The Complexity of [In]formal Networks
in Bosnia and Herzegovina
Christophe Solioz
1. Types of social networks
Central Europe, especially the Balkans, and Bosnia and Herzegovina in a particular manner, is
characterized by a multiple and complex transition and (dis)integration process. The later, characterized
by a paradoxical combination and succession of periods of integration and disintegration,1 brought about
in some countries, such as the former Yugoslavia, the loss of state sovereignty. This process affected of
course the production of meaning, creating a confusion of meanings and of rationalities as well as new
space of meanings. These may be considered as social constructions, closed to what Charles Taylor called
“common meanings”, which refer to actors’ effort to agree among themselves. Thus, creating such
common meanings implies a voluntary action, very often based on informal constructions. My intention is
to focus on these informal constructions, more specifically on informal networks and on how these
contribute to the pluralization of meaning.
What were the consequences of the dismantling of the state for informal networks? On the one hand,
in a period characterized by renewed social relations, traditional community-based features and
clientelistic networks usually gain ground.2 But on the other hand, social structures and networks, such as
the famous komšiluk ("neighborliness") and dosluk ("friendship") in Bosnia and Herzegovina, were able
to function only as long as the state guaranteed economic and social stability, because interest groups and
good citizenship of this kind require stable institutions and effective states.3 When these vanished, the
social environment became subject to fear and crime, thus favoring hidden networks linked firstly to
survival strategies and secondly to warlords and ethnic nationalist-oriented parties.
This paper focuses on groups and networks that are not explicitly institutionalized. Firstly, I consider
social relationships between people and/or groups not necessarily structured by the existence of a formal
organization.4 These have played a key role in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as in the Balkans in
general, especially in periods of the erosion and/or collapse of the state. On the one hand, there are
special-interest clans and cliques:5 social circles, circles of intrigue, ties of loyalty and social obligations,
mostly consisting of closed and exclusive networks well established in the political game and not seen as
particularly virtuous. We may think of kinship/clan ties and clientelistic networks controlling the black
market and grey economy, but also the armed forces and the financial resources of the state, as well as
various criminal activities involving weaponry and drugs. Such groupings generally “inhibit people from
fulfilling their official duties to formal institutions, or prevent organizations from operating in an efficient,
transparent way.”6 On the other hand, there are open and inclusive networks based on friendship, trust and
See Dušan Nećak, “Historical elements for understanding the ‘Yugoslav Question’,” in Payam Akhavan and Robert Howse
(eds), Yugoslavia, the Former and the Future, Washington DC: Brookings Institute, 1995, p. 14; see also Robert L. Barry, in
Ibrahim Spahic (ed.), Bosnia and Herzegovina in Europe: Many Identities – Civil Link, Sarajevo: Council of Europe, IPC, 2001,
pp. 23–6.
2 See Jacques Donzelot, “L’avenir du social,” Esprit, Paris, March, no. 3, 1996, pp. 58–81.
3 See Steven Sampson, “Weak states, uncivil societies and thousands of NGOs: Western democracy export as benevolent
colonialism in the Balkans,” Lund, draft, second revision, 28 June 2002, p. 10.
4 But they may be characterized by the same properties as other social networks (size, composition, density, intensity, cohesion,
centrality versus distance, clustering, complexity and overlap).
5 “Clan” in Herzegovina, as in North Albania and Montenegro, means traditional tribal societies, but usually it designates the
expansive influence of a political-economic elite based on nepotism and clientship. Janine Wedel introduced the word “cliques”,
meaning dense and multiplex networks: see her “Informal relations and institutional change: How Eastern European cliques and
states mutually respond,” Newsletter of the East European Anthropology Group, Chicago: DePaul University, vol. 16, no. 1,
1998, http://condor.depaul.edu/~rrotenbe/aeer/aeer16_1.html#Wedel.
6 Sampson, op. cit., p. 3.
1
1
ethics that may contribute to socialization, and also have a say in the democratization process. Examples
of these networks include movements such as the Union for a Democratic Yugoslav initiative in the
former Yugoslavia (1989),7 Charter 92 and the Forum of Tuzla Citizens in Bosnia and Herzegovina
(1991). These social networks, before becoming significant public movements, were initially informal
networks characterized by personal ties, relationships of trust and common values, articulating a new way
of making politics.8
Informal networks are shaped by history and by social context; above all, they are multifaceted and
have complex features. One of the paradoxes characterizing them is that
these same informal relations which inhibit institutions from functioning are those which have enabled
Balkan peoples to survive subjugation by foreign powers, authoritarian politicians, and countless wars
and betrayals. Moreover, if we examine the many successful civil society initiatives in the Balkans, we
find that many of these activities are based on the utilizations of kinship, friendship and neighborhood
ties and strong linkages of obligations.9
As we will see, informal groups and networks may shape – or obstruct – the development of institutions
and, of course, they also influence the outcomes of foreign aid and assistance programmes. Moreover, it is
not simply the case that clientelistic networks are misusing the state’s structures for their own profit;
paradoxically, institutional objectives are sometimes implemented thanks to a network of personal
relations and/or the efficiency of informal networks.
Generally speaking, informal networks manifest the following main characteristics:
 They exert extensive influence, as the context in which they are operating is characterized by the
weakness of the rule of law.
 They mediate between different spheres: the state and the private sector, bureaucracy and the market,
communities and society;10 and they defy accurate conceptualization in terms of polar opposites (the
state versus the private sector, centralized versus decentralized institutions, and so on).
 They operate in many areas and are not confined to just one clearly delineated level of society, e.g.
just the political or the economic sphere. Social circles and clans are multidimensional and
multifaceted, containing actors with multiple layers of loyalty11 acting simultaneously in several
different spheres of action.12
It is appropriate to ask if South-East Europe, and in our case specifically, Bosnia and Herzegovina, are
especially subject to informal and hidden networks. Here I must recall Robert Putnam's statement that
“any society – modern or traditional, authoritarian or democratic, feudal or capitalist – is characterized by
networks of interpersonal communication and exchange, both formal and informal.”13 In other words,
such networks are a common characteristic of any society. However, it can be argued that the triple
transition process present-day Bosnia and Herzegovina is currently experiencing – from war to peace,
from socialism to capitalism, and from controlled democracy to sustainable democracy and independence
– almost certainly favors the re-establishment or strengthening of these networks, which facilitate the
enactment of survival strategies and are also a way to seize or keep power.14 In other words, we may
7
Its manifesto is now translated into English, in Dejan Djokić (ed.), Yugoslavism: Histories of a Failed Idea, 1918–1992,
London: Hurst, 2003, pp. 300–3.
8 See Gyorgy Konrad, Antipolitics: An Essay, New York: Harcourt Brace, 1984.
9 Sampson, op. cit.
10 See Ferdinand Tönnies, Gesellschaft und Gemeinschaft: Grundbegriffe der Reinen Soziologie, Darmstadt, 1935
(Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft reprint, 1979).
11 To family, home town, province, state, continent; profession, religion, ancestry, language and so on.
12 This perspective is informed by the work of Janine Wedel, op. cit.
13 Robert Putnam, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993, p.
173.
