Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Nation-building – Bosnia and Hercegovina'

Thesis (M.A. in National Security Affairs)--Naval Postgraduate School, September 2006.
Thesis Advisor(s): Donald Abenheim, Richard Hoffman. "September 2006." Includes bibliographical references (p. 81). Also available in print.

The following study seeks to explore the theme of what has become known as a serious security problem within the genderfield as well as the peace and development field, strategic rape as a weapon in war. More specifically, the essay analyses women's experiences of rape in the Bosnian war, in order to explore how big of a space is dedicated for these experiences to be expressed in the aftermath of war and in the process of building a nation. The empirical findings consist of stories told by women who have experienced rape during the war, available for the general public to find. With a theoretical framework consisting of a combination of feminist theories surrounding the gender order, the analysis seeks to focus on what power relations and different types of silences can be found in the stories told by war rape victims. The conclusion states that all of the power relations are based on the unequal relationship between the male and female, which influences the relationship between war rapevictims and war criminals, politicians and the victims surrounding. The silence brought to life by stigma transforms into various forms, the main ones referring to the war rapevictims and witih the politicial sphere.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--George Mason University, 2009.
Vita: p. 340. Thesis director: Dennis J.D. Sandole. Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Conflict Analysis and Resolution. Title from PDF t.p. (viewed Oct. 12, 2009). Includes bibliographical references (p. 327-339). Also issued in print.

Nation building is vital in post-war states to bring the people that have been at war together. To restore peace in a state, many different actors need to work together to bring stability, safety, and advancement to a new nation. There are several methods of nation building, and this thesis evolves around three of them. This is a qualitative study where three theories on nation building are used to analyze the development of nation building, and the obstacles Bosnia and Herzegovina still has to reach a national identity. Several studies are used in this thesis to show how the development has evolved in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The method consisted of searching in databases for peer-reviewed articles, finding documents from international actors, and statistics. This thesis reveals that Bosnia and Herzegovina still has a long way to go before it becomes an nation where the citizens feel united, no matter which ethnicity they belong to.

This thesis develops a model that can be used to assess the ability of religious institutions to contribute to post-conflict state building. Highlighting the tendency in state building literature to stop short in discussing what seems to be inferred, but unnameable—religion—the research proposes a framework that identifies theoretical mechanisms through which religious institutions can contribute to post-conflict state building. Drawing from the theologies of Roman Catholicism and Sunni Islam the thesis then reflects upon why they would, of their own accord, lend their considerable legitimacy and resources. The thesis diverges from traditional approaches such as rational choice theory that suggest religious institutions act to maximise membership or assets, and instead embraces a teleological view recognizing the importance of belief structures in understanding a religious institution's motivations. It embraces salvation as a hermeneutical key to outline a Roman Catholic theology of state building while drawing upon the concept of justice for Sunni Islam. The thesis concludes by incorporating the particularistic nuances of Bosnia and Herzegovina's unique historically and culturally influenced religious practices, structures and theologies to suggest the ability and willingness of the two religions' institutions to contribute to their country's state building.

This essay will try to explain and compare the different development steps which Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina have taken after the war. How could countries with such similar backgrounds develop in such different ways? By analyzing and comparing the two countries the purpose was to examine how these countries which had so much in common could develop in so different ways.  My two questions are:  What similarities and differences are there between the development which Bosnia and Croatia have taken after the war?  Why have Croatia succeeded and not Bosnia? My analysis showed that the main reason to the difference between these countries was that Bosnia is divided; all ethnic groups in Bosnia only consider what's best for their own ethnic group and not what's best for the country. Croatia however has expelled the Serbs which made it easier for them to have a succesfull democratic development.

