Nationalism and Ethnic Politics

This Call for Papers seeks articles for the conference titled “Dayton at 30: Power-Sharing Lessons from Bosnia and Herzegovina” scheduled for October 14, 2024, in person at the University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland.

Conference participants will be invited to contribute to a Special Issue to be published by the journal Nationalism and Ethnic Politics. Prior to publication, these contributions will be adjusted based on discussions during the conference and in accordance with the comments of the editors and reviewers following the event.

Topic

The Dayton Agreement ended the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) that left 100,000 dead and 2.2 million displaced out of the pre-war population of 4.3 million people. The Dayton Agreement established two entities in BiH, a Bosniak-Croat Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH) and a Serb-dominated Republika Srpska (RS). It also established a complex power-sharing system between the three constituent groups - Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs. For the past three decades, the Dayton Agreement has upheld negative peace in a fragile post-conflict state. However, despite this success, the political system and the state itself is highly contested by the three constituent peoples and still largely dependent on external actors for support, personified in the role of the Office of the High Representative (OHR). BiH is also confronted with considerable governance-related challenges and obstacles.

The guiding questions for this conference will be:

• What new lessons can theorists and practitioners learn from 30 years of power-sharing in BiH?
• How can the political system in BiH in particular, and power-sharing democracies in general, become more functional and more inclusive?

Building and extending these guiding questions, the focus of the conference will be to explore the case of BiH and its consociational practice in-depth with an aim to better inform power-sharing theory, as well as to share empirical lessons from the past three decades that can aid practitioners in BiH and beyond to establish and develop more effective, inclusive, and kind power-sharing democracies.

Goal

The objective of the conference is to assess the successes and failures of implementation of the Dayton Agreement and to offer fresh perspectives on it. We hope to advance our understanding of power-sharing democracies and offer new perceptions and critical evaluations of the Dayton Agreement and its implementation. We encourage scholars interested in the conference and the special issue to be cognizant of gender balance in their citation practices and we encourage them to read and include work from scholars from Bosnia and Herzegovina in their analysis. We especially encourage scholars from Bosnia and Herzegovina and early career scholars to send their abstracts for the conference and for consideration in the special issue of Nationalism & Ethnic Politics.

The conference is open to all approaches to the Dayton Agreement, but we would like to get fresh perspectives on:

•        Political and electoral systems of Bosnia and Herzegovina and power-sharing at the local level;
•        Bosnia and Herzegovina’s impact on power-sharing theory;
•        International interventionism, the dependency syndrome, and constitutional reforms to the Dayton Agreement;
•        The representation of minorities, micro-minorities and others within the power-sharing system;
•        Informal power-sharing, patronage, and state capture.

Abstract submission

Contributors need to submit an abstract of 300 words and a short biography of 100 words to dayton30conference@gmail.com.

Important dates

Submission deadline for abstracts – July 15, 2024

Notification if the abstracts are selected for the conference – August 1, 2024

Submission of articles to organizers and other contributors – October 5, 2024

Conference – October 14, 2024

Feedback returned to authors – December 15, 2024

Revisions – Between December 15, 2024, and April 1, 2025

Completion of the editorial process and publication – By November 21, 2025

More information to come. Updates will be posted on the website https://sites.google.com/view/dayton30conference/.

Editors and conference organizers

Valentino Grbavac, University of Edinburgh

Ivan Pepić, University of Geneva

Aleksandra Zdeb, Pedagogical University Krakow

 

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