14 See Zorica Ivanović, “Transition und informelle Beziehungen,” Ost-West Gegeninformation, no. 4, December 1998, p. 22.
2
consider these networks as a way of adapting to a new social, economic and political context. Generally,
then, in different periods in history, important societal changes occurred, resulting in ruptures of some
kind, accompanied by attempts to rely on past social strategies in order to survive such ruptures. It can be
said that one specific aspect has molded the formation of informal networks in Bosnia and Herzegovina,
as well as in the post-Yugoslav republics: the movement from rural subsistence agriculture to urban wage
labor, which in some remote places took three generations to complete.15 This gap between past and
future may therefore explain the necessity of relying on familiar strategies and the pressure to keep
traditional habits alive.16 It is also the reason why we have to go back into Bosnia and Herzegovina’s past
in order to search for the origin or roots of some present-day groupings.
The different examples that will be presented in the next section illustrate how informal networks
correspond to broad sets of social relations that – as mentioned above – intersect with different spheres,
some partly separated, other partly overlapping, as shown in Figure 1, below.17 I will examine some of
them, focusing on the processes characterizing such informal groupings, more specifically how they –
standing as they do at the juncture between community and society – are evolving from informal into
structured networks – and the other way round. In order to express this idea I will use the expression
[in]formal networks.
Figure 1: [In]formal networks in Bosnian society
komšiluk:
pleme:
dosluk:
esnafi:
neighborliness
family clans
network of friends
corporations, guilds
CSOs:
NGOs:
GONGOs:
PSCs:
civil society organizations
non-governmental organizations
governmental organizations
public service contractors
2. Past and present [in]formal networks in Bosnia and Herzegovina
2.1. Various networks at a glance
15
Tone Bringa, Being a Muslim the Bosnian Way: Identity and Community in a Central Bosnia Village, Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1995, p. 51.
16 See ibid., p. 82. Bringa mentions Muslim religious practice as a way to link the past and the present (p. 196).
17 I will not discuss here the kinship networks, as this is best done by Tone Bringa, ibid.
3
Since the Middle Ages, there have been, on the one hand, traditional tribal societies (pleme) based on
family clans (bratstva or rodovi) and, on the other hand, family (kumovi) and friend networks (dosluk).
Further, there have also been professional and regional networks. As regards the former, going back to the
seventeenth and eighteenth century, there were the esnafi, i.e. powerful guilds or corporations led by
Muslims, but also including Christians and Jews. These guilds/corporations were active primarily in the
Ottoman period and had an important economic and political role in society, e.g. the esnafi in Sarajevo
had the right to nominate the chief administrator of the city. As regards regional networks, the esnafi are
relevant here, but also the janissary in Sarajevo and Mostar, i.e. elite Muslim troupes made up of male
children taken from non-Muslims families within the Ottoman Empire and taken off to Istanbul,
converted to Islam and trained to a high degree of military skills,18 as well as the sandjaki. Coming from
Serbia or Montenegro,19 the later were Muslim and tradition-oriented. Recently, sandjaki leaders Ejup
Ganić and Edhem Bičakčić played a major role in the Bosniak Party of Democratic Action (SDA). These
various social structures existed in different forms during the Medieval, Ottoman,20 Austro-Hungarian,
monarchist, socialist21 and post-Yugoslav periods. They were intertwined with networks of influence
based on patronage and nepotism. Based on private connections (veze), they provided assistance and
promotion to deserving individuals, but were often involved in corruption of various kinds. In the past, as
well as in present-day Bosnia and Herzegovina, such mostly informal practices were strengthened by the
disintegration of the main institutional forms of mediation and participation.
In present-day Bosnia and Herzegovina, the difficult economic situation – characterized by a dramatic
drop in standards of living, an significant increase in poverty, and the collapse of the social welfare
system and basic public services – explains why many Bosnians try to solve their problems by using
private connections (veze, stele), following the principle of “I help you, you help me.” Therefore, raja
("friend, buddy, comrade") represents help to get a job or an important position, but also an apartment or
just medical assistance; it also organizes protection, defence and/or acts of war. But in order to avoid any
idealized perception of these networks, ordinary people are really their victims, because in the end, only
the bosses and some political party leaders actually “win” in this game.22 War and pre-war nepotism were,
of course, closely inter-related, as best demonstrated by the case of Fikret Abdić, the director of the state
conglomerate Agrokomerc in Velika Kladusa.
In 1986, Fikret Abdić, called “Daddy” by his followers, was removed from his directorship and placed
under arrest for fraud. By that time, Yugoslav authorities claimed that the incredible wealth of
Agrokomerc came not from hard work but from Abdić's issue of more than USD 300 million in illegal
promissory notes to suppliers and contractors. It was the largest fraud in Yugoslav history. Abdić then
entered politics by joining the Party of Democratic Action (SDA) two months before the first postCommunist elections. It turned out that Abdić outscored Izetbegović in the election, but for reasons that
were never explained, he refused the presidency, granting it instead to Izetbegović. He soon fell out with
Izetbegović, and in 1993 founded the Zapadna Bosna (the Autonomous Province of Western Bosnia),
setting up working relationships with secessionist Bosnian Serbs and Croats. Consequently, Bosniak
fought against Bosniak in the Bihać-Velika Kladuša area. In June 1994, the Bosnian Army launched an
offensive against Abdić, who fled into neighboring Croatia with his followers. After Franjo Tudjman's
death, the new Croatian government, following a legal co-operation agreement between Bosnia and
Herzegovina and Croatia, put Abdić on trial. On 31 July 2002, the Croatian district court in Karlovać
18
The practise of devshirme ("child levy") extended well into the seventeenth century, it must be regarded as a political and
military tool and not as a religious policy. The Janissary corps was abolished in 1826.
19 The Sandžak was – until the 1878 Berlin Congress – part of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
20 At the beginning of the 19th century, Bosnian feudal families (kapetans, begs and ayans) achieved a position that was
practically independent of the vizier. The system of kapetans – who possessed wide-ranging powers as military governors of the
frontier regions in the decaying Ottoman Empire – was abolished in 1835.
21 At that time, the Yugoslav translation of the expression VIP (very important person) was: veze i protekcije ("relation and
protection").
22 See Kristof Gosztonyi and Rüdiger Rossig, “Ohne ‘Raja’ geht noch wenig,” Ost-West Gegeninformation, no. 4, December
1998, pp. 10–15.
4
sentenced him to 20 years imprisonment for war crimes committed while he ruled the Bihać pocket in
north-west Bosnia between 1993 and 1995. This example illustrates the multidimensional and
multifaceted aspect of nepotistic and clientelistic networks, organized in a strong hierarchical way by a
father figure, mixing economic and political interests, and changing sides when necessary, even at the
expense of their own supporters.
Now, after looking at the darker side of such networks, I would like to present some positive examples
of social capital provided by [in]formal networks in both past and present Bosnia and Herzegovina.
2.2. Komšiluk socialization practice
Several socialization spheres stand between more informal networks and well-regulated structures, e.g.
komšiluk ("neighborliness"), which had an important role in the mosaic of Bosnian religion and
communities, enabling a multiform cultural parallelism that characterized Bosnia and Herzegovina
throughout history.23 I may recall that before the nationalist movements from Croatia and Serbia became
active in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the inhabitants considered themselves as Bosnians of different faiths
rather than members of the Croatian or Serbian Nation.24 During the four centuries of Turkish rule,
komšiluk was a ground-roots negation of division and particularization, as long as stability and peace were
guaranteed by the state. Firstly, komšiluk had a geographical meaning, overlapping partly with the
concept of mahala ("hamlet", or, in cities, "quarters"),25 referring to next-door neighbors. Secondly, it
referred to the habits of the respective households in terms of their mutual obligations to visit and help
each other on a regular basis. Therefore, komšiluk may be described as a visiting circle formalized
through communal rituals based on hospitality and related to social exchanges. Komšiluk can also be used
to refer to Muslim, Catholic and Orthodox formal visits beyond immediate neighborhood relatives,
especially on some specific occasion like birth, death, illness, religious celebrations and so on, both in
rural areas and in cities.26 Of course, villages and cities have different social habits and, in addition, today
there is a mixture of komšiluk and ordinary friendship.
