Research output
Complete citation
Poljarević, Emin. “Bosnien: a sui generis state” [Bosnia: A Sui Generis State]. Inblick Östeuropa 7, nos. 1–2 (2005).
Status
Published
Publication type
Public scholarship / commentary
Overview
This Swedish-language article analyses Bosnia and Herzegovina as a state whose constitutional and political structure cannot be understood through conventional models of sovereignty alone. Written a decade after the Dayton Agreement, it asks whether the international strategy for stabilising Bosnia could overcome the country’s constitutional fragmentation, identity crisis, and economic disorder while moving it toward Euro-Atlantic integration. The article situates Bosnia at the geopolitical centre of the Western Balkans and examines the paradox of extensive international investment alongside persistent institutional weakness. It argues that the European Union’s objective of preventing renewed conflict was necessary but that the strategic means chosen to achieve it risked reproducing dependency and political paralysis. The article’s contribution is an early diagnosis of Bosnia’s post-war predicament: a formally sovereign but internationally supervised state whose prospects for durable peace depended on reconciling external state-building with domestic legitimacy and functional institutions.
Research question or central concern
Could international supervision and Euro-Atlantic integration produce a legitimate and functional Bosnian state after Dayton, or did the chosen strategy reproduce institutional dependency and paralysis?
Main argument, approach, and contribution
The article argues that Bosnia’s distinctive post-Dayton order combined formal sovereignty with deep international supervision. It evaluates the gap between the European Union’s stabilising objectives and the constitutional, political, and economic effects of its strategic choices.
Keywords
Bosnia and Herzegovina; Dayton Agreement; state-building; European Union; sovereignty; Western Balkans; post-war reconstruction
Emin Poljarević 