This thesis aims to investigate EU peacebuilding in Bosnia-Herzegovina, focusing on the ways in which EU actors engage with local cultural actors and vice versa. Given that, in the liberal peacebuilding tradition, civil society has been considered a key actor in the public sphere, peacebuilding actors have tended to neglect seemingly more marginal actors and their subtle ways of impacting on the peacebuilding process. However, this thesis contends that processes of interaction are not always direct and visible, but centre on discourse clusters, which I frame as imaginary ‘spaces of agency’. Through the creation of meanings within a space of agency and its translation into other imaginary spaces, actors develop the power to impact upon the peacebuilding process, often in coded ways and therefore invisible in the public sphere, as peacebuilding actors, including the EU, have created it. A typology of the modes of interaction and possible responses between spaces helps understand the complexities and nuances of peacebuilding interaction. The thesis uses this framework to analyse several exemplary spaces of agency of the EU, rooting them in institutional discourses with specific reference to Bosnia-Herzegovina. Based on this, I investigate a number of responses to those spaces on the part of local cultural actors, as well as how the latter contribute to the emergence of alternative localised spaces, where the EU’s spaces fail to connect to the everyday dimensions of peace. I suggest that this represents a way in which local actors try to claim the ownership of peacebuilding back in subtle ways. This also points to the ability of actors that have traditionally been excluded from the peacebuilding project to contextualise abstract and distant processes into what matters locally, as well as their capacity to reject and resist when the EU’s spaces remain irrelevant for local peacebuilding imaginations.

This master’s thesis is a result of research conducted during six weeks in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The purpose of this study is to examine whether the contribution of the Dayton peace agreement to process of nation building in Bosnia has become counter productive as it contains elements of both nation-state and state-nation foundation. The study strives to understand the question of identity and how people in Bosnia view themselves and Others, and how they view the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina in combination with the Dayton peace agreement. Qualitative methods such as semi-structured and focused interviews as well as participatory and direct observations built the base for the data collection. The hermeneutic method is used as an approach to comprehend and to handle the findings. As my personal background contains pre-understandings of the chosen topic, I have chosen to use them throughout the research instead of ignoring them as the objective of this study is not to come to a final response of this topic, but instead to bring forward an alternative angle of the identified problem. The result of this study indicates that people in Bosnia and Herzegovina tend to identify in terms of ethno-national identity groups primarily where religion and territory have a decisive role in shaping identity, while a common Bosnian identity has fallen behind. It also reveals that the Dayton peace agreement damages the idea of a common Bosnian identity and questions the idea of Bosnia all together. This research suggests that a nation-state bottom-up process in Bosnia is little perceptible, due to the lack of a common Bosnian identity. The results from this study indicate that Bosnia does not fit the state-nation definition, nor the nation-state definition for several reasons while both state-nation and nation-state building are visible on regional levels. The Dayton peace agreement has initiated a very difficult political situation with extremely complex state structures and limited possibilities for change. The ethno-national division of three, and the constitutive tying of particular groups to specific territories, has hampered both the societal and political situation in Bosnia.