It would be a mistake to understand these social relations in terms of a positively multicultural way of
life, which was often the kind of idealized perception of them presented during the recent war (1992–95).
On the contrary, komšiluk expressed social distance and separateness constructed – as indicated by Tone
Bringa – as parallel opposites: the practices chosen to represent difference were of the same kind. Thus,
“each religious community needs the presence of the other in order to construct an ethno religious (and
village) identity, since it is mainly through this presence that a person is taught to be aware (by the way of
contrast) of his or her own identity.”27 Therefore, we may consider mutually acknowledged and accepted
differences as the basis for interaction, identity formation and common meanings.
Obviously, these differences are not reconciled any better in times of war – just the opposite, in fact.
Not only in the recent war, but already at the end of the Ottoman period, especially towards the end of the
eighteenth century, when Bosnia and Herzegovina was in a constant state of warfare and sank into
increasing backwardness and disunity, komšiluk proved to be unable to counter centrifugal and
Bosnia and Herzegovina’s society is composite, characterized by the fact that several separate referential systems, consisting of
religious-based communities, coexist. Srećko M. Džaja recalls that Bosnia and Herzegovina illustrates the development both of a
common group identity and of separate, ethno-religious group identities; see Srećko M. Džaja, Konfessionalität und Nationalität
Bosniens und der Hercegowina: Voremanzipatorische Phase 1463–1804, Munich: Südosteuropäische Arbeiten, vol. 80, 1984.
24 The transformation of the three religious communities into different national communities took place in the nineteenth
century. See Florian Bieber, “Muslim Identity in the Balkans before the Establishment of Nation States,” Nationalities Papers,
vol. 28, no. 1, 2000, p. 20.
25 Bosnian Muslims, Catholics and Orthodox members generally lived in distinct mahalas, whether in villages or in cities.
26 See Tone Bringa, op. cit., p. 55; we are also referring to our own observations (1994–97). Bringa correctly emphasized the key
role played by women.
27 Ibid., p. 79.
23
5
segregationist forces. Worse, such forces were manifested in acts of plunder, murder and rape. 28 But once
the war was over, the pacification and normalization process once more favored neighborliness networks.
The film Returning Home: Revival of a Bosnian Village shows the determination of displaced Muslim
villagers to rebuild their pre-war lives, and their openness toward Croat refugees living in their homes.
Insofar as the latter were not directly responsible for the warfare and its consequences, komšiluk was
again possible.29 The World Bank’s 2002 Bosnian social capital study also reveals another situation: in
different locations, the former practice of komšiluk facilitated a situation where pre-war residents placed
themselves in opposition to internally displaced persons (IDPs).30
Socialization practices among locals, IDPs, and so-called “minority returnees”31 may vary from place
to place. Nevertheless, contrary to what one would have expected, the war and its “ethnic cleansing” have
not completely destroyed interpersonal relations across ethnic lines, and the abovementioned study
confirms that at the individual level, practice of neighborliness still exists.32 The World Bank survey
shows that 43.9 per cent of the residents of Bosniak majority areas said that there has been no decline in
socialization with neighbors of different nationality.33 This seems particularly the case in areas where
population changes have been more limited and therefore where pre-war social identities and networks
were largely preserved. From my point of view, the fact that komšiluk is still present, though in a less
formal way, makes komšiluk an [in]formal network, still contributing to Bosnia’s social capital, despite
the stresses and strains put upon it. But this does not hide the fact that Bosnia and Herzegovina has
suffered a dramatic destruction of its previous social capital.
2.3. Religious community as a network
Outside the religious context, i.e. from a social and cultural point of view, the Franciscans may be
considered also as a three-hundred-year-old [in]formal network. From the beginning of their presence in
the country at the end of the thirteenth century, they contributed to the broadening of Bosnian cultural and
historical horizons by introducing – mostly in an adapted way – European culture. For instance, Matija
Divković (1563–1631) had a clear understanding of the basic need to address people in their own
language, and also contributed to the development of Bosnian-Croatian speech and the standardization of
orthography and literary language. The first integral work of civic history was written by Brother Filip
Lastrić-Oćevac (1700–83): Epitome Vetustatum Bosnensis Provinciae ("Survey of Antiquities of the
Bosnian Province") in 1762. Outstanding Bosnian writers from the eighteenth century continued the basic
Franciscan tradition of cultural and political action. Ivan Franjo Jukić (1818–57), in a memorandum
addressed to Sultan Abdul-Medzid, formulated the first constitutional demands for Bosnia and
Herzegovina. He was also the founder of the first Bosnian cultural society, Kolo Bosansko ("Bosnian
Circle"). In addition, Antun Knežević (1834–99) developed the idea of an autonomous Bosnian state with
rights based on historical tradition, tolerance and equality in matters of religion and nationality. But his
approach found practically no hearing among the Bosnian population and it could not overcome basic
Bosnian religious divisions.34 During the first Yugoslavia, in 1929, the Franciscan Brother Josip Markušić
(1880–1968) carried on this pro-Bosnian tradition affirming the integrity of the country: “Bosnia and
Herzegovina, as central convenient regions, hold together like a transverse bar the outer rings of the state
…. As such they may not be distributed under any circumstances generously to the others”.35 These
28
See Joel Halpern and David Kideckel (eds), Neighbors at War: Anthropological Perspectives on Yugoslav Ethnicity, Culture
and History, University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000.
29 See Returning Home: Revival of a Bosnian Village, directed by Tone Bringa and Peter Loizos, 2001.
30 World Bank, Local Level Institutions and Social Capital, Washington, DC: World Bank, ECSSD, vol. 1, June 2002, p. 23.
31 This expression refers to return to an area where one’s own people are not demographically or politically dominant. The term is
unfortunate, since "minority" connotes people who are not a constituent or state-forming nation. But Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks
are constituent people, and as such they cannot be designated as minorities.
32 World Bank, op. cit., p. 12.
33 Ibid., p. 9.
34 See Srećko M. Džaja, op. cit., 1984, p. 13.
35 Franjevački Vijesnik, no. 3, 1 March 1929, pp. 65–70.
6
examples illustrate the cultural and political relevance of the Franciscan network in Bosnia and
Herzegovina.
