Challenging the Fear of Be(com)ing a Minority: The Integration of Others as an Impetus for Durable Reconciliation in Post-Conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina
Challenging the Fear of Be(com)ing a Minority: The Integration of Others as an Impetus for Durable Reconciliation in Post-Conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina

Summary/Abstract: The political participation and the political representation as the two segments through which the political integration operates depict how the issue of Others reflects the society in Bosnia and Herzegovina. At this point, the political participation to some extent could be considered as an identity marker in the case of the Others. From the bottom-up perspective, the Others are illustrated as a conglomeration bridging over the ethnic divisions. Moreover, in the setting of the political participation, being an Other could mean more than just a simple census identification, but a thoughtful response to the increasing ethnonationalisms reflected in the party system, as well as in many other spheres of the Bosnian society. On the other hand, thinking ‘from above’, the political representation is related to the integration of the Others in the state institutions. Here, the focus would be to analyse the current mechanisms of inclusion of the Others in the state organs as determined by the provisions in the constitutions of Bosnia and Herzegovina, of Republika Srpska and of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The consequences of the political misrepresentation are studied through the Sejdić and Finci v. BiH case1 opening the debate for fundamental constitutional changes that should guarantee equal treatment of all the citizens in Bosnia. Furthermore, the political misrepresentation is (and was) triggering the fear of becoming minority or of becoming an Other in BiH in the context of the first postwar census that took place in the autumn of 2013.

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