| This dissertation examines the political economy of the peacebuilding process in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the aftermath of the country's 1992--95 war. Starting from the position that little progress has been made to date in transforming Bosnia's war-shattered economy into a functioning market economy, it seeks to understand and explain the principal dynamics that have led to this disappointing result, and to place Bosnia's economic transition process within the context of the country's broader post-conflict peacebuilding process. In doing so, the study draws on recent theoretical literature on the political economy of post-socialist transitions and on the political economy of conflict, attempting to draw lessons from each for the Bosnia case and to combine the literatures in ways that yield insights into situations, like Bosnia, that are both post-socialist and post-conflict.; The central argument advanced here is that much of Bosnia's ongoing economic crisis, and its current reform stalemate, can be explained by exploring the interactions of an inappropriate international model of economic reform with the country's particular post-conflict and post-socialist political economy. It argues that international policy-making in Bosnia has been dominated by the orthodoxy of the Washington consensus, and has therefore placed excessive focus on stabilization, liberalization, and privatization, and underemphasized institution-building, the restoration of the rule of law, and the dismantling of the nationalist power structures that have dominated political and economic life in Bosnia for more than a decade. Similarly, too little emphasis has been placed on the socio-economic aspects of human security, including social security and employment. While poorly designed and executed international strategies have contributed to Bosnia's slow economic recovery, economic regeneration has been further complicated by Bosnia's complex post-war constitutional structures and the country's largely unresolved stateness question, both of which have contributed to the perpetuation of a largely dysfunctional political system and reinforced the authority of the same nationalist structures that remain the central obstacles to both political stability and market reform. |
