| This dissertation is about the international effort to build the foundation for lasting peace in Bosnia-Herzegovina after the 1992--95 war that engulfed the country. An important finding from previous studies of post-settlement intervention in deeply divided societies is that security guarantees have to be provided to the local parties to maximize the chances of successful peacebuilding. These guarantees come in two forms: first, a broad power-sharing agreement that includes all the relevant actors in the peacebuilding process and provides each a stake in its success. Second, foreign powers guarantee the parties that the peace agreement will be upheld. The literature on peacebuilding is almost unanimous in arguing that both these types of security guarantees allow peace to take hold and democracy and democratization to take root.; This dissertation tests this claim by closely analyzing the political aspects of post-settlement peacebuilding in Bosnia in four areas of intervention: institution building, electoral engineering, civil society development, and minority return. Three major conclusions are put forward. First, power-sharing institutions are indispensable in the short-term to convince the parties to lay down their weapons, but they come with a long-term cost that undermines the peace process. Not only do power-sharing institutions reify ethnic divisions, but also they violate individual human rights. Second, and contrary to conventional wisdom, these institutions make negotiation and compromise among the parties less likely. Instead of favoring compromise, power-sharing institutions postpone the costs of conflict, and thus create more dissention. Third, a massive international presence in the form of security/development organizations alters the local political dynamics. The assertive role of international agencies, geared towards removing the immediate obstacles to peacebuilding, has a double negative effect: it does not address the structural reasons for instability, and relieves the local political elite from the responsibility to reach compromise.; Instead of simply calling for an end to the assertive role of the international agencies, this dissertation makes a case for a 'post-settlement settlement,' that is, the need for a broad rethinking of the institutional structure in a direction more conducive to the protection of individual human rights. |
