A Tale of Two Governments? Government Responses and Perceived Influence in the 2014 Protests in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Abstract

Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) experienced an unprecedented wave of non-sectarian anti-government protests in 2014. Although the key motivating factors generally highlighted such as economic marginalization and poor governance were common throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina, the protests did not extend to all parts of the country. Notably, despite very similar initial conditions in the two jurisdictions of the country, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH) saw major unrest with a large number of participants in many locations while subsequent protest mobilization was much more limited in the Republic of Srpska (RS). We take advantage of the variation in the responses from the two governments in the same country to evaluate how observed and anticipated government responses can shape the willingness to join dissident activity. We argue that variation in government responses and its impact on perceptions on prospects for successful collective action can help account for the differences in mobilization across the two entities. We test our expectations using a new data set on protest events, participants and government responses in BiH from January to April 2014. Our findings are consistent with the argument that coherent repressive government policies tend to suppress mobilization, while mixes of repressive responses and concessions from the government can encourage further mobilization. The results for FBiH show clear variation in protest following changes in government behavior, and are consistent the claim that repressive responses likely suppressed mobilization in the RS.