Linking active and activist citizens: electoral change and the Bosnian plenums

Abstract

This article will examine whether the demands for social justice during the citizen-led assemblies ("plenums") in February 2014 in Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH) triggered electoral change in cantonal elections in the Bosniak-Croat entity (the Federation of BiH, or FBiH). Extant analyses underline the perennial weakness of Bosnian civil society, and the stasis in the ethnified political party system, even in the wake of the protests in 2014. However, these studies only look at the aggregate level and do not differentiate between places where plenums were established and those where they were not. To address this gap, the present article will differentiate, following Engin Isin, between "active citizenship" and "activist citizenship" as the basis for the conceptual framework. A difference-indifferences analysis will be employed using municipal-level FBiH cantonal election results from 2006, 2010, 2014, and 2018. There are two main questions in the study. First, was there a significant electoral change in municipalities with plenums compared with places without a plenum? Relatedly, did the change differ amongst the main parties? The article will thus link active and activist citizenship in the post-conflict and post-socialist setting of BiH.

Nonelectoral Participation in Deeply Divided Societies: Transforming Consociations from the Ground Up?

“…They characterize this long-term shift in civic consciousness as their core goal, as opposed to short-term political change. Whilst this shift had not resulted in a change in electoral outcomes and institutional politics from the bottom-up, some observers believe that it has the potential to do so over time (Murtagh 2015;Milan 2017;Sircar 2019). Indeed, popular support for marriage equality legislation reflects the changing public attitudes in NI, the successful cooperation of the LGBTQ groups with the provincial and national policymakers, as well as the public indignation at the abuse of the Petition of Concern in the Northern Ireland Assembly.…”

“…Resting on the principle of elite accommodation and representation of (ethnic) groups via their leaders, it evidently accords little role for bottom-up mobilization of citizens in politics. Because politics in consociational settings is particularly elite-centric (Murtagh 2015), issues that are crosscutting or unrelated to ethnic identity usually lack representation in high-table politics (Sircar 2019;Luther and Deschouwer 1999). Cross-group mobilization challenging political decision-making is oftentimes sporadic because every issue is dragged into the ethnic terrain (Fraenkel 2020;Horowitz 1985).…”

“…It would be fair to say that the plenums have sought to change primarily access points for citizens' participation in and engagement with bread-and-butter issues eying potential institutional reforms of state institutions. However, plenums remained locally active with little coordinating capacity to craft a cross-community platform acceptable to parties in the ethnicized political system at the FBiH and BIH as a whole (Sircar 2019). Failing to swing the opinion of the plurality of voters and their political leaders about the need for reforming the system of political representation has not been the result of plenums' lack of effort, however.…”

Scalability of Transitional Justice and Reconciliation Interventions: Moving Toward Wider Socio-political Change

“…The work of cultural and youth centres and other alternative spaces, alongside citizen initiatives, have paved the way for public manifestations of discontent in BiH (Belloni, 2020;Sircar, 2019). The large-scale political protests that erupted beginning from the late 2000s onwards represent non-ethnic mobilisations that had the effect of framing and empowering the 'citizen' (Belloni, 2020;Sircar, 2019). They confirmed that many Bosnians share the same concerns, and that they identified elites as the main immediate cause of their misfortune, rather than the 'other' ethnic group.…”

“…They confirmed that many Bosnians share the same concerns, and that they identified elites as the main immediate cause of their misfortune, rather than the 'other' ethnic group. (Belloni, 2020;Sircar, 2019). Socio-economic protests that took place throughout BiH in 2014 resulted in the resignation of several cantonal governments (Belloni, 2020;Lai, 2020).…”