Author: Dr. Mirza Buljubašić, REUNIR Associate Fellow, a criminologist specializing in atrocity crimes, terrorism, and extremism, with a broader research focus on transitional justice, punishment, and intergenerational dynamics in post-conflict societies. Dr. Buljubašić has served as a research consultant, and research team leader in projects related to justice sector reform, security governance, and violent extremism across the Western Balkans.
In June 2013, a mother stood outside the Parliament of Bosnia and Herzegovina holding her infant daughter and a cardboard sign that read: “I am a baby, not a number.” Her daughter, like thousands of newborns at the time, had been denied a personal ID number and therefore medical care due to a political deadlock rooted in ethnic power-sharing. The protest that followed—nonviolent, multiethnic, and led by ordinary citizens—marked one of the clearest expressions of public frustration since the war. More than a decade later, the sign still resonates. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, the demand for normalcy—civic equality, democratic accountability, functioning institutions—remains a radical act.
Back then, the crisis was over an administrative code. But its causes were structural. Political actors, divided along ethnic lines, failed to agree on the law needed to register newborns. Protesters were not demanding revolution—they were demanding that the state work. The same dysfunction persists today, though the political stakes have grown more volatile, and the rhetoric more openly secessionist.
The Myth of Sacred Balance
For nearly three decades, Bosnia and Herzegovina has lived under the shadow of a peace that ended one war but institutionalized the next. The Dayton Peace Agreement, signed in 1995, was a triumph of emergency diplomacy. It stopped the killing. But it also imposed a power-sharing arrangement that enshrined ethnic vetoes and fragmented state institutions, rewarding wartime territorial logics. Today, Dayton is no longer a safeguard of peace—it has become an enabler of democratic paralysis.
A recent political rupture has made this clearer than ever. A major coalition of Croatian nationalist parties, and liberal, left, and centre-right parties, informally known as the “Trojka,” severed its partnership with the dominant Serb party, the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD), at the state level. The split was triggered by Milorad Dodik’s increasingly anti-state rhetoric and his open sabotage of Bosnia’s EU integration path, including his declaration that Bosnia and Herzegovina should never join the Union. Dodik, the longtime leader of Republika Srpska (RS) and a central figure in Bosnia’s postwar politics, had for years been undermining state institutions, stalling legislation, threatening secession, and escalating attacks on judicial independence. The Trojka’s response—a parliamentary maneuver removing SNSD’s influence in the House of Peoples, a key legislative chamber where ethnic blocking powers routinely stall decision-making—was not merely procedural. It marked a rare act of cross-ethnic resistance to the machinery of obstruction that Dayton has long enabled.
No major party had dared such a move in recent memory. The break surprised analysts not because of the coalition’s grievances, but because it punctured the assumption that ethnic-based vetoes were immovable. For the first time in over a decade, a pro-European realignment across ethnic lines challenged Republika Srpska’s grip on the narrative of frozen sovereignty. And yet, no single coalition reshuffle can resolve the deeper crisis: a system engineered to produce deadlock.
In Republika Srpska, opposition parties present themselves as alternatives to Dodik’s regime. But scratch the surface and many echo the same core dogmas: the entity’s inviolability, deep mistrust of international actors—especially the United States—and suspicion of Sarajevo’s supposed centralist ambitions. They oppose Dodik’s style, not his strategy. This convergence is not just opportunistic—it reflects decades of narrative capture through education, media, and public institutions, where RS autonomy is framed as existential and state cooperation as betrayal.
These distortions are not confined to Republika Srpska. Calls to reform Bosnia’s system along ostensibly more “European” lines have increasingly invoked the Belgian model: a state with complex federal arrangements, linguistic communities, and powerful regional governments. But the comparison falters under scrutiny. Apart from Brussels, Belgium’s regions are linguistically and culturally distinct, with separate historical trajectories. Bosnia’s pluralism, by contrast, is historically interwoven and geographically dispersed; language sciences are clear on the issue of language: it is the same language but political standardisation separates it into Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, and Serbian. To import Belgium’s structure into Bosnia would be to solidify wartime separations as permanent borders, entrenching a system that already prioritizes ethnic real estate over civic rights.
