Protests among citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina are becoming more frequent.
Most often, their aim is to decry the dysfunctionality and opacity of the
government, which are the result of the ethno-political structure created by
the Dayton Agreement, but also a trend towards democratic regression and
autocracy. A number of authors have tackled the ?JMBG? protests of 2013 and
the Plenums that emerged from the February 2014 protests, from their
particular disciplines. The focus of this paper is the social movement
?Justice for Dzenan,? organized by the Memic family upon the tragic death of
Dzenan Memic in Sarajevo in February 2016. An in-depth study was conducted
with key actors of the movement, as well as those who follow or in some way
support the protests. Particular emphasis in the research was paid to the
pragmatic symbiosis of the social movement and one political party. We argue
that it is possible to identify a pragmatic symbiosis as a novel form
(democratic innovation) of socio-political cooperation that can impede
rising autocratization. Through the quest for accountability, social
movements are introducing new strategic practices of mobilization and a
novel type of alliance-building with external factors (new political parties
as well as other social movements). The goal of the paper is to explore how
the social movement ?Justice for Dzenan? interacts with political parties
and approach the political sphere in BiH. Also, the idea is to examine the
possibilities and functionality of this kind of cooperation with the
framework of contentious politics.