One State, Two Entities, Three Constituent Peoples: BiH’s Failed attempt at Interethnic Peace

Abstract

After the 1992-1995 Bosnian genocide, citizens of all ethnicities pleaded for peace, yearning for a new beginning. Attempting to establish a more unified country, the highly unstructured government scrambled to piece together the broken country, resulting in a system referred to as “one state, two entities, three constituent peoples.” This approach to state unification recognizes the tiered governmental structure with the existence of state and entity (quasi-state) governments, which represent the one state and two entities, respectively. These governments are disproportionately influenced by people belonging to the three dominant ethnic groups, the Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs, who represent the three constituent peoples. Nearing thirty years after the end of the genocide, with few effective improvements made to Bosnia’s haphazardly-made governmental system, Bosnia has struggled to ensure long-lasting peace. Despite attempts to ameliorate interethnic relations through changes in the state and entity level governments, the structural makeup and consequent actions of these governments face Bosnian citizens with genocide-era tensions and unimpaired ethnopolitical enclaves that threaten the stability of the country.