Moreover, Bosnia’s constituent peoples—Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs—do not live in cleanly bounded zones. Any move toward ethnoregionalism would disenfranchise minorities and members of mixed families, particularly in urban centers. The irony is stark: Croats, whose nationalist political representatives most vocally advocate for electoral reforms centered on group-based representation—often framed as measures to ensure legitimate political representation rather than an explicit demand for a third entity—would likely see their influence diminish under a strictly proportional, territory-based system. Proposals claiming to empower communities would in fact institutionalize their marginalization. This is far from the values and ideals of the European Union.
These proposals are not only domestic. Officials from neighboring EU member states—especially Croatia—have increasingly revived calls for a third entity or a redrawn constitutional order based on ethnic federalism. Cloaked in the language of minority rights and subsidiarity, these initiatives are neither neutral nor technocratic. They are strategic, aimed at advancing nationalist objectives under the cover of EU integration rhetoric. The European Commission, preoccupied with internal cohesion and wary of reigniting tensions, has so far refrained from clear public positions on such moves. In March 2023, for instance, it failed to respond to direct appeals from civil society groups to clarify its stance on Croatian-backed electoral reforms. Silence in the face of such nationalist restructuring risks complicity. If the Union truly supports Bosnia’s democratic future, it must speak—and act—accordingly.
At the heart of this debate lies a fundamental paradox: those who invoke Dayton as the guardian of peace are often those most invested in preventing its reform. They cling to the Agreement’s legacy while ignoring its unfulfilled obligations—such as Annex 4 on constitutional equality, Annex 6 on human rights, and Annex 7 on refugee return. Dayton was a peace treaty, not a democratic constitution. Yet it has become an untouchable scripture in a political system that rewards stasis.
The End of the Dayton Illusion
And so Bosnia drifts. Its youth emigrate in unprecedented numbers—nearly half a million since 2013, according to the Union for Sustainable Return and Integrations in BiH. Elections renew ethnic mandates but rarely bring programmatic change. Governance is reduced to symbolic stalemates. Citizens remain unable to vote for candidates outside their group or territory, while legislation is regularly blocked by procedural maneuvering. The system does not just fail to represent the demos—it filters, dilutes, and distorts it.
The question is not whether Dayton has failed. The question is: who benefits from its perpetuation? The answer is clear. Ethnonational elites, for whom identity politics is a shield against scrutiny, a platform immune to accountability. The illusion of parity—between peoples, entities, and vetoes—protects their interests. It does not serve the public.
Reform must come. But from where? Can constitutional change occur internally? In theory, yes—via amendments and referendum. But domestic political actors have shown limited capacity to transcend Dayton’s zero-sum logic. Also, Dayton is an internationally witnessed agreement, and any major shift will require international coordination. Change will require leadership from those with a legal and moral mandate: the Peace Implementation Council, the Office of the High Representative, the European Union, and democratic allies committed to Bosnia’s sovereignty. Waiting for unanimous consent from those who profit from the system is a recipe for further paralysis and decay.
This is not to say that Bosnia cannot function. It does, in places. Civil society remains active. Local governance works in many municipalities. Citizens continue to live, work, and care for each other across ethnic lines. But the national architecture obstructs transformation. Every attempt at reform is filtered through demands that serve party survival, not democratic renewal.
To reform Bosnia’s institutions today is not to attack the state—it is to rescue it. A new constitutional order must begin with a basic democratic principle: equal rights for all citizens, regardless of ethnicity or place of residence. This principle is not radical. It is the standard of every modern democracy. And yet in Bosnia, it remains controversial because it threatens elites whose power rests on division.
The international community must now decide: does it still believe in a civic, democratic Bosnia, or is it prepared to tolerate permanent limbo—a state frozen by its own foundational contradictions? Reaffirming Bosnia’s sovereignty is not enough. Reform must dismantle structural vetoes and exclusive ethnic claims. The new order cannot be negotiated on nationalist terms. It must be founded on democratic legitimacy.
Bosnia and Herzegovina does not need another blueprint. It needs a political awakening—one that reclaims the future from those who have monopolized its past. This will be slow and contested. The actors who once helped bring peace must not retreat into diplomatic neutrality. They must lead—not as occupiers, but as guarantors of civic transformation. And the citizens of Bosnia—those who stayed, those who left, and those still watching—must be at the heart of the next chapter.
Photo©️ Eric Miller/Reuters
