Volume 7 Number 2

Spring 1998

Why political union cannot be imposed by foreign powers

Bosnia: The Contradictions of “Democracy” without Consent
Robert M. Hayden

     It has been more than two years since the international community started its project of rebuilding Bosnia and Herzegovina under the provisions of the Dayton Agreement. While active hostilities between armies have ceased, the efforts to build a common state for all of the peoples who lived in the former Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina until 1992 and to enable refugees and displaced persons to return to their former homes have had very little success. Further, the political contradictions of Bosnia are becoming overwhelming. The High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina (hereafter, HR), the chief executive officer for the international civilian presence in the country, has found it necessary to bypass the elected parliamentary assembly in matters supposedly within its competence and to remove elected officials.(1) He now is proposing to place controls upon the press. At this time (May 1998), attempts to return displaced people to their homes have been met with violence by all three sides, leading the HR to dispatch international military forces into some towns.
     The international effort to rebuild Bosnia and Herzegovina is, therefore, not going smoothly. The reason for the difficulties is that the entire pursuit has been based on principles contrary to those of the Bosnian peoples themselves, or at least, contrary to those of the politicians elected by the Bosnian peoples in elections mandated by the Dayton Agreement and supervised by the international community. In essence, the international community is committed to building a state that is rejected by substantial portions of its putative citizens and a “democracy” without the consent of very large numbers of those meant to be governed. Thus the problems faced by the HR are manifestations of the fundamental contradictions between what the international community says it is committed to doing and what the elected representatives of the Bosnian peoples want done.
     The contradictions of Bosnia can be seen through an analysis of the country’s symbols, which were imposed by the international community without the agreement of the people whose state they are supposed to symbolize. Both the method and the timing of their enactment show the meaning of the symbols to be primarily external, of importance chiefly to those enacting them, who were not themselves Bosnians. Bosnia is thus revealed as a symbolic construction, a cause of and for the international community, but not a government of or by its own peoples. Whether such a “state” can really exist is debatable. The method selected by the HR to promote “democracy” in Bosnia is to create a dictatorship of virtue. Ironically, the course chosen by the HR seems most similar to that of the communist regimes of the former Yugoslavia, a coincidence that may bode ill for the future of Bosnia.

Dayton’s constitutional paradox
     In the period between 1991 and 1992, the former Yugoslavia broke up under the pressure of discrete, separatist nationalisms, each premised on the creation of ethnic states: Croatia for Croats, Slovenia for Slovenes, Serbia for Serbs. Bosnia could not survive under this definition of the state, because there was no majority nation, ethnically defined. In the free and fair elections in 1990, the population of Bosnia had partitioned itself, voting for ethnic parties: one Serb, one Croat, one Muslim. Far from being merely a postcommunist aberration, this pattern of ethnic voting resembled what was seen in every relatively free, relatively fair election in Bosnia in this century, from 1910 through 1997. From the start, the freely elected Serb and Croat parties rejected the idea of inclusion within a Bosnian state. As noted by the court in the first case in the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia at The Hague, “the disintegration of multiethnic federal Yugoslavia was . . . swiftly followed by the disintegration of multiethnic Bosnia and Herzegovina. . . . Both Bosnian Serbs and Croats made it apparent that they would have recourse to armed conflict rather than accept minority membership in a Muslim-dominated state.”(2) The war was aimed at the partition of Bosnia and the removal of minorities from the resulting territories, particularly from the “Republika Srpska” and the “Croatian Community of Herzeg-Bosna.” While Bosnia was recognized in an effort to prevent the Serbs and Croats from partitioning it, the recognized government has never controlled more than about 30 percent of the territory of the supposed state, and it is unlikely that it has ever enjoyed the loyalty of a
majority of the population.
     The Dayton Agreement proclaimed a single Bosnian state composed of two “entities,” the “Republika Srpska” and a Croat-Muslim “Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina,” which had been sponsored by the US but that, in fact, has never functioned as a coherent whole since its 1994 creation. The constitution accepted at Dayton, however, was never likely to provide the structure for a viable state, since it granted powers to the supposed central government mainly over foreign affairs, with almost no power within the country (See EECR 4, no. 4 [Fall 1995], pp. 67–68). Each “entity” retained almost all other governmental powers, including separate armed forces. Further, the Dayton Agreement was accepted by the presidents of Serbia and Croatia on behalf of the Bosnian Serbs and Croats, but was not accepted by these people themselves. The Dayton Agreement was never subjected to ratification by the peoples of Bosnia and Herzegovina, presumably because it was unlikely to gain acceptance by the Serbs and Croats. Thus, from the start, Bosnia was a “democracy” that lacked the consent of many of the governed, a putatively joint state composed officially of two (in reality, three) constituent units, each armed against the other, and “united” by a supposed central “government” that has almost no authority to act within the country.

