Diaspora, deliberation and democracy: examining externally-sponsored initiatives for the development of local fora in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Abstract

Many democratic countries around the globe guarantee some type of representation for various groups of recognized minorities and to various extents. Those governments enable and/or incentivize their deliberative performances through various participatory democratic instruments, either within the official institutions, or in online platforms, or by partaking in different governance and budgeting processes. Diaspora communities, though do not share most of the characteristics commonly attributed to ‘minorities’, could be theoretically considered as an ‘ex-territorialized minority’ in terms of access to decision-making processes and overall democratic participation. However, diaspora groups functionally appear to be often marginalized in democratic deliberation in the countries of their origin, and only a handful of countries have put in place official policies that address this matter. In this article, we aim to analyse how foreign governments and their aid agencies operating in BiH have contributed to the development of diaspora-friendly democratic deliberation fora for enhanced (handson) practices of localized Bosnian diaspora's engagement in their country of origin. We analyse and compare six selected local communities (municipalities and cities) in Bosnia and Herzegovina, examine the externally-driven municipal institutional restructuring and explore what motivates locals to adopt and accept diaspora as a component of their own local deliberation frameworks.