Decentralization as an Effective Tool of State-Building? The Cases of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo

Abstract

Decentralization has appeared as the only option of governance in internationally led state-building projects in South East Europe. PostDayton Bosnia and Herzegovina has been the prime example, with its complex multilayered institutional arrangements, consisting of a weak central government, and two ethnically based entities: the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina inhabited predominantly by Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats, and Republika Srpska inhabited mainly by Bosnian Serbs. The experience of post-Dayton Bosnia poses the question of whether decentralization inevitably reflects and perpetuates ethnic divisions. Despite the commonly cited shortcomings of the decentralized form of government, including its failure to transform Bosnia and Herzegovina into a viable state and, in particular, a viable economy, post-Dayton decentralization can be defended as a last resort measure, and the only possibility of preserving and governing the country given its recent history. The Bosnian case provides many parallels to the post-independent Kosovo, where calls for municipal decentralization were justified as a means of providing the Serbian minority with a participatory role in the new state.KeywordsVeto PowerConstitutional ReformConstitutional ChangeEthnic DivisionUnited Nations Security Council ResolutionThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.