Introduction
Since it gained independence in 1992, there has been a proliferation of academic and policy writing on Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), focused on a variety of topics, treating it as an object of study rather than an active subject in the international political and legal arena, using its agency in the pursuit of its own interests and goals. There is a myriad of research published on BiH regarding state building and democratization (for instance, Chandler 2000; Andjelic 2003; Ramet 2005; Bieber 2006; Belloni 2007; Dzankic 2017; Keil and Perry 2015), as well as on peacebuilding and international involvement (for instance, Cigar 1995; Campbell 1998; Burg and Shoup 2000; Farkas 2003; Donais 2005; McQueen 2005; Coles 2007; Koneska 2016; Kappler 2014; Emkic 2018; Berry 2017; O’Reilly 2018), pointing to this fact. Indeed, very little research has taken BiH as carrier of its own strategic orientation in international affairs.
While there are authors who argue that some post-Yugoslav states can be considered as autonomous actors ‘in a globalized and heavily interdependent world’ (Keil and Stahl 2014), the overall image of BiH’s foreign policy-making capacity that emerges from the existing literature remains one sided. It undermines understanding of the particular complex dynamics at play when it comes to the country’s international positioning and foreign policy orientation.1 This is unjustified as there are several examples of influence in domestic and international policymaking that can be examined through the empirical study of BiH.
The main idea behind this volume is to closely examine BiH’s institutional agency in foreign affairs. It evaluates how this country, often considered as ‘weak’ or even ‘failing’, shapes its foreign policy portfolios in regional, European, and global contexts. The overall aim is to draw out the contours and scope of BiH’s foreign policy in various contexts, areas, and over time. The volume offers a clear and comprehensive analysis of the evolution of BiH’s foreign affairs goals, since its independence from Yugoslavia, shaped by different state actors and institutions, including both conflict and post-conflict periods, Euro-Atlantic integration, economic and political affairs on both regional and international levels, integration with a variety of international organizations, bilateral relations with neighboring states and other relevant international powers, including the United States, Russia, selected European Union (EU) countries, and Turkey, as well as development of relations with the Bosnian diaspora. It focuses on analysis of policy design, competencies, positioning, strategizing, integration, key achievements, and challenges. One of its strengths is the amount of empirical research that it brings in combination with interdisciplinary approaches to foreign policy analysis.
From an empirical perspective, the evolution of BiH’s foreign policy has so far remained unexplored in academic and policy research and is sorely needed after a quarter of a century since the country’s independence. Indeed, BiH is a unique case study of a post-conflict state without a coherent foreign affairs policy formulated in the form of a law or in other comprehensive and clearly structured documents. To use an imperfect analogy, in much the same way as the UK’s Constitution, as a sum of laws and principles that make up the country’s political system, BiH’s foreign policy is uncodified, yet it is materialized and practiced by a network of internal actors who steer decision-making processes within a complex domestic political system. We argue that the country’s foreign policy exists and is continuously shaped through interactions with different domestic and international agents. Accordingly, in its 25 years of independence, BiH has still managed to sue another country, has presided over the United Nations (UN) Security Council and the Council of Europe, and contributed to various international crisis management, peacekeeping, and peacebuilding missions around the world, demonstrating its foreign policy institutional agency in varied ways.
While BiH does not have a set of legal documents which set out foreign policy roles and agendas in a clear way with a strong sense of direction, it is nonetheless actively involved in foreign affairs and maintains its foreign policy via a number of institutions and actors who act within their constitutionally set limitations. Whereas this could be construed as a lack of cohesion in foreign policymaking, this book aims instead to demonstrate that occurrence can also be analyzed through a number of institutions and actors who perform and adapt to internal and external changes and then pursue certain policy goals. These institutions resist the daily political turmoil of the country and provide a degree of stability demonstrable through foreign policy. They maintain the longevity of foreign policy within BiH through repetition. Theoretically, this calls for an examination of foreign affairs agenda setting from the perspective of a weak, transitional state, utilizing a different lens and contributing a new perspective. Previous foreign policy studies only marginally take this into account. This volume is important as it disaggregates the different actors within foreign policy analysis in order to better understand how foreign policy is shaped in BiH, even when this policy is ineffective or impractical for the country (Morin and Paquin 2018).