I will use the dervish orders as a second example, focusing on their recent development. 36 I may first
briefly recall that during the Tito era, religious practices were a constitutive factor in the construction of
parallel and competing collective cultural and political entities or nacije ("ethno-religious groups",
"nations", i.e. Muslim, Croat, Serb). Further, I have also to mention the coexistence between Islam and
Communist ideology. The Islamska zajednica ("Islamic Association") was the state-approved
organization responsible for the Muslim community; during communism, its main body, the Starješinstvo
("Council of Elders") was controlled by a government committee for religious affairs. With the support of
the latter, in the 1950s the Islamska zajednica banned the dervish orders and closed their tekije ("dervish
sanctuary of a sufi order"). But the Naqshibendi Order, which was dominant in central Bosnia, instead of
dissolving, went underground and continued to be active, mostly secretly in private houses. The sufi
hodžas ("Islamic teachers") were criticized because their practices – body movements, trances, piercing
with sabres and skewers, throwing of knives, divination – were considered not to be prescribed by Islamic
law, i.e. as not shari’at. But the popular attraction and success of the dervish orders forced the Islamska
zajednica, in the 1980s, to control them, which was effectively a way of recognizing them. This was
shown by the fact that their representatives participated in all major dervish events, and that most sufi
hodžas were finally employed by the Islamska zajednica. As noted by Tone Bringa, this “provided
official Bosnian Islam with some of the mysticism and popular appeal it had lacked … [but also] watered
the rituals down to the extent that the mystics had lost much of their former attraction.”37 This example
best illustrates the paradox of an [in]formal network: it is condemned and therefore forced to hide, but
also controlled and therefore accepted. As employer of the official Islam organization, a sufi hodža will
teach “according to Islam” at the mekteb ("Quar’anic school"), but later, in practice, according to the
dervish tradition.38
2.4. The early development of civil society and the role of cultural societies
In 1862, the right to establish independent associations was decreed by the Ottoman Empire, but the
intensive development of civil society only started after the establishment of Austro-Hungarian rule in
1878, especially between 1908 and 1914. According to Djordje Pejanović, more than 1,256 associations
and societies were established by 1916, ranging from cultural activities and charity societies to athletic
societies, the famous sokol ("falcon") associations.39 This rather high figure is explained by the fact that
Pejanović worked with rather generous criteria, in particular including as separate entities the different
local branches of a particular association. Nevertheless, this mushrooming of associations can only be
understood if related, firstly, to already active [in]formal groups and networks; secondly, to the growth of
a middle-class culture combined with the development of a local intelligentsia; and thirdly, to migratory
movements (see Table 1, below). Based on the figures provided by the Verwaltungsberichten, Srećko M.
Džaja presents more realistic figures (see Table 1). 40
Table 1: Associations (a) and Members (b) in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1908–1916)
Bosno-Croat
Bosno-Muslim
Bosno-Serb
36
Other*
Together
The dervish orders were divided into different streams, most importantly the Mevlevi and the Bektashi. I may mention here a
fascinating novel: Mesa Selimovic’s masterpiece, Death and the Dervish, is an authentic account of the Muslim-Ottoman world
narrated by the dervish of the title, Sheik Ahmed Nuruddin (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1996).
37 Tone Bringa, op. cit., p. 222.
38 For further highly interesting aspects of the dervish orders, see ibid., pp. 217–24.
39 Djordje Pejanović, Kulturno-Prosvetna, Humana i Socijalma Društva u Bonsi i Hercegovini za vreme Austrijske Vladavine,
Sarajevo, 1930.
40 Srećko M. Džaja, Bosnien-Herzegowina in der Österreichisch-Ungarischen Epoche (1878–1918): Die Intelligentsia zwischen
Tradition und Ideologie, Munich: Oldenburg Verlag, 1994, p. 105.
7
Year
1908
1909
1910
1912
1913
1914
1915
1916
a
b
157
183
187
179
167
170
139
80
27 886
27 905
25 292
19 315
14 849
12 712
8 839
a
b
81
93
109
148
139
160
109
56
a
b
a
b
8 868
8 562
9 147
146
170
211
13 160
14 599
17 916
220
211
253
29 369
32 287
36 774
25 385
11 186
9 558
6 788
227
39
23
10
20 149
2 110
935
536
300
369
263
190
37 692
37 568
28 832
26 660
a
604
657
760
950
833
738
534
336
b
79 283
83 353
89 129
103 638
102 541
65 713
52 037
42 823
* Includes new arrivals, especially immigrants from Croatia, and mixed professional associations.
Most of these associations were educational and cultural societies that were formed on religious and
national lines. For example, the Jewish La Benevolencia was founded in 1982,41 1901 saw the
inauguration of the Serb Prosvjeta ("Enlightenment"), the Muslim-Bosnian Gajret ("The Effort") was
founded in 1903 (which from 1907 followed a pro-Serb line), the Croat Napredak ("Prosperity") was
founded in 190442 and, in 1923, the Muslim-Bosnian Narodna Uzdanica ("People’s Hope"), following a
pro-Croat line. Both Muslim associations, Gajret and Narodna Uzdanica, merged in September 1945 to
form Preporod ("Revival").43 These associations were similarly organized: they had their seats in
Sarajevo, with trustees in other cities and villages, were active in the field of education, were especially
involved in the elimination of illiteracy, and each had its own publication.44 After the full annexation of
Bosnia and Herzegovina on 5 October 1908, Vienna and Budapest allowed local administration of the
vakuf system (i.e. the religious charitable foundations), and recognized various political organizations that
had recently been set up: the Muslim National Organization (1906), the Serbian National Organization
(1907) and the Croatian National Society (1908). Thus, the Austro-Hungarian administration contributed
not only to the development of the Bosnian economy, but also to its social and political organization. The
integration of informal networks was part of that process, obviously only until World War I started – as
shown by the figures in Table 1.
During the first Yugoslavia (1918–41), these organizations had to face the consequences of the
Yugoslav unification and adapt to a new order: an integration model dominated by the Serbian-controlled
centralized character of the state. One of the consequences of the 1929 dictatorship was the abolition of
all sokol associations refusing affiliation to the new nation-wide controlling body, the dissolution of all
political organizations and the imposition of major controls on all cultural associations. Therefore, on the
one hand, we may observe a tendency to integrate and “use” informal networks, and, on the other hand, as
a result of abolition, to favor secret networks. The latter represented an important opportunity for the
Communists and led, ultimately, to the creation of the second Yugoslavia (1945–91).
2.5. Between clandestine and public networks
41
See http://www.gemeinden.judentum.de/benevolencija/index.htm.
See http://www.napredak.com.ba.
43 See http://www.preporod.com.
44 See Srećko M. Džaja, op. cit., 1994, pp. 102–8 and 173–85; and, by the same author, Die Politische Realität des
Jugoslawismus (1918–1991): Mit besonderer Berücksichtigung Bosnien-Herzegowinas, München: Oldenburg Verlag, 2002, pp.
184–210.
42
8
Mlada Bosna ("Young Bosnia")45 – a group made up of Serbs, Croats and Bosnian Muslims committed to
achieving independence for Bosnia and Herzegovina – is another illustration of less formal groups
evolving into more structured networks. Initially, from 1895 to 1908, Young Bosnia was a clandestine,
loose grouping of anti-Habsburg students active in the main Bosnian towns of Sarajevo, Mostar, Banja
Luka and Tuzla. The students – most of them were studying in Vienna and Zagreb, but also in Geneva,
Lausanne and Bern – were receiving financial help from Prosvjeta, Napredak, Gajret and La
Benevolencia. This support was usually coupled with obligations to become involved in conspiracy and
the spreading of propaganda. Between 1908 and 1910, it acted more publicly and organized a few protest
demonstrations.46 From 1910 to 1914, the grouping entered into a terrorist phase characterized by a
succession of hero/martyr assassins: Bogdan Žerajić, who attempted to assassinate General Marijan
Varesanin in 1910, the Luba Jukić, who tried to assassinate the governor of Croatia in Zagreb in 1912,
and the Gavrilo Princip, who killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914, so
precipitating World War I. A cult of martyrdom and self-sacrifice was fostered around the assassination
attempt by Žerajić, who was studying law at Zagreb University with a grant from Prosvjeta. He was
transformed into "the first martyr" and a symbol for the Young Bosnia movement. Žerajić also established
the “principle” that political assassination could be used as a means to achieve independence. There were
seven similar assassination attempts in Bosnia before 1914. Young Bosnia was manipulated in this period
by the Serbian Narodna Odbrana ("National Defence") which by that time was controlled by the panSerb secret network Ujedinjenje ili Smrt ("Unification or Death") – also known as Crna Ruka ("Black
Hand"). This exemplifies not only the evolution of such movements, but also the ties between hidden and
more or less public networks.
