Eighteen years of the (de)composition of the State

Abstract

This article is a critical study of Bosnia and Herzegovina (B&H) after Dayton, an analysis of the country as a political community. I say like because BiH has been existing for eighteen years on the institutionalized basis of the Dayton Accords. Collective rights have made any kind of individualism impossible, ethnic principles dominate over civil ones, and the Dayton ordinance has come to establish an expensive, complex and ineffective state system. Dayton was a show of force that brought (imposed) peace to this country, but limited the future progress of BiH after the conflicts and after Dayton. The deep disagreements and the destruction of the social and political fabric of the country are resurrecting the violence and impotence of a society that is devastated and disjointed. A society that has an enemy in the order, divided in such a way that the constitution of an order based on a minimum consensus, a consensus of fundamental political and legal principles, becomes impossible. In the analysis of the deficit born after the reestablishment of the order, but also the dismantling of BiH, I start from those authors who in their works analyze these factors considered limiting (political, legal and social). The fundamental question of this article is this: after everything that has not been done for eighteen years, is it possible to consider BiH a civilized political community? Each negative factor addressed in this article creates problems both in the functioning of the political system and in maintaining its stability. Hence arises the question that gives rise to the title of this article: how is a State maintained that has spent eighteen years removing, one after another, the attributes that make up its sovereignty?