This volume has direct policy implications. Through informative, critical engagement, it brings a detailed insight into policy design, the ways in which policies have been implemented, and the directions in which BiH, as a ‘weak state’, could go in the future. Considering the large number of policy researchers and international organizations and diplomats who are interested in better understanding BiH and the Western Balkans more generally, this volume is of great interest as it provides analytical and historical perspectives on the country’s foreign policy scheme, main orientations, and overall development. This is particularly timely as BiH has managed to remain peaceful and relatively stable since the end of the 1992–1995 conflict and can thus generally be considered an affirmative case of post-conflict transition.
The volume also demonstrates that despite their apparent weakness, post-conflict states can exert institutional agency in foreign policy and can engage within the international domain. In other words, it provides a novel examination of weak states and their role in international politics. We are aware that in a globalized world and international politics that group countries in the region together, there are clear limitations for each country in pursuit of its foreign policies. Thus, the goal of this book is not to persuade readers that BiH foreign policy is fully independent or exemplary of the region, nor do we claim that it is exemplary or high-quality foreign policy in general, but that it holds on its own merits and needs to be fully examined through the practices of institutions and actors and not necessarily through codified documents. In cases without clear structures of foreign policy in place, it is often these agents that help to construct the ways in which foreign policy is conducted (Hudson 1999).
The following section provides a brief overview relevant for better understanding the way in which the country’s foreign policy setting and implementation are organized.
Structure: Foreign Policy in Conflict and Post-conflict Settings
BiH’s political , legal, and administrative setup has sparked much academic and policy interest. A book which considers the foreign policy of a post-conflict state needs to pay particular attention to the ways in which foreign policy is structured within the aforementioned complex setup, including ‘the organizational configurations within which foreign policymaking takes place, which includes a broad set of formal institutions and how they are organized, and may also include a focus on how much smaller decision-making groups are structured or configured’ (Haney 1995, 101). BiH’s foreign policy agenda is currently torn between struggles of internal (dis)integration and external positioning within larger (dis)integrating structures. The country lacks an effective institutional apparatus and a clear strategy on how to develop and strengthen its capacities in exercising foreign affairs. Even though the foreign policy design and execution are in exclusive competency of national-level institutions, various institutions and actors, whose primary tasks are domestic, often engage in foreign affairs. While this does not differ from general understanding of the importance of domestic politics in foreign policy analysis , the internally contested legal and political structures of the country ultimately impact the way that state institutions are limited when exercising foreign affairs and designing adequate policies, which is demonstrated throughout this volume.
BiH is a complex multilevel polity, shaped by the fragmentation of power and its persistent relocation within the system, as well as loose responsibility chains. The country’s institutional setup are designed in such a way as to delegate certain policy areas in an imperfectly coordinated system. The ongoing presence of international actors and institutions in BiH, such as the Office of the High Representative (OHR) and the Peace Implementation Committee (PIC), has contributed to the complexity of the country’s foreign policy relations.2 Formally, they facilitate processes, launch reforms, and often direct state-level foreign policy, while they informally lobby for the same and promote collaboration among ethnonational elites. The existence of sub-national quasi-diplomatic missions and offices that pursue particular and isolated courses of action abroad, often outside of the official parameters set by state-level institutions, such as the ones established by the Government of Republika Srpska Entity, additionally complicate the situation.3
BiH held a referendum on independence on March 1, 1992. Within two months, on May 22, 1992, the country officially became a member of the Organization of United Nations. It immediately plunged into war for the following three years.4 The conflict ended in 1995 by signing the Dayton Peace Agreement (DPA). The Bosnian Constitution, adopted as an integral part of the DPA (Annex 4), reinforces the country’s dedication to the UN Charter as well as ...