Later on, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia run along similar lines. It was banned for most of the
inter-war period, therefore – in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as elsewhere in Yugoslavia – coming to
rely on the clandestine activities of a splinter group of a few hundred people. As the rule of law did not
operate in the Ustaša NDH ("Independent State of Croatia"),47 many Muslims joined the partisans from
August 1941 onwards, while others – attempting to avoid the various conflicting forces – preferred to
form their own local defence units, as the Green Cadres, or to join the Muslim Volunteer Legion, which
fought against both the partisans and the Četniks, or to enlist in the April 1943 founded Thirteenth SS
Handžar division (which disintegrated in 1944). This gives us an idea on how radically the Bosnians were
split, fighting on all sides. With the end of the World War II, Sarajevo was liberated by the partisans on 6
April 1945, and the Communists began to impose their power and control the whole of society. This
favored the well-structured, Communist Party-controlled organizations.48 Informal groups that were
considered “class enemies” or were just liberal-minded were abolished and, as a result, their activities
followed clandestine paths.
Of course, in present-day Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as in other post-Yugoslav republics, the
Communist Party does not exist as such any more: previous members have started to build new political
parties or to get involved in the Social Democratic Party. War changes people and their perceptions of
who they are and of their own past experience. Past membership of various organizations – sometimes
only remaining as a generic feeling – and remembrance of the “good old days” or Tito's times, are hidden
and may occasionally constitute the basis of relationships and, thus, constitute hidden informal networks
that would be very interesting to study.
2.6. [In]formal networks during the Communist period and the rise of networks of civic engagement
45
For more on Young Bosnia, see Vladimir Dedijer, The Road to Sarajevo, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1966.
Srećko M. Džaja distinguishes the three periods we are mentioning here, op. cit., 1994, p. 231.
47 The Ustaša NDH (1941–44) incorporated the whole of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
48 Nevertheless, it would be wrong to assimilate socialist Yugoslavia to the Soviet Union and other Marxist-Leninist states. On
this issue see Jim Seroka and Radoš Smiljković, Political Organizations in Socialist Yugoslavia, Durham, North Carolina: Duke
University Press, 1986.
46
9
After 1945, all societies and organized networks, if not banned, were put to the service of building a
society based on the ideology delineated in the programme of the ruling Communist Party. Persecutions
and “social cleansing” forced various groupings to go into hiding. But the 1948 Tito-Stalin rupture
introduced some tolerance: intellectuals met within the framework of Praxis,49 and elsewhere in Central
Europe forbidden books were now published. Furthermore, despite the dominance of ideology and
international openness, the concepts of decentralization and self-management – notably the Samoupravne
Interesne Zajednice (SIZ) ("self-administered interest communities"), which were abolished shortly
before the 1992 war – contributed to some extend to the development of [in]formal networks. This
explains why, in the 1970s, these networks did not support either the Croatian Spring or the Serbian
Liberals. Bearing in mind that the Tito regime was the only option favoring a unified Bosnia and
Herzegovina, most [in]formal networks had to move between Serb or Croat nationalists and old
Communist upholders of dogmatic unitarism. Nevertheless, from the 1960s onwards, cultural life and
alternative grassroots civil groups, often influenced by Krležian subversiveness, began to flourish.50
If we examine the formal socialization structures during the Communist period, we have to recall that
the official party was surrounded by mass organizations like the Socialist Alliance, the Trade Union
Association of Yugoslavia, the League of Socialist Youth, and a multiplicity of citizens' associations like
sport clubs, and cultural and artistic societies. Affiliation to these organizations was not compulsory, and
had only loose links with the League of Communists.51 With the breakdown of the Communist system,
mass organizations disappeared or withdrew from politics, while citizens' associations carried on their
activities and nationalistic parties founded their own cultural societies. But a turning point came in the
1990s. Beside citizens’ associations (udruzenja gradjana), mostly devoted to leisure activities or to the
interests of a specific social group, non-governmental organizations (nevladine organizacije) emerged,
which were more value oriented and, especially during the war, tended to be centered on service delivery.
Membership in the former was and still is more common than membership of new NGOs, often funded
by foreign donors. Thus, the largest proportion of associative life is linked to traditional citizens’
associations, and therefore the social capital cannot be expressed solely by referring to the number of
local NGOs.
Nevertheless, in this same period the grassroots civil initiatives – networks of civic engagement
similar to those prevailing in Western Europe – were first emerging, later to be marginalized by the
triumph of a pseudo-democratic, anachronistic system based on ethno-denominational communities. If, on
the one hand, many Yugoslav [in]formal networks were destroyed by the break-up of both the former
Yugoslavia and the Bosnian Republic, on the other hand, different networks – often linked to human
rights or former dissident groups – were active during wartime, carrying on – on the very margins of
existence – to build free, informal, open and inclusive groupings based on ethics and friendship.52 Most of
them are still active today, some as well-established and structured NGOs or CSOs, others as more
informal organizations – such as Circle 99.53 It would be wrong to assume that these open and inclusive
informal networks failed to transform themselves into effective, representative political parties and civil
society organizations. The Bosnian Shadow Government and the Citizens’ Alternative Parliament
(GAP)54 were successful in bringing the opposition – within the framework of the Democratic Alliance
for Change – to power in 2001. Nevertheless, and despite significant support from abroad, fatalism and
indifference seem to prevail after the split and defeat of the Alliance in the October 2002 elections.
See Ursula Rütten, Am Ende der Philosophie? Das gescheiterte „Model Jugoslawien“, Klagenfurt: Drava, 1993.
See Mladen Lazić (ed.), Society in Crisis: Yugoslavia in the Early 90s, Belgrade: Filip Visnjic, 1995. Miroslav Krežla (18931981) was a famous novelist, dramatist and poet. His work had a strong current of social critique.
51 See Jim Seroka and Radoš Smiljković, op. cit.
52 See Paul Ricoeur, “Ethique et politique,” Esprit, Paris, no 5, 1985, pp. 1–11; and Maurice Blanchot, “Le refus,” L'Amitié,
Paris: Gallimard, 1958. On this issue, see also Christophe Solioz, “Réseau pour une Europe pantopique,” Troubles, Geneva, May
1995, pp. 41–7; available from http://www.christophesolioz.ch/1995/pantop.html.
53 See “Entretien avec Ivan Lovrenović,” Monitor, Podgorića, 26 May 2000; http://atlas.bok.net/balkans/msg00367.html.
54 See http://www.forumtz.com/page.php?st=novostigap.
49
50
10
As evidenced by Robert Putnam, the value of networks of civic engagement is to increase
interconnectedness, to foster robust reciprocity and trust, and to nourish wider co-operation, because they
cut across social cleavages; therefore, they contribute considerably to social capital and common
meanings.55 But in recent Bosnia and Herzegovina, kinship- and community-based networks were the
most influential – hierarchically ordered organizations (such as the army, churches, the mafias and other
parallel networks) became privileged to the detriment of the horizontally structured organizations (such as
sports clubs, mutual aid societies, cultural associations and voluntary unions). Therefore, networks
associated with social trust and good government had a lesser influence on society; and of these, because
of the critical economic situation, some had no incentive at all to work towards the common good and the
economic growth of society.