Mass ethnic violence, including genocide and ethnic cleansing, can take a variety of forms, but sexual violence often remains a key and defining feature. In the Bosnian war of 1992-1995 following the break-up of Yugoslavia, it is estimated that between 20,000 and 60,000 rapes were committed; and estimates are that between 250,000 and 500,000 rapes were committed during the Rwandan genocide in 1994. And yet the experiences and needs of these survivors of sexual violence can often remain marginalised through post-conflict reconstruction processes and beyond. Drawing on ethnographic and multi-method research, this dissertation explores and contrasts the post-conflict experiences of women who suffered from wartime sexual violence in Rwanda and Bosnia-Herzegovina and the programmes offered by key NGOs that continue to work with them. Focusing on policies and experiences of re-integration and the creation of a sense of social belonging, I show that these women represent a distinct category of civilian victims of war, whose postconflict needs and experiences are often marginalized by both their states and their communities. The thesis’ empirical core draws on ethnographic fieldwork, which included participant observation of ten key NGOs, four focus groups with HIV-infected individuals and women survivors of sexual violence, semi-structured and unstructured interviews with 17 survivors, 23 NGO staff and a Rwandan government representative, as well as informal conversations with all of these actors and members of the local communities. This ethnographic data was complemented and contextualized with official statistics, as well as government and NGO documents, and with interviews conducted at UN Women and the UN Trust Fund. The main substantive findings of this dissertation are that following the end of the ethnic violence in Rwanda and Bosnia-Herzegovina, the two states embarked on very different post-conflict reconstruction efforts. Rwanda has been characterized by an important process of nation-building, with the state outlawing ethnicity in favour of national unity, and implementing gender-sensitive policies to promote women’s rights. In contrast, the Bosnian-Herzegovinian state implemented policies mostly geared towards state-building, based on the rationale that the institutionalisation of ethnicity could only truly be accommodated through strong state institutions. The dominance of ethnic politics however overshadows other political agendas, such as gender policies, policies that have still not lead to transformative changes at the local level. These macro-policies importantly influence post-conflict experiences, most especially those of women who had survived sexual violence. My findings are suggestive of the complexity of the post-conflict experiences of the women I met, mostly in terms of social reintegration, where the macro-policies of post-conflict reconstruction continue to powerfully shape both their everyday lives and the work done by the NGOs. In Rwanda today, the women I interviewed mostly wish to be fully socially accepted and treated as part of their communities, with the NGOs offering them holistic support. But in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the women I interviewed today mostly demand legal recognition by the state, with the NGOs actively lobbying for this on their behalf. And yet, due to a shared experience of continuing everyday marginalization within both societies, as civilian victims of war, in both places the women often rely on NGOs to negotiate their social position within their states, nations and communities. This mediation role is structurally complicated by the NGOs’ relationships to donors and to the pressures of the state in which they operate. The impact of this is that through their mediation role NGOs reconstruct the women’s experiences in order to align with the priorities of the international donors and states in which they operate. Consequently, the contrasts between the work done by NGOs in each country are clearly visible, despite the similarity of the war crimes experienced: Rwandan NGOs actively seek to increase women’s empowerment within their social community, while the Bosnian NGOs actively aim to increase the women’s voices within more explicit political agendas. The thesis’s key theoretical or intellectual contribution, therefore, concerns its relevance to intersectional scholarly work on post-conflict and gender studies. More specifically, my findings suggest that a shift occurred immediately following the end of the armed conflicts, where the women who had experienced wartime sexual violence and who were socially located outside the scope of justice of their ethnic enemies, suddenly found themselves outside the scope of justice of their own ethnic or national communities. Extending Mann’s (2004) and Opotow et al’s (2005) typologies of ethnic violence and moral exclusion, I then develop a specific framework for understanding the underlying moral shifts experienced by the survivors of sexual violence. In doing this, I seek to capture this gendered moral and social relocation and its consequences on the everyday lives of the women and the NGOs that work with them. This forms the basis for my theoretical contribution that the women moved from ethnic women to moral outcasts in the aftermath of the ethnic violence, and that this exclusion is contextually shaped since the priorities for social reintegration are different in Rwanda to BiH. Addressing these priorities then requires different forms of post-conflict inclusion.

Ethnic nationalism produces conflicts through constructing identities that include certain groups and exclude or marginalize others. This process often continues in post-war periods and hinders inter-ethnic reconciliation. Political actors proceed with constructing ethno-national identities and (re-)writing national narratives in the realm of remembering. This thesis seeks to understand how memorial sites are used for nation-building processes in post-war contexts, based on the municipality of Prijedor, Bosnia and Herzegovina. This single instrumental case study analyzes two memorial sites through fieldwork, newspaper articles, and archival records. The theoretical framework builds on concepts from nationalism studies, memory studies, as well as cultural and political geography. The analysis demonstrates that the studied memorial sites are used as follows: 1) to depict the nation's objects of identification for demarcating the national Self from the Other; 2) to promote myths of victimization for unifying the group and justifying atrocities; 3) to silence narratives and memories that contradict or challenge those of the own group; and 4) to mark territory as an integral part of the spatial narrative in which public places are transformed into “owned” places. All four practices are closely interrelated and give the memorial sites meaning and authority to convey the Bosnian-Serbian nation-building project.

