Ethnic Division and Ownership in Bosnia and Herzegovina

In June 2008, Bosnia and Herzegovina (hereafter Bosnia) signed the Stabilisation and Association Agreement with the EU. The signing of SAA, however, does not mean reconciliation among nationalist parties who had started the war came to an end successfully. Instead these parties are still dominant in political sphere of Bosnia. On the other hand, as Bosnia comes closer to the EU, Bosnia will inevitably need to express ownership, that is, to have will and capability to tackle reform agenda necessary to join the EU. Although the term•eownership' can be used in the context of politics, civil society and business, ownership in this article limits its scope to political one. The main agenda of ownership is, thus, capability to cooperate, discuss and come to an agreement among politicians of Bosnia. Dayton Peace Agreement (DPA) installed in Bosnia the Office of the High Representative (OHR) as a representative of international community. OHR is responsible of supervising civilian aspects of peace implementation with extremely huge authority. In addition, DPA provided Bosnia with consociational democracy. As is shown in this article, Bosnia lacks cooperation among political elites, in other words, ownership. Recently OHR has been moving from regulation with coercive power to that of EU integration requirements. Therefore, this article tries to figure out current situation and future prospect of ethnic division in Bosnia, taking police reform as a case. At first, Bosnian state structure set by DPA is analyzed from consociational democracy perspective. Secondly, it clarifies international community's approach towards Bosnian ethnic division. Thirdly, the extent to which Bosnia politicians showed the sense of ownership and international community's influence on it are examined.