2.7. Parallel power networks obliterating the development of the state
Due to the breakdown of central institutions and the collapse of the state and the economy, the 1990s
were characterized by booming parallel networks controlling the armed forces, the state’s financial
resources and various criminal activities. At the same time, the three ethnic-nationalist parties – the
Serbian Democratic Party (SDS), the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) and the Bosniak Party of
Democratic Action (SDA) – and many political-economic structures linked to them – started to develop
and to control the entire society. During the war, nationalistic networks were strongly related to criminal
networks, “cleansing” the country, benefiting from diverted humanitarian aid and controlling the black
market. Very active during the war, criminal networks are nowadays still efficient in trafficking in people,
in developing networks of organized prostitution and in distributing narcotics. Their main contribution is
to maintain an atmosphere of fear and uncertainty through armed robberies, threats, attempts to kidnap
children, house-breaking and car hi-jacking. This helps to explain the prevalent culture of lawlessness, the
lack of respect for institutional authority and the preponderance of criminal centers of power and
influence. The post-war environment is still characterized by corrupt political patronage and nepotism.
Local gangland power-brokers are omnipresent, and many mafia warlords are still running for public
office.56 This partly explains why corruption and organized crime are still so prevalent today in Bosnia
and Herzegovina and why parallel power networks exert so much influence on the state apparatus and
public enterprises.
This is best shown by the privatization process, which was initially largely controlled by nationalist
establishments that have used and abused it to strip assets from public companies, which end up in the
hands of their cronies. The voucher-based privatization system was often misused to distribute many
vouchers to war veterans, other favored groups that had lived in a given area during the war, and
individuals connected with the wartimes parties, who then dispensed available jobs to their brethren.57
This is, of course, affecting the return of refugees and displaced persons, especially the so-called
“minority return”, who will suffer from employment discrimination. In addition, the polarization of
Bosnia’s population into separate national enclaves during the war, in a way confirmed by the General
Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina (GFAP) and the electoral victories of the
nationalist parties, “have ensured that the municipal administrations, courts, police, school, and public
companies are staffed almost exclusively by members of the locally dominant nation.”58 In places such as
Prijedor, Bratunac and Srebrenica, returnees are confronted in school, courts and the police with people
involved in running concentration camps or leading paramilitary formations.59 As a consequence, in
55
See Robert Putnam, op. cit., pp. 173–4.
See International Crisis Group (ICG), Rule Over Law: Obstacles to the Development of an Independent Judiciary in Bosnia
and Herzegovina, Sarajevo: ICG Balkans Report, no. 72, 5 July 1999.
57 See ICG, Bosnia’s Precarious Economy: Still Not Open for Business, Sarajevo: ICG Balkans Report, no. 115, 7 August 2001.
58 See ICG, The Continuing Challenge of Refugee Return in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sarajevo: ICG Balkans Report, no. 137, 13
December 2002, p. 16.
59 See ICG, War Criminals in Bosnia’s Republika Srpska , Sarajevo: ICG Balkans Report, no. 103, 2 November 2000.
56
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places where “minority return” is succeeding, returnees have occasionally formed parallel institutions led
by returnee associations, which are sustained by a largely separate economy.
In today's Bosnia and Herzegovina, because of the continuing pressure of the international community,
the changes that occurred in neighboring Croatia and Serbia, and the changes induced by the
implementation of the constitutional amendments introduced in 2002,60 the structures of past warlords and
nationalists parties will more and more be forced to function as hidden networks. The significance of the
constitutional changes are exemplified by Canton 10 (Livno), which until recently was run as a
criminalized mini HDZ state. Serb “minority return” has now altered the demographic balance of this
canton and has changed the way it is run. The HDZ coalition won the October 2002 elections, but must
share power with Serbs and Bosniaks, according to the new constitutional amendments that require that
the constituent peoples and the “others” must be proportionally represented in cantonal government, in
line with the 1991 census; in addition, the cantonal and municipal administration will have to hire staff
with an eye to fulfilling the national quota represented by the 1991 census.61 This does not only mitigate
“ethnic cleansing” and moderate separatist dreams, but also dismantles the structures established by
warlords and nationalist parties, forcing them to reorient the power and strategy of their networks.
Some consideration of the three ethnic-nationalist parties, which returned to power after the October
2002 elections, will conclude this section. These parties have regularly opposed the implementation of the
Dayton Accord. Today they are trying to put on new faces – but one may ask how honest such faces are.
This is particularly true of the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), which, since its recent U-turn, claims
to be in favor of strengthening the state and opposed to its division. To a lesser extent, this also applies to
the Bosniak Party of Democratic Action (SDA), which in its election platform calls for the adoption of all
the High Representative’s decisions and impositions – but fails to convince its deputies to act
accordingly. For its part, the Serbian Democratic Party (SDS), while ferociously defending the Dayton
Accord, is trying to be open to some changes – but only if the international community pushes hard for
them.62 On the one hand, this new political situation forces the nationalist parties to get involved in the
reform process and, on the other, it pressures the High Representative to keep the new coalition under
control and to regularly assert his authority. But even if these parties are really starting a transformation
process (which has yet to be proved), the parallel criminal networks are still very active in opposing the
consolidation of democracy in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
2.8. Evolution of the pan-Islamic networks
I will now consider the powerful Bosnian pan-Islamic63 network that emerged during the same period
(1990–2000). The roots of this Islamist faction go back to March 1941, with the grouping of pan-Islamic
circles in the framework of Mladi Muslimani ("Muslim Youth"). This network was by that time
influenced by the traditionalist-oriented El Hidaje ("The Right Way") association. Mladi Muslimani's goal
was the establishment of a common state for all Muslims in the Balkans. A victim of the Communist-led
repression, Mladi Muslimani disappeared in 1949. It was later re-established informally in the 1970s. A
few former members, with Alija Izetbegović already the central figure, began to intervene at the Sarajevo
mosque, propagating religious material and renewing contact with members in exile and Muslims from
Arabic countries. This is the background of the most influential leaders of the Stranka Demokratske
60
Referred to as the Mrakovica-Sarajevo Agreement, signed by Bosnian politicians on 27 March 2002, which counters the legacy
of “ethnic cleansing” and has the potential to boost the levels of return, because returnees can count on having representatives of
their own “constituent people” in positions to protect their interests.
61 Before the war, Serbs comprised 37 per cent and Bosniaks 10 per cent of the population of Canton 10.
62 See ICG, Bosnia's Nationalist Governments: Paddy Ashdown and the Paradoxes of State Building, Sarajevo-Brussels: ICG
Balkans Report, no. 146, 22 July 2003, pp. 17–24.
63 "Pan-Islamic" refers to Djamaluddin al-Afghani. His communitarian Islam was based on the idea that Umma’s ("Community of
the Faithful") unity transcends the existence of nation states.
12
Akcije (SDA),64 founded in March 1990 as a “political alliance of the citizens of Yugoslavia belonging to
the historical-cultural sphere of Islam.”65 Since the beginning, the pan-Islamic network controlled the
official publication of the Bosnian Islamic Community, the weekly Preporod ("Revival"), and the SDA.