During the collapse of Socialist Yugoslavia and amid a concomitant process to ethnically divide Bosnia, Sarajevo suffered through a siege which after three-and-a-half years resulted in a completely new social, political and territorial order. Following the signing of the peace agreement in Paris in December 1995, to end the war in Bosnia, the city simultaneously experienced a transition from war to peace and from socialism to capitalism. This double transition was marked by increasing intervention from the international community, who deployed an administration in Bosnia and Herzegovina to supervise the implementation of the peace agreement. Despite the fact that no specific local peace-building mission was established in Sarajevo, the Office of the High Representative (OHR), in charge of supervising the civilian annexes of the agreement, became particularly involved in the supervision, coordination and even execution of several key processes shaping its urban transformation, in areas such as the management of land, economic transition and the reconstruction of Sarajevo’s intrinsic ethnic diversity. Thus, this dissertation analyses the role of the OHR in the urban transformation of the symbolic Bosnian capital during the post-war period with an ultimate focus on the impact of those policies, developed mostly between 1995 and 2003, in the current ethnic and spatial configuration of the city.
En l’àmbit dels estudis urbans Sarajevo no és un cas d’estudi menor degut al seu simbolisme, amb un pes significatiu en la història contemporània continental, així com també per la llarga tradició de diversitat, inicialment religiosa i posteriorment ètnica, i de convivència al llarg de la seva història. Sarajevo és, de fet, un cas peculiar, sinó únic, en el sentit que la coexistència entre les diverses comunitats és una característica intrínseca de la ciutat, havent estat promoguda pels principals governs responsables dels tres períodes de major expansió urbana. Aquesta llarga tradició va rebre una de les seves principals agressions durant el col·lapse de la Iugoslàvia socialista. En el marc d’un procés de territorialització ètnica de Bòsnia i Hercegovina, desenvolupat principalment pels líders polítics serbobosnians conjuntament amb els sèrbies, Sarajevo va acabar sent sotmesa a tres anys i mig de setge que van provocar una profunda transformació de l’ordre social, ètnic, polític i territorial. Després de la signatura dels acords de pau a París el desembre de 1995, coneguts com els Acords de Dayton, que van posar fi a la guerra a Bòsnia, la ciutat va emprendre el període postbèl·lic destruïda, encerclada i dividida, amb una àrea assetjada sota control del Govern de Bòsnia i Hercegovina i els sectors perifèrics, i fins i tot alguns barris centrals, sota domini de les tropes serbobosnianes.

Defence date: 27 October 2003
Examining board: Prof. Damir Grubiša (University of Zagreb) ; Prof. Philippe C. Schmitter (EUI - Supervisor) ; Prof. Susan Woodward (City University of New York) ; Prof. Jan Zielonka (EUI)
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digitised archive of EUI PhD theses completed between 2013 and 2017

Examining board: Prof. John McGarry (Queen's University, Kingstone, Ontario, Canada) ; Prof. Mitja Žagar (Institute for Ethnic Studies, Ljubljana, Slovenia) ; Prof. Pierre-Marie Dupuy (European University Institute, Florence, Italy) ; Prof. Michael Keating (European University Institute, Florence, Italy - supervisor)
Defence date: 16 December 2004
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digitised archive of EUI PhD theses completed between 2013 and 2017

