Prud and Butmir Processes in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Intra-ethnic Competition from the Perspective of Game Theory

Abstract

Local political elites in Bosnia and Herzegovina have been unable not only to use existing political institutions but also to reform them. It triggered two informal attempts to create an agreement on the institutional reform undertaken in the years 2008–2009. The paper focuses on comparison of both processes, following the main assumption that decision-making processes in multi-ethnic environment depends not on inter-ethnic, but intra-ethnic competition. This argument was supported by Georg Tsebelis’ nested game theory, which explains the phenomenon by introducing the concept of two arenas and multiple games while one variable, monopoly of intra-ethnic representation, is considered crucial to limit the outbidding chain. Consequently, it was concluded that the Prud negotiations with exactly one actor from each group were supposed to be more successful than the much more diverse Butmir talks.