnia. The Bosnian-language abbreviation for Bosnia and Herzegovina, used in several quotes in this article, is BiH.

  2. The ESDP has been renamed the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) as a result of the Lisbon Treaty.

  3. Though note that not all supporters of centripetalism are necessarily transformationalists in the wider sense. See McGarry and O’Leary (2009, p. 22) for a discussion of this relationship.

  4. The report was written by Danish MEP Nils Haagerup in his role as rapporteur for a European Parliament Political Affairs Committee investigation into the Northern Ireland conflict.

  5. Interestingly, Hayward was part of the EU-funded ‘EUBorderConf’ project that the Diez et al model was developed as part of (see Diez et al, 2008). As Hayward notes, the aim of her article is not to question the usefulness of the model as such, but rather to ‘critique the supposition held by Diez et al and the constructivist school that the EU's discursive influence is towards substantive or integral change in either identities or the “scripts” by which they are articulated’ (2006, p. 263).

  6. Formally, the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Available at http://www.ohr.int/dpa/default.asp?content_id=380.

  7. More specifically, Dayton is an example of a corporate consociation, whereby groups are accommodated ‘according to ascriptive criteria, such as ethnicity or religion or mother tongue’, which ‘tacitly assumes that group identities are fixed, and that groups are both internally homogeneous and externally bounded’ (McGarry et al, 2008, pp. 61–62). Liberal consociations, by contrast, allow ‘groups to self-determine their organization and representation’ and ‘rewards whatever salient political identities emerge in democratic elections, whether these are ethnic, religious, linguistic, or other criteria based on programmatic appeals’ (McGarry et al, 2008, p. 62).

  8. Such a view of ethnicity has been described as ‘mosaic multiculturalism’, which one of its critics describes as ‘the view that human groups and cultures are clearly delineated and identifiable entities that coexist, while maintaining firm boundaries, as would pieces of a mosaic’ (Benhabib, 2002, p. 8).

  9. It is not only EU policy-makers who have attempted to use the carrot of accession to encourage constitutional reform. US policy-makers have also tied the issue to Bosnia's EU accession prospects (see, for example, English, 2008; Biden, 2009).

  10. The European Parliament's two resolutions on constitutional reform suggest that MEPs also favour a more radical approach than other EU actors. This raises the interesting question of whether some EU actors are more ‘transformationalist’ than others, which could be explored in further research.

  11. The reason why the Council of Europe called for more wholesale reforms than other actors was explained in the author's interview with a senior official, Council of Europe Field Office, Sarajevo, 4 June 2010. The official stated that ‘there is simply no way we can accept a state which is based on divisions, I mean there are x number of mechanisms whereby you can ensure political representation of minorities, but to have a constitution which de jure prevents Jews and Roma – the two peoples which were completely exterminated by the Nazis – which prevents Roma and Jews from standing for election, Jews and Roma and all the other minorities, and the others, are just second-rate citizens. It's intolerable. So the Venice Commission as an advisory body could not do anything else than to recommend to move over to a civic state’.

  12. The three parties were the Party of Democratic Action, represented by Sulejman Tihić the Croatian Democratic Union of Bosnia and Herzegovina, represented by Dragan Čović and the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats, represented by Milorad Dodik. Each of these parties is mono-ethnic, representing Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs respectively.

  13. Author's interview with an EU member state diplomat involved in the Butmir talks, Sarajevo, 15 June 2010. See also Council of Europe (2010, pp. 8–10).

  14. Author's interview with Kurt Bassuener, Democratization Policy Council, Sarajevo, 17 June 2010.

  15. Author's interviews with a political advisor, Delegation of the European Union to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sarajevo, 8 June 2010 and a senior official, Delegation of the European Union to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Banja Luka, 10 June 2010. Similar views were expressed in an interview with a desk officer, European Commission DG Enlargement, Brussels, 30 April 2010.

  16. Author's interview with a senior official from an EU member state embassy involved in the Butmir talks, Sarajevo, 15 June 2010.

  17. Author's interview with a senior official, Delegation of the European Union to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Banja Luka, 10 June 2010.

  18. This terminology has been used in relation to different cases by a number of authors, including Roy (1999), Edwards (2007) and McGrattan (2010) and, more generally, by Gilley (2004).

  19. Author's interview with a senior official, Office of the High Representative/EU Special Representative, Sarajevo, 16 June 2010.

  20. Author's interview with a senior official, Delegation of the European Union to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Banja Luka, 10 June 2010.

  21. Author's interview with a political advisor, Office of the EU Special Representative, Sarajevo, 22 June 2010.

  22. Author's interview with a political advisor, Delegation of the European Union to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sarajevo, 8 June 2010. It is also worth noting that while the Commission's 2009 progress report on Bosnia does note that the constitution ‘still offers too many possibilities for political obstructionism’ (European Commission, 2009, p. 7), when asked why they thought nationalist elites continued to dominate Bosnian politics, none of my interviewees pointed to the incentive structures inherent in the constitution.

  23. Author's interview with a senior official, Office of the High Representative/EU Special Representative, Sarajevo, 16 June 2010.

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Acknowledgements

The majority of this article was conceived and written during two periods that I spent as a visiting researcher: the first at the Centre for EU Studies at Ghent University and the second at the Penn Program in Ethnic Conflict at the University of Pennsylvania. I am grateful to Jan Orbie and Brendan O’Leary for hosting me at these two institutions. I would also like to thank Michelle Pace, Tim Haughton and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions. Responsibility for any remaining mistakes or omissions is solely my own. This research would not have been possible without the support provided by an Economic and Social Research Council studentship (award number ES/I901825/1).

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    Laurence Cooley

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Cooley, L. The European Union's approach to conflict resolution: Insights from the constitutional reform process in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Comp Eur Polit 11, 172–200 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1057/cep.2012.21

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