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This article analyzes the value and impact of the nation building policy of the international community in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Bosnia). The analysis shows that the nation building effort has failed in the sense that the ethnic nationalist political culture persisted and that a collective Bosnian identity is absent. Bosnian politics continued to be dominated by ethnic nationalist political parties and ethnic group interests. The author argues that this can be explained by the continued securitization of ethnic identity. In other words, each ethnic group regards its vital interests to be existentially threatened by the other ethnic group(s). Therefore, the author concludes that when it comes to inter-ethnic cooperation, achieving good and effective government in Bosnia is not so much about nationbuilding, but about de-securitizing ethnic relations.

The paper explores processes of coalition governance in foreign policy. Specifically, it argues that such processes are being shaped by two interrelated dimensions of coalition set-ups: first, the allocation of the foreign ministry to the senior or a junior coalition partner; second, the degree of policy discretion which is delegated to that ministry. Bringing these two dimensions together, the paper distinguishes four types of coalition arrangements for the making of foreign policy which are expected to have predictable implications for the process of foreign policy making and ultimately for the foreign policy outputs and quality of multiparty coalitions.

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