Building Nations Instead of Peace(s): the Bosnian Metaconflict

Goran Tepšić

Abstract

The author argues that a significant problem with the ongoing internation­al administration in Bosnia is an epistemic hegemony of the West, which has further deformed Bosnian conflicted society through the establishment of ap­proaches that resemble Western colonialism/imperialism. Although illiberal and lacking local legitimacy and accountability, this informal trusteeship has adopted discourses of liberalism and Europeanness to justify itself in front of the local and global public. Nevertheless, that caused local resistance — mostly in the form of ethnopolitics. Political elites, both internal and external, have framed post-war society of Bosnia and Herzegovina as a ‘continuation of war by other means’, which resulted in the construction of mutually contested national identities and ethnicized peaces. Therefore, the author uses critical approach to peacebuilding, interpretative methodology and discourse analysis to argument his general hypothesis.

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