This paper will start with an analysis of the Dayton Peace Agreement, and assess to what extent it focused on peace-building, state-reconstruction and democratization. It will provide an overview of major peace-building, state-reconstruction and democratization initiatives by international and local actors in post-war Bosnia. Following the often-presented argument that "Dayton is a good peace agreement but a bad blueprint for a democratic state," the paper will ask if the Dayton Peace Agreement has failed in the consolidation of Bosnian statehood and the democratization of the country. In order to do this, an in-depth analysis of the current situation in terms of state consolidation and democratization will be given. The main argument of the paper demonstrates that while the Dayton Agreement had some inherent weaknesses, actions by local elites and international state-builders also explain some of the current issues of the Bosnian state.
Security sector reform (SSR) has become an important part of the EU’s efforts to transform the Western Balkans from a conflict-ridden area into a stable and democratic part of Europe. This paper studies SSR in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) as an illustration of the multifaceted and complex Europeanization policies employed by the EU in the region. It does not present a study of the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) missions, as there is already a wealth of material available on this subject, but offers instead a broader examination of changes in two sectors of BiH’s security system with the aim of improving understanding of the EU’s impact on the domestic environments of candidate states. Its main argument is that the EU used police and intelligence reforms in Bosnia, both of which were part and parcel of the SSR efforts in the country, as state-building tools. But because domestic competence in Bosnia was lacking and the EU was rather inexperienced in implementing SSR, the reforms have had a mixed record of success and reveal the limitations of the region’s Europeanization.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.