The Diminishing Returns of Ethnic Maximalism in Bosnia

The past year has been marked by several significant developments in BiH and the Western Balkans, none perhaps more consequential than the removal from office of longtime Serb secessionist Milorad Dodik following his conviction by the Court of BiH. We still do not know who will replace Dodik as president of the RS entity, as the special election to name his successor were rife with fraud, clearly orchestrate by the long-governing SNSD regime in Banja Luka.

Ovaj tekst dostupan je i na bosanskom jeziku

What did not occur this year, however, are any structural changes to BiH’s constitutional regime. That was never likely per se. Yet as this year marked thirty years since the signing of the Dayton Peace Agreement, constitutional reform was a frequent subject of debate and discussion at dozens of panels in BiH, the region, Europe, and the U.S.

So, politics in BiH persists even as the prospects for structural change remain dim. This may not seem like a significant fact, yet it is arguably the most significant dimension of the broader historical moment in which BiH exists and has existed since 1995.

Because these are the facts: the post-Dayton period in BiH is its longest experience with parliamentary and electoral democracy to date. BiH endured the period of aggression with its sovereignty and territorial intact. And although hobbled with a largely irrational constitutional regime, it has likewise endured the malign political machinations of Belgrade, Zagreb, and their local proxies against its statehood since the war too.

New threats and challenges continue to emerge, some local, some transnational. But BiH and those committed to its sovereignty have one great advantage (despite their general political incompetence): they have already plunged the depths of adversity.

Today, BiH has been at been at peace, with its imperfect multiparty democracy and the myriad other shortcomings of the Dayton regime, for thirty years. Ukraine, by way of comparison, managed only twenty-three years of peace when Russia launched its first invasion in 2014. And it now appears, sadly, destined to enter a twelfth year of war.

Those who today still contest BiH’s sovereignty, territorial integrity, and institutional legitimacy are confronted with ever diminishing returns. Dodik, for instance, is clearly no longer a meaningful threat to the fundamental integrity of the Bosnian state. He may undermine its rule of law and its democratic processes but even in this respect he is near the nadir of his influence.

Dragan Covic and his ethnic separatist HDZ BiH, along with their patrons in the Plenkovic government in Zagreb, received an electoral lifeline from High Representative Christian Schmidt’s illiberal interference in the 2022 elections. But they did not, truly, gain anything from the action, they merely forestalled the inevitable: the possibility of government formation in BiH without the participation of the HDZ BiH.

After all, consider that in 2002 – the first electoral cycle in which Dragan Covic assumed a leadership role in the party – the HDZ BiH won some 116,452 votes, or 9.48% of the total vote, in the BiH House of Representatives. By 2022, its total votes had increased to 139,081 – largely due to the implosion of the Croat opposition parties – but its vote share had fallen to 8.75%.

Worse, the HDZ BiH’s natural electorate – conservative Croats from western Herzegovina – are themselves a shrinking share of the population, and the party has steadfastly refused to entice any new voters. Unlike the SDS and the RS opposition parties more generally, which have significantly shifted towards political pragmatism, the HDZ BiH has actually become more radical, as evidenced by its recent reanimation of demands for the creation of a third entity.

This is a categorical misreading of the general historical thrust of Bosnian and regional politics since 1995. BiH may be a weak state, but it is not a weakening state. The HDZ BiH and SNSD are both strong parties, but their electoral strength is declining. For political maximalists like Covic and Dodik, this amounts to a race to the bottom.

It also means that those who have the most to gain from constitutional reform in BiH are not Bosniak or even civic political actors, as it is often publicly perceived. As I argued in my “Dayton Plus” constitutional reform proposal earlier this year, it is precisely Croat and Serb nationalists who have the most to gain from amendments to the country’s governing system, especially reforms in line with the European Convention on Human Rights. Because this offers them the possibility of preserving significant portions of BiH’s existing ethnic power sharing model, while still allowing for the country to move towards a more rational system of governance. Above all, one capable of realizing its EU and NATO aspirations.

The longer they delay recognizing the same, the weaker their political hand becomes. The SNSD, for one, seems clearly headed for a loss of its primacy among the Serb electorate in BiH. The HDZ BiH may not yet have a credible opposition within the Croat electorate, but its electoral base is declining. And even their most loyal partisans do not believe that either party will be in a stronger position in ten, or twenty years.

The pace of change in this or that year in BiH may thus appear glacial, almost imperceptible. But the movement of glaciers, in time, reshapes entire continents.