Symbols of feigned unity: flag, currency, and coat of arms
The ethereal nature of the Bosnian “state” is well illustrated by the history of the symbols representing it. The Dayton Constitution (Art. I.6) provides that “Bosnia shall have such symbols as are decided by its Parliamentary Assembly and approved by the Presidency.” The primary symbols are a flag, a coat of arms, and a unified currency (until now, the German mark has been the only common currency, with Yugoslav dinars used in Serb areas, Croatian kuna in Croat areas, and Bosnian dinars in Muslim areas).
     The first sign of difficulty came with the failure of the presidency to agree on a design for a common currency, thus manifesting the deadlock that I predicted would be probable in central institutions (see EECR 4, no. 4 [Fall 1995], pp. 67–68). At a December 1997 meeting in Bonn, the international community decided that, in cases in which the parliamentary assembly or the presidency could not reach a decision, the HR would be empowered to do so. Accordingly, when the presidency failed to achieve agreement on a design for a new currency, the HR put forth his own. The currency features poets and novelists of all three nationalities, but only the novelist Mesa Selimovic, who identified himself as a Serbian writer even though he was of Muslim heritage, is on the banknotes of both “entities” that make up Bosnia. No other writer was acceptable to all three groups.
     If they could not agree upon the worthiness of poets and novelists, what chance was there that the political leaders of the Bosnian peoples would agree on the other symbols of a supposedly common state? This question came to the fore with the debates over the flag, perhaps the most revealing indicator of the fiction of Bosnia’s unity. Unsurprisingly, the Serbs, Croats, and Muslims could not agree on common symbols for a state, which the leaderships of the first two groups had never had any real interest in joining in the first place. The solution of the HR was to create a special flag commission, which proposed three versions of a “neutral flag.” The design chosen by the HR was a gold triangle on a blue background with a row of white stars, in which “the triangle represents the three constituent peoples of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the gold color represents the sun, as a symbol of hope; the blue and the stars stand for Europe” (Office of the High Representative [OHR] Bulletin, no. 65, February 6, 1998). In other words, the HR intentionally chose a design that had no emotional connection with anyone in Bosnia and Herzegovina. When the flag was unveiled at a press conference, even the HR’s own press spokesmen laughed when a reporter pointed out that the flag “looks like a cornflakes box.”
     In fact, the primary consideration driving selection of the flag was the Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan; the deadline for selecting the flag was set with the games in mind (Office of the High Representative [OHR] Bulletin, no. 65, February 6, 1998). The flag was certainly flown in Nagano and flies on the East River and in the foyer of the State Department, but it has been little seen in Bosnia itself, except when the HR has insisted that it be flown. There is no particular indication that practically anyone in Bosnia not in the employ of the international community has any affection for this flag—but then, the consent of the elected representatives of the Bosnian peoples is not very relevant for decision making there, as will be discussed below.
     Having imposed this flag, the HR charged the same design commission with producing a coat of arms, to contain “the visual elements and universal symbols of the flag,” as the “official seal by which Bosnia-Herzegovina will be represented internationally, on the country’s passport, for use on official documents . . . and by embassies and consulates.” Three designs were again to be presented to the parliamentary assembly and the presidency, with a deadline of May 15 for them to act. When they did not do so, the HR chose a design that “follows the design and themes of the flag . . . blue, with a triangle of yellow color in the top right hand side corner, and a row of five white stars running parallel to the left side of the triangle” (OHR Press Release, “Coat of Arms of Bosnia-Herzegovina,” Sarajevo, May 20, 1998).
     Thus the symbols of Bosnian statehood have been chosen by the international community rather than by Bosnians themselves, from designs that have meaning to the international community rather than to Bosnians themselves, and all according to a schedule determined by the publicity calendar of the international community rather than by the desires of Bosnians themselves. Presumably unintentionally, the HR has thus established that Bosnian statehood is far more important to the international community than it is to the Bosnians, while at the same time demonstrating that the governmental structures created at Dayton will not work if they are left under control of Bosnians.

Feigning democracy: the irrelevancy of Bosnian political institutions
     Article I.2 of the Dayton Constitution provides that “Bosnia and Herzegovina shall be a democratic state under the rule of law and with free and democratic elections.” While elections have indeed been held since Dayton, the parties that won them were the very same parties that had brought the country to civil war in 1992. As the saga of the state symbols shows, these parties have been no better able to work with each other since January 1996 than they were before April 1992, which makes it logical enough that the HR was empowered in Bonn to bypass them, as it in fact has done. But it is surely an odd democracy in which the unelected representative of foreign powers can ignore the elected representatives of the people of the country.
     The irrelevancy of parliamentary consent is exemplified by the preamble to the Law on Citizenship of Bosnia and Herzegovina, adopted by the HR in December 1997 “on an interim basis, until the Parliamentary Assembly adopts this law in due form, without amendments and no conditions attached.” While this formulation leaves little enough room for doubt as to the relative powers of the Parliament and the HR, the latter’s second deputy, Hanns Schumacher of Germany, has been explicit in a recent interview: “We dictate what will be done . . . we simply do not pay attention to those who
obstruct . . . those who resist will have to face the consequences.”(3)
     This dictatorial approach is not an aberration. The New York Times (April 10, 1998) has reported that the HR, “with the blessing of Washington . . . now rules Bosnia by fiat.” He has removed elected officials in both the Serb and Croat areas and, by ignoring parliamentary procedures in the Republika Srpska assembly, has engineered the replacement of that entity’s
government, which had been formed by the most popular Serb party, with one headed by a prime minister from a minor party. One of his latest efforts is an attempt to “break the monolithic control of media by government and political parties” by a strategy based on two principles that would normally appear contradictory: “(1) editorial intervention and media restructuring and regulation, (2) encouragement of independent media.”(4)

