Socio-cultural aspects of post-war reconstruction using the example of the Bosnian experience

Abstract

The article provides a comprehensive analysis of the socio-cultural and institutional parameters of the post-conflict development of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the context of international intervention after the signing of the Dayton Peace Agreement. The aim of the study is to identify the relationship between the configuration of dominant forms of social solidarity, the specifics of the political culture of Bosnian society and the evolution of the strategies of the international community in the process of peacebuilding and state-building. The theoretical and methodological basis is the cultural theory (grid–group), which allows interpreting the political behavior of local elites and the population, as well as the tools of external actors through the prism of hierarchical, fatalistic, egalitarian and individualistic models of social solidarity. It is shown that at the early stage of the post-Dayton process, the “social map” of Bosnia was determined by the prevalence of hierarchical-fatalistic attitudes, the reproduction of ethno-national mobilization and the preservation of high conflict, which limited the effectiveness of internationally implemented policies. It is substantiated that the initial egalitarian-individualistic approaches to international settlement (consensus mechanisms, negotiations, economic conditionality and the logic of “rational choice”) turned out to be socio-culturally unviable, causing repeated institutional failures and a transition to a more rigid model of governance. It is established that the introduction of the Bonn powers meant a shift in the role of the Office of the High Representative towards a hierarchical regulatory-coercive paradigm and the formation of practices of “controlled/protective democracy”. It is concluded that, despite achieving certain short-term results in the field of institutional building and stabilization of governance, international intervention at the same time preserved the dependence of the political system on external control, strengthened fatalistic attitudes, and did not ensure a deep transformation of political culture and sustainable internal balancing of the socio-cultural space.