As Xavier Bougarel recalls, “the true power of this faction was in its capacity to step into the center of the
political re-composition after the fall of Communism and the crisis of the Yugoslav Federation.”66 This
explains why it succeeded in pulling together all the main actors and currents of Muslim nationalism
within the framework of the SDA. The victory of the nationalists in the election of 18 November 1990
introduced the process of a communitarian-based dismantling of the state – from November 1990 until
April 1992. The SDA created its own communitarian networks: the cultural association Preporod, the
charity organization Merhamet, the clandestine paramilitary group Patriotska Liga ("Patriotic League")
and the Vienna-based – later Istanbul-based – Third World Relief Agency (TWRA), which would finance
and provide arms for the Bosnian army. The so-called Kapetanović Commission discovered in the late
1990s that, with regard to the 1992–95 period, some USD 400 million of TWRA funds remained
unaccounted for.
From the very beginning of the Bosnian War in April 1992, the SDA refused to create a government of
national unity – together with the civic parties – and started to substitute its own networks parallel to state
structures. When in October 1993 the SDA was forced to restore the state apparatus, it made sure that
pan-Islamic representatives would be present at all levels.67 It should be noted that Prime Minister Haris
Silajdzić resigned on 21 January 1996 because of the presence and power of these parallel networks.
Their effectiveness in circumventing state processes and their progressive monopolistic control of the
state contributed, on the one hand, to the “nationalization” of Islam – but not to the re-Islamization of
Bosnia and Herzegovina – and, on the other hand, to the weakening of the state apparatus.68 For this panIslamic network, Islam became a cultural discourse directed to the population, a way of securing its
political domination and of hiding its own projects behind religious generalities. It was also a political
ideology representing a sign of recognition by its own members. However, loyalty to Islam was not the
only criterion in the selection of network members: military prestige, financial power and some specific
professional qualifications also played a major role.
3. State building, [in]formal networks and foreign intervention
[In]formal networks – at the juncture between community and society – have much to do with the longterm Yugoslav and Bosnian political, constitutional and economic (dis)integration process. On the one
hand, a period of weak rule and political confusion reinforced exclusive networks based on nepotism and
corruption – as is well known, networks based on clientelism restrain civic involvement and inhibit
horizontally structured networks. During the recent war, these centrifugal networks were often used by
foreign powers to their advantage, keen as they were to exploit Bosnian divisions in order to (re)gain
influence and/or territories. On the other hand, despite backwardness and wars, open networks –
especially networks of civic engagement – contributed to Bosnia’s social capital, to the emergence of a
rich culture, and to the shaping of civil society, as well as political life.
See Xavier Bougarel, “From Young Muslim to the Party of Democratic Action: The emergence of a pan-Islamist trend in
Bosnia-Herzegovina,” Islamic Studies, Islamabad, vol. XXXVI, no. 2–3, 1997, pp. 533–49.
65 “SDA, programska deklaracija,” Muslimanski Glas, vol. 1, no. 1, November 1990, pp. 62–4.
66 Xavier Bougarel, “Bosniaks under the control of Panislamists,” Dani, Sarajevo, 18 June 1999; available from
http://www.cdsp.neu.edu/info/student/marko/dani/dani9.html.
67 See Xavier Bougarel, “L’Islam bosniaque, entre identité culturelle et idéologie politique,” in Xavier Bougarel and Nathalie
Clayer (eds), Le Nouvel Islam Balkanique: Les Musulmans, Acteurs du Post-Communisme, Paris: Maisonneuve and Larose,
2001, pp. 91–6.
68 See more on this issue in Xavier Bougarel and Nathalie Clayer, op. cit.
64
13
In conclusion, I would like to mention the following trends characterizing [in]formal networks in
Bosnia and Herzegovina:
 The development of genuine networks was often interrupted by periods of (foreign or indigenous)
suppression or control;
 Most of the networks followed community lines; and
 As in any society, [in]formal networks may be divided into exclusive and inclusive ones, vicious and
virtuous ones, the latter in Bosnia and Herzegovina often having the upper hand.
In present-day Bosnia and Herzegovina, dependence-/exploitation-based and reciprocity-/trust-based
networks hold society and the state together, though the former are more efficient. Therefore, the question
is how to decrease the influence of vicious networks – characterized by distrust, exploitation, clientelism,
lawlessness, criminality, backwardness, ineffective government and economic stagnation – and to
increase the impact of virtuous ones – created by co-operation, trust, reciprocity, civic engagement and
collective well-being. How does one bring a person or a network to change the existing rules instead of
simply continuing to accept them as they are? As Robert Putnam states, third-party enforcement,
especially exogenous intervention, is mostly an inadequate solution, because social capital itself is an
emergent property of the social system itself.69 Various studies I have published have insisted on the fact
that the development of civic networks is a participatory process, that best practices imposed through
conditionality often fail to produce lasting changes70 and, as indicated also by Joseph Stiglitz, that
exogenous reforms tend to undermine people’s incentives to develop their own capacities.71 Indeed,
studies of Third World development have clearly established that the most successful local organizations
represent indigenous, participatory initiatives; organizations implanted from outside have a high failure
rate.72 This is the main reason why I strongly advocate ownership-driven strategies.73
Therefore, foreign programmes favoring the practice of reciprocity (komšiluk), and the extension of
networks of civic engagement may have only a very limited influence. They can even lead to opposition,
because they may be seen as external, foreign, and therefore not adapted to local society. From my point
of view, the best strategy of the international community in this field would therefore be to limit any
attempts it might be tempted to make to empower and reinforce local capacities in terms of social trust,
norms of reciprocity, civic networks and co-operation, since such attempts are almost bound to fail. Both
exogenous and local actors must acknowledge that to dismantle vicious uncivic networks and to
consolidate self-sustaining virtuous networks and institutional changes is a matter of time measured in
decades.
I am well aware that any advocacy of limits to the action of the international community must be
carefully balanced. From my point of view, at the broader state and social levels, the long-overdue foreign
intervention was a necessity, firstly to end a merciless war and secondly to build a common state and
initiate both the democratization and transition processes. Indeed, the 1995 Dayton Accord, imperfect in
many ways, or at least contradictory,74 has as its principal value the virtual assurance of the lasting future
of a common state for all of its communities and citizens. But contrary to what the paradigm of the
69
See Robert Putnam, op. cit., p. 177.
See my contributions to the volume edited by Christophe Solioz and Svebor Dizdarevic, Ownership Process in Bosnia and
Herzegovina: Contributions on the International Dimensions of Democratization in the Balkans, Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2003,
pp. 9–24, and pp. 54–75.
71 Joseph E. Stiglitz, “Participation and development: Perspectives from the comprehensive development paradigm,” Review of
Development Economics, vol. 6, no. 2, 2002, pp. 163–82.
72 Milton J. Esman and Norman T. Uphoff, Local Organizations: Intermediaries in Rural Development, Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1984, pp. 99–180.
73 See Christophe Solioz and Svebor Dizdarevic, op. cit., as well as Christophe Solioz and Svebor Dizdarevic, La BosnieHerzégovine : enjeux de la transition, Paris: L’Harmattan, 2003.
74 See ICG, Is Dayton Failing? Bosnia Four Years after the Peace Agreement, Sarajevo: ICG Balkans Report, no. 80, 28 October
1999; http://www.crisisweb.org.