Discrediting the peace
It might be argued that the imposition of a de facto protectorate in Bosnia is long overdue (though the Office of the High Representative shuns the use of the “P word”), and that the restrictions on political activities are necessary to create the conditions for real democracy. After all, Germany and Japan were prepared for democracy by even more direct controls, under outright military occupation. In those countries, however, reconstruction involved the re-creation of classic nation-states. In Bosnia, on the other hand, the same contradictions that first produced the war remain in place; much as the international community may think that all people in Bosnia are the same, they still divide themselves into Serbs, Croats, and Bosniaks, and expect to be disadvantaged at best if they are so unfortunate as to fall under the rule of members of another group.
     Despite the human-rights rhetoric of the international community, these expectations of hostility toward minorities are realistic. Since the implementation of the Dayton Agreement, the physical separation of the peoples of Bosnia has been advanced, not reversed. Recognizing this, the HR has sponsored several “returns conferences,” most recently a “Regional Returns Conference” that included representatives from Croatia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. That conference concluded that “the problems of displacement in the former Yugoslavia are spread over the whole region and must be resolved as a whole,” with specific calls to Croatia to permit returns.(5) What this amounts to is a demand that the entire course of the Yugoslav conflicts be reversed, a completely improbable occurrence. Max Weber expressed the contradiction that would be required, with reference to another European war, earlier in this century: “the only sure way to discredit the war . . . would have been a status quo peace . . . and then the war would have been argued ad absurdum, which is now impossible. For the victors, at least for part of them, the war will have been politically profitable.”(6) For the victors in the Yugoslav conflicts, and especially for the Croatian regime of Franjo Tudjman, elimination of concentrations of minorities has been among their proudest accomplishments. In this situation, insistence on something that clearly will not happen seems unwise. To quote Weber again, “the peace will be discredited, not the war.”(7)

The contradictions of political union without consent
     The HR and the international community that he serves are faced with a frustrating contradiction. In order to gain Serb and Croat consent to inclusion within Bosnia, the Dayton Agreement provided that there would be, in fact, no real Bosnian government. Put another way, Dayton gained the nominal consent of the governed by providing that the proposed government would itself be nominal and with no power to govern. Thus the Serbs and Croats did not consent to be governed by a Bosnian state, but rather only to inclusion in a mimic sovereignty with no effective government.
In order to overcome this contradiction and to make the state real, the HR has decided to dispense with consent. Yet this seems unlikely to be a winning strategy, because the HR’s actions themselves reinforce the message that Bosnia is a creation of the international community, not of the Bosnians themselves. The more the HR ignores the need for the people of Bosnia themselves to consent to being governed by a Bosnian state, the less legitimate that state is likely to be in the eyes of those whose consent was originally conditioned on its powers being illusory.
     The choice in Bosnia is thus between government without consent and consent conditioned on no government. But could more be expected in a “state” symbolized by a flag that was chosen precisely because it means literally nothing to the people who actually live in the country?

Notes

1. The source of the authority of the High Representative is essentially contractual. His mandate derives from the Dayton Agreement, as confirmed by the Peace Implemen-tation Council, an ad hoc body with a Steering Board composed of representatives of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the UK, the US, the presidency of the European Union, the European Commission, and the Organization of the Islamic Conference. The Steering Board guides the High Representative. While the UN Security Council endorsed this arrangement (UN Resolution S/RES/1031, Dec. 15, 1995), the High Representative is not a UN body and seems to be
responsible to no authority other than the Steering Board of the ad hoc Peace Implementation Council.

2. “Opinion and Judgment” in Prosecutor v. Dusko Tadic, No. IT-94-1-T (ICTY, May 7, 1997), par. 83. The
evidence is summarized in Robert Hayden, “Bosnia’s Internal War and the International Criminal Tribunal,” Fletcher Forum of World Affairs 22, no. 45 (1998).

3. Interview with Hanns Schumacher in Dani, April 11, 1998, as published by OHR on its web page (www. ohr.int/press/i980411a.htm).

4. OHR, Report of the High Representative for Implementation of the Bosnian Peace Agreement to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, April 9, 1998, par. 58.

5. OHR, “Regional Return Conference, Banja Luka, 28 April 1998: Chairmen’s Concluding Statement.”

6. Max Weber, “Politics as a Vocation” (1919), in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, ed. and trans. H. Gerth and C. Mills (Oxford, 1946).

7. Ibid.

Robert M. Hayden is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Associate Professor of Law at the University of Pittsburgh.

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