The state as a symbol or a means to an end: internal border changes in multinational federations

Basta, Karlo

doi:10.1111/nana.12050

Cited by 4 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…Moreover, there is discontent even among the Croats, who themselves profit from substantial power-sharing. In particular, there are grievances over the lack of a separate Croat federal entity and lower Croat influence in Presidential elections (Basta 2014), as compared to Bosnia’s other constituent peoples and to their titular ethnic kin in Croatia.…”

Section: Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Inclusion, Recognition, and Inter-Group Comparisons: The Effects of Power-Sharing Institutions on Grievances

Juon

2023

Journal of Conflict Resolution

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Extant evidence suggests that power-sharing reduces the participation of minorities in civil conflict by alleviating their grievances. Yet, it remains unclear how and to what degree power-sharing should be institutionalized. Moreover, direct attitudinal evidence for the grievance mechanism remains rare. Addressing these gaps, I argue that corporate power-sharing which is constitutionally-enshrined and explicitly recognizes minorities most strongly alleviates their grievances. However, it simultaneously accentuates the importance of relative inter-group comparisons. This means that minorities with a lower relative degree of corporate power-sharing than their 'peers' in the same country and transnational kin population should have higher grievances, irrespective of its absolute level. Using an extensive combination of mass survey data, I test my expectations in a series of hierarchical multi-level models. By highlighting the importance of institutional design, my results have significant implications for policy in multi-ethnic societies and for the scholarly literature on accommodation and grievances more generally.

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Section: Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Inclusion, Recognition, and Inter-Group Comparisons: The Effects of Power-Sharing Institutions on Grievances

Juon

2023

Journal of Conflict Resolution

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“…Where specifi c institutional forms are imbued with symbolic meaning and linked to strongly internalized narratives about communities in question, the menu of institutional options might be significantly more constrained than where this is not the case. 121 Thus, even though in some instances elites might have signifi cant leeway in institutional design, this kind of openness need not characterize all plural polities. 122 Institutions can be both instruments and symbols, but it is up to scholars to investigate the degree to which they possess these sets of attributes.…”

Section: Layering the Argument: Bosnia And Beyondmentioning

confidence: 99%

Imagined Institutions: The Symbolic Power of Formal Rules in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Basta¹

2016

Slavic rev.

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Through a detailed examination of institutional discourses in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina, this article demonstrates that formal political institutions may play a more layered role than is allowed by existing theories of nationalist and ethnic conflict. Competing institutional preferences of Bosniak, Serb, and Croat elites are not simply instruments for the achievement of collective or individual goals. They are symbolically salient expressions of collective identity as well. For Bosniak elites, the stated preference for a non-ethnicized territorial framework and majoritarian central government suggest the vision of a multiethnic, but not institutionally multinational, Bosnian political community. Their Serb and Croat counterparts, by contrast, insist on the continued “ethnicization” of the territorial architecture and the central government apparatus. These preferences express an understanding of Bosnia as a state of three discrete political communities. Any attempts at comprehensive institutional reform must thus reckon with the opposing and deeply embedded visions of institutions-as-symbols. The theoretical implications of this work go well beyond the Bosnian case.

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“…State-building combines the dismantling of internal boundaries and the building of external ones (Bartolini, 2004; Basta, 2014; Flora, 1999). States and state-building dominated European politics for 500 years to be joined after the 1950s by European integration and both state-building and European integration have been at work in SEE from the 1990s in the context of EU enlargement (Taylor et al ., 2012, pp.…”

Section: Borders and European Integrationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Those Who Knock on Europe’s Door Must Repent? Bilateral Border Disputes and EU Enlargement

Geddes

Taylor

2015

Political Studies

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This article explores a neglected aspect of the wider debate about EU enlargement: bilateral disputes between a member state and an applicant, where the former uses, or threatens to use its membership status to block the applicant's progress in order to resolve a bilateral dispute. Through analysis of three cases -Italy and Slovenia, Slovenia and Croatia, and Greece and Macedonia -we show that the EU's transformative power does not always flow 'outwards' towards the state seeking membership. This raises interesting questions about enlargement as a process of international bargaining between sovereign states filtered via a supranational entity formally responsible for negotiations. The cases suggest limits to the EU's transformative power in the context of disputes that are linked to the meaning and significance of borders. It is not surprising that the European Commission prefers disputes to be resolved bilaterally or via a third party.Keywords: borders; European Union; enlargement; South East Europe 'Those who knock on Europe's door such as Ljubljana must make a gesture of repentance.' (Gianfranco Fini, quoted in Corriere della Sera, 1994, p. 5) Studies of EU enlargement typically focus on the relationship between the European Commission as an agent of the member states and the applicant country. Central to EU enlargement is that member states collectively consider a country's application and that progress (or not) is determined by satisfying the EU's criteria as a collectivity -a process concerned with satisfying a supranational interest, not national criteria. It is then assumed that the EU's transformative power flows outwards from the member states (the 'insiders') to the applicant (the 'outsiders'). We identify a gap in the accounts offered by these existing studies, which is the impact of domestic mobilisations about the status and meaning of borders on EU enlargement.The role and impact of bilateral disputes is a neglected aspect of analyses of the relationship between a member state and an applicant, where the former uses, or threatens to use, its membership to block membership in order to resolve a dispute. Our analysis takes three cases from South East Europe (SEE) -a region that is central both to the EU's recent history and future development. We show how the 'unfreezing' of border conflicts in four countries (Croatia, Italy, Macedonia and Slovenia) linked to the break-up of the former Yugoslavia and in the context of European integration produces outcomes that confound the usual expectations about the direction of transformative power -namely outsider adjustment. We demonstrate three other potential outcomes: insider adjustment, mutual adjustment and stalemate. Each of our three case studies flows from the complexities of Balkan politics but are now framed by European integration. All were triggered by Yugoslavia's break-up and demonstrate unexpected outcomes if the assumption were that bs_bs_banner

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The state as a symbol or a means to an end: internal border changes in multinational federations

Cited by 4 publications

References 30 publications

Inclusion, Recognition, and Inter-Group Comparisons: The Effects of Power-Sharing Institutions on Grievances

Inclusion, Recognition, and Inter-Group Comparisons: The Effects of Power-Sharing Institutions on Grievances

Imagined Institutions: The Symbolic Power of Formal Rules in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Those Who Knock on Europe’s Door Must Repent? Bilateral Border Disputes and EU Enlargement

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