70
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transition takes for granted in terms of a quasi-automatic evolution from an authoritarian regime to a
consolidated democracy, Bosnia and Herzegovina today lies somewhere half-way between these two, in a
grey zone75 characterized by somewhat disquieting socio-economic behaviors76 and sham pluralism, only
poorly masking the domination of an elite that is partly corrupt, partly incompetent. Nevertheless, the
future of Bosnia and Herzegovina depends largely on the country’s capacity to progressively resolve these
problems and, in broader terms, on the success of the appropriation by the citizens of Bosnia of the
transition and democratization processes. To affirm the priority of this paradigm does not imply that the
international community does not have to assume its responsibilities or play a constructive role in terms
of promoting and assisting the democratization process.77 However, it must redirect its efforts in Bosnia
and Herzegovina, giving preference to the recognition and development of local competence and civic
empowerment. As far as the Bosnian side is concerned, Bosnian institutions and citizens must rid
themselves of their dependency complex and of their victimization tendencies, in order resolutely to
assume their responsibilities and progressively increase the sovereignty of their state.
The central question the European Stability Initiative’s director, Gerald Knaus, and secretary-general,
Felix Martin, posed in July 2003,78 was that of the use of the so-called “Bonn powers,” which, during the
1997 Peace Implementation Council (PIC) meeting in Bonn, gave the High Representative of the
international community in Bosnia and Herzegovina a far-reaching mandate as well as significant power –
in particular the power to dismiss obstructive public officials and to impose legislation if Bosnian
legislative bodies failed to do so.79 These powers were intended to be used only when local institutions
and authorities had failed to support the implementation of the Dayton Accord. The present High
Representative, Paddy Ashdown, himself recognized that the Office of the High Representative (OHR)
represents a “unique and highly intrusive, and potentially dependency-inducing postwar structure.”80 On
this issue, the July 2003 report published by the International Crisis Group (ICG) says that paradox will
be the characteristic feature of the mission of the High Representative: “In order to do away with the
Bonn powers, they will have to be used more intensively.”81 But by doing so, the High Representative
will be confronted with yet another paradox – highlighted in the same document: “[Ashdown] can sack
and impose and exhort, but he cannot actually run the country … [he] can command but not implement
reform.”82 Concerning the intrusive capacities of the High Representative, a more realistic and
satisfactory option would be to use his powers only in a limited way, and to do so only until the next
elections.83 But such a decision must be part of a focused ownership-oriented strategy that must be
discussed with local politicians.
“The development of an effective Bosnian state remains frozen so long as the international
protectorate remains in place,” write Marcus Cox and Gerald Knaus in an open letter to Ashdown
published on 23 July 2003 by the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR).84 This idea, which
Concerning the discussion on the transition paradigm, see Thomas Carothers “The end of the transition paradigm,” Journal of
Democracy, vol. 13, no. 1, 2002, pp. 5–21; concerning the grey zone, see Thomas Carothers, “Struggling with semiauthoritarians”, in Peter Burnell (ed.), Democracy Assistance: International Co-operation for Democratization, London: Frank
Cass, 2000, pp. 210–25.
76 Fikret Causevic, by including the grey labor market, thinks that the official unemployment rate (around 40 per cent) should be
lowered to around 25 per cent; see United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Early Warning System in Bosnia and
Herzegovina: 2001 Annual Report, Sarajevo: UNDP, 2002, pp. 22–3; http://www.ews.undp.ba.
77 See Laurence Whitehead, “Concerning international support for democracy in the south,” in R. Luckmann and G. White (eds),
Democratization in the South: The Jagged Wave, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996, p. 252.
78 Gerald Knaus and Felix Martin, “Lessons from Bosnia and Herzegovina: Travails of the European Raj,” Journal of
Democracy, vol. 14, no. 3, July 2003, pp. 60–74; http://www.journalofdemocracy.org/KnausandMartin.pdf.
79 The “Bonn powers” complete Article 2.1. of the GFAP’s Annex 10.
80 OHR, Mission Implementation Plan, Sarajevo: OHR, January 2003, p. 1; http://www.ohr.int.
81 ICG, op. cit., 2003, p. 41.
82 Ibid., p. 39.
83 The High Representative would still have the powers defined in Article 2.1. of the GFAP’s Annex 10.
84 Marcus Cox and Gerald Knaus, “Ashdown urged to let go: Open letter to Lord Ashdown,” Balkan Crisis Report, London:
IWPR, 23 July 2003; http://www.iwpr.net/index.pl?archive/bcr3/bcr3_200307_447_1_eng.txt.
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assumes that Bosnia and Herzegovina is truly a protectorate, involves the concept of an almost immediate
transition process: i.e. the end of the protectorate would be followed by the existence of a sovereign state
and, as if by magic, would give rise to a genuine domestic political process. On its part, the ICG
legitimates and encourages Ashdown's aggressive policies, expecting convincing results – while at the
same time recognizing the paradoxes of this position, as well as the absence of a convincing exit strategy.
According to the ICG, the international community has the right to use a trial-and-error strategy – but not
the local politicians, by definition without credibility and incapable of taking over the running of the
state?!85
According to Victor Bojkov, Bosnia and Herzegovina may be best conceived of not as a protectorate
but as a “controlled democracy,” i.e. a hybrid regime combining democratic structures and nondemocratic ones in which external actors are still the key players in the country.86 Nevertheless, domestic
institutions exist that meet fundamental procedural requirements for democracy as well as providing a
framework clearly favoring domestic action. The challenge of controlled democracy is precisely to
strengthen domestic democracy, therefore making ownership-driven strategies indispensable. I believe
that the transfer of responsibility and authority is not only impossible to circumvent but is, in effect,
already under way. Of course, such a hand-over can only be progressive, and requires an authentic
partnership between external and local actors.
Careful anthropological and sociological reconstruction of [in]formal networks in Bosnia and
Herzegovina must be done in order to confirm and refine the present general approach to this matter.
Nevertheless, I hope to have evidence in this contribution that [in]formal networks have their own
dynamics. Of course, the fact that they are problematic because of presumed codes of secrecy and loyalty
based on community relations makes them difficult to penetrate and control, whether by local authorities
or external actors. But I would like to point out here another characteristic of the role of [in]formal
networks. Bearing in mind the potential of [in]formal networks for trust and civic engagement, I would
like to emphasize that the public sphere should not ignore this social capital, because abstract universal
principles such as civic or constitutional patriotism have to put down their roots in real life, in order to
overcome the gap between the public and private spheres. With the current state-building process,
exclusive networks should more and more be controlled, limited and cracked down on, so creating space
for inclusive [in]formal networks, which may contribute to the overcoming of narrow, community-based
allegiances and to integrate them into the political sphere. These networks, which represent part of
Bosnia’s social capital, will, in my view, contribute to – but not substitute for – the development of a
sovereign and independent Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Geneva, 30 August 2003
See ICG, op. cit., 2003, p. 2; see also Ivan Lovrenović, “Who actually governs Bosnia-Herzegovina?” Bosnia Report, London,
July 2003; http://www.bosnia.org.uk/bosrep/report_format.cfm?articleid=923&reportid=157.
86 See Victor D. Bojkov, “Democracy in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Post-1995 political system and its functioning,” Southeast
European Politics, vol. IV, no. 1, 2003, pp. 41–67; http://www.seep.ceu.hu/archives/issue41/bojkov.pdf.
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