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East European Politics & Societies
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"Democracy" without a Demos? The Bosnian Constitutional Experiment and the Intentional Construction of Nonfunctioning States

Robert M. Hayden

The social science literature on ethnically divided states is huge and varied, but suggestions for constitutional solutions are strangely uniform: "loose federations" of ethnically defined ministates, with minimal central authority that must act by consensus and thus cannot act at all on issues that are contested rather than consented. In Bosnia, the political system mandated by the international High Representative suffer the same structural flaws that were used to make the former Yugoslav federation and the Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina unworkable. Similarly nonviable systems were proposed in 1994 to 1995 for Croatia and in 1998 to 1999 for Kosovo and recently for Cyprus and for Iraq. This article analyzes the paradox of mandating consensus-based politics in ethnically divided states, inclusion in which does not have the consent of most members of at least one group.

Key Words: Bosnia and Herzegovina • consociation • federation • national states

East European Politics & Societies, Vol. 19, No. 2, 226-259 (2005)
DOI: 10.1177/0888325404272679
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