In search of a democratic counter-power in Bosnia–Herzegovina

Noting the significance of the twentieth anniversary of the signing of the Dayton Peace Agreement, the author offers a view in which the ethno-nationalist structures of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) maintained by the protocols of the Agreement could be understood as a particular form of ‘class subjection’ through ethnic alienation, enforced by the wider ideological mechanisms of control and discipline characteristic of the ethno-politically predetermined position of citizens in BiH society. Dayton-era BiH is thus better viewed as consisting not of the three constituent ethnic peoples but of the two constituent classes: the class of agents of ethno-political entrepreneurship and the class of objects of these entrepreneurs’ appropriation. The sequence of protests throughout BiH in which a wide variety of citizenry participated undermined the rarely questioned ethno-nationalist ideological hegemony, suggesting that the ‘solution’ to BiH’s still charged ethnic politics lies perhaps in reclaiming class a category of social mobilization. Thus, the author analyses how the 2013 and 2014 protests and floods, opened new political space and a chance for different political possibilities and for the rise of genuine democratic counter-power in BiH.