In 1995 none of the political parties representing the peoples of Bosnia preferred a federal option. Yet, Bosnia became a federal state, highly decentralised and with a complex institutional architecture. This solution was imposed on them by international actors as a result of peace negotiations following the Yugoslav wars. Political parties in post-war Bosnia were not willing to identify with or accept the federation. The international community intervened taking over key decisions and so...

State Building and Democratization in Bosnia and Herzegovina details the post-Dayton evolution of the country over the last two decades. Carefully evaluating the successes and failures the book explores the slow progress of the democratization process and how key elites initially took hold of the state and its institutions and have successfully retained their grip on power, despite heavy international presence and reform attempts to counter-balance this trend. Bosnia and Herzegovina offers...

This study provides an overview of current nation building processes in contested states. With a specific focus on the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic, and Kosovo, original data is presented, collected in English in a single work for the first time. Viktoria Potapkina presents an analysis and comparison of contested states from an internal perspective, looking at the processes that help legitimize such entities from within and creating support for the...

The topics of extremism, violent extremism, and radicalization leading to terrorism have constituted an increasingly prominent area of policy interest and donor support in recent years, globally and in the western Balkans. Counterterrorism initiatives, as well as efforts to prevent and counter violent extremism (P/CVE), often reveal the need for broader reform, peacebuilding, and democratization strategies. While foreign donors and domestic authorities tend to focus on ISIS-inspired violen...

This book examines the political and legal challenges of regional governance of the 28 countries of the European Union and the 48 in the Council of Europe. The contributions, dilemmas, and moral hazards from this record of nearly seven decades of regional inter-governmental institutions has kept the peace, but produced episodes of crisis from overstretching jurisdictions, thematically and geographically. Polarization between nationalist and integrative forces has displaced the idealistic a...

Britain does not have a written constitution. It has rather, over centuries, developed a set of miscellaneous conventions, rules, and norms that govern political behavior. By contrast, Bosnia’s constitution was written, quite literally, overnight in a military hanger in Dayton, USA, to conclude a devastating war. By most standards it does not work and is seen to have merely frozen a conflict and all development with it. What might these seemingly unrelated countries be able to teach each o...

Twenty years on from the end of war, the status of the north of Kosovo remains disputed. Ten years on from Kosovo’s declaration of independence from Serbia, the north’s predominantly Serb population continues to resist integration. Education, health, and other vital services continue to be provided by Serbia. These latent tensions regularly surface through various forms of resistance, including protests and barricades (most notably those of 2011); resistance which has many historical prece...

What is the relationship between writing systems and nationalism? How can different alphabets coexist in the same country? What is the destiny of the Cyrillic alphabet in Europe? Giustina Selvelli’s original work provides detailed answers to these far-reaching and potentially divisive questions and many more by examining several intriguing debates on topics of alphabets and national identity in a number of countries from the Balkan area over the course of the last 100 years. Following an e...

Based on a variety of contemporary debates on federal theory Understanding Federalism and Federation honours Michael Burgess’ contribution to the study of these topics through a selection of approaches, theories, debates and interpretations. Gathering contributors from diverse subfields to synthesize current debates it offers a snapshot of the immense range of current research on federalism and federation. Leading authors debate key issues such as American federalism, Canada and the role o...

This book critically examines the process of statebuilding by the EU, focusing on its attempts to build Member States in the Western Balkan region.This book analyses the European Union's policies towards, and the impact they have, upon the states of the Western Balkans, and assesses how these affect the nature of EU foreign policy. To this end, it focuses on the tools and mechanisms that the EU employs in its enlargement policy and examines the new instruments of direct interventio...

Looking at the growing use of federalism and decentralization as tools of conflict resolution, this book provides evidence from several case studies on the opportunities and challenges that territorial solutions offer when addressing internal conflicts within a variety of countries.Federalism has been used as a tool of conflict resolution in a number of conflict situations around the world. The results of this have been mixed at best, with some countries moving slowly to the paths ...

Power-sharing serves as a popular conflict resolution device at war’s end. Yet, the performance record of such arrangements is highly variable, sometimes leading to peace and stability and at other times to immobilism and institutional collapse. This book explores the adoption, function, and dissolution of power-sharing arrangements across the Global South, including case studies of Colombia, Ethiopia, Malaysia, and Iraq, and others to make sense of this mixed record. Authors identify a ra...