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The 1992-1995 war in Bosnia and Hercegovina (BiH) was the most violent phase of the dissolution of former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY), of which, for almost 50 years, BiH was one of six constituent republics. In the course of the war BiH¿s three main ethic groups- - Muslims, Bosnian Croats and Bosnian Serbs, with active involvement of neighbouring Croatia and Serbia, fought each other in pursuit of its own vision of BiH political and territorial (re) organization. The causes and the character of the war remain contentious, the main disagreement being over the issue of whether it was a war of aggression by BiH¿s neighbours or a civil war. Essentially, it contained the elements of both, which determined the way the war was fought, the multiplicity of actors involved, and complexity of agendas played out in the course of the conflict, its settlement and peace building process. The fighting was brought to end by an intense international military and diplomatic campaign, which pushed the worrying parties into compromise none of which considered just. The task of implementing complex terms of the peace agreement was put overwhelmingly in the hands of international actors, while local parties pursued the strategy of obstruction, trying to assert their own interpretation of the peace agreement that would accommodate some of their war aims.This paper looks at war veterans associations, as one particular type of non- state actors engaged in undermining peace settlement in the specific context of BiH war. Because of their position on the continuum between combatants and outside actor, and the nature of relationship with the political leadership negotiating the peace agreement, this case could provide different insights into the issue of spoiling in the types of contemporary conflicts characterised by multiplicity of both actors and agendas, and complex strategies needed to pacify them. The paper starts by brief analysis of the political and economic goals behind the 1992-1995 war, narrowing inquiry into Bosnian Croats self- rule as a political project and goal of the strategy of spoiling pursued by Bosnian Croat war veterans associations. It then reflects on the terms of the peace agreement, indicating some of the main areas the implementation of which was actively obstructed by this group. The analysis of the war veterans association deals with their origins and the position in the Bosnian Croat post- war power structures, the sources of their funding and their official and hidden agenda. The probe into spoiling tactics focuses on three important aspects of the peace agreement i.e. refugee return, war crimes prosecution and institution building, and is followed by a brief analysis on the impact of various strategies the international community as a custodian of peace has used to sustain its implementation.

The thesis analyzes formation of Muslim nationalism identity during the 20th century and then its radical discursive transformation in the context of the Bosnian war between 1992 and 1995 and the conflicting struggle with neighboring Serbian nationalism. Internal redefinition of the Muslim/Bosniak national identity is examined in the context of a number of structural, institutional and discursive continuities and discontinuities, as both a contingent and determined event at the same time. As a result of these heterogeneous processes, the current Bosniak national identity is mainly homogenized around the symbols of Islam and the national myth of eternal suffering of Bosniaks and the age-long genocidal endeavor of Non-Bosniaks that resulted in the "Serbian genocide/Holocaust" over Bosniaks between 1992 and 1995. Key words War, nationalism, national identity, ethnic conflict, nation-building, Bosniak nationalism, Muslim nationalism, Serbian nationalismm, Islam, genocide, Holocaust, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bosnian war

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)
Previous research on post-conflict elections has found several criteria important in determining if an area is ready to hold elections and whether or not it is likely to succeed. Although rarely ranked in any determination of importance, several concepts are present in most post-conflict election research. Additionally, there is not an agreed set of standard criteria upon which success can be assumed. When researching the post-conflict election literature two questions arise: (1) is there a set of criteria established to determine if an area is ready to conduct post-conflict elections, and (2) do all criteria need to be present in order to ensure successful post-conflict elections? Most research agrees on common criteria but highlights or researches one dominant criterion, to which is then often attributed to the success of an election. This is found in Krishna Kumar’s focus on international assistance (Kumar, 1998), Staffan Lindberg’s attribution of success to repetition of the election process (Lindberg, 2006), Paul Collier’s focus on per capita income (Collier, 2009), and Marie-Soleil Frere’s research on post-conflict elections and the media (Frere, 2011). When reviewing multiple research sources, it is likely several factors at various times and in various elections will be credited with being the single source criterion for success. This kind of past research is well supported and conclusively argued, but still fails to provide a scope of understanding outside of a single event. In other words, it is case specific and not comparatively applicable across cases. Although this thesis does not intend to “McDonaldize” (Ritzer, 2009) the process of democratization, it does propose to define a common set of criteria necessary, even if in varying degrees, to conduct successful elections in post-conflict environments.