What is the government's role in building social capital in Bosnia and Herzegovina and are they doing enough?
So in this segment, we will be sharing more about the significance of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Government in dividing the Country based on ethnic lines. It may get a little complicated.
“But how on earth can it actually be that complicated?” you may wonder? In this case, we can assure you that Bosnina posesses one of the most complex political systems known in today’s world and even by standards of ancient civilisation. As mentioned before, it contains 2 Federations, 10 Cantons and 143 Muncipalities within this one nation. What’s more, they also have 3 Presidents that hold office for 4 years, rotating Presidents every 8 months.
“Wait what?” you might ask, and it is indeed true! So for simplicity sake, we have created this simple diagram for everyone to understand the State Government a tad better.
It looks complicated - and it IS complicated. This governmental system not only selects 3 presidents, but only allows representatives of certain ethnic groups to be represented in certain regions. As seen in the diagram, the Serb representative has to come from Republika Srpska and the Croat and Bosniak representatives hail from the Federation.
With this chance of representation taken from the minorities in the respective states, this creates a situation where there is clear discrimination and inequality within the 2 federated entities. Its no wonder that Bosnian politicians rely on race and ethnicity based politics (Subotić, 2016) to gain support. Furthermore, we are discussing ethnic discrimination of the 3 major ethnic groups in Bosnia. What about the rest such as the Jews and Roman people? Their lack of political representation at the highest levels indeed pose a challenge toward building social capital as their interests aren’t event taken to heard by the various political groups that utilise ethnicity-based politics to gain political support.
As you can already tell, Bosnian politics are probably even more complex than that. Before we visited Bosnia and the Balkans, we had already heard that certain schools in Bosnia implemented separate curricula for each ethnic group, with schools even having separate classrooms and entrances/exits for different ethnic groups. Having had the chance to visit the University of Sarajevo, we decided to speak to the students and the various staff regarding the education system in Bosnia.
Education and the Government
While conversing with PhD Candidate/Masters Graduate and Teaching Assistant Berina Besirovic, she explained that in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, each of the local Cantonal governments dictated the guidelines and educational structure (Emkic, 2018) for the various Cantons. This meant that in Sarajevo, students actually attended multi-ethnic schools from young instead of having separate schools and curricula to study, creating a more united image and identity of Bosnia. However, this discrepancy also meant that the local governments hold significant amount of power in the development of social capital in the Cantons and by extension in Bosnia.
This power of the local government was further reinforced upon our visit to the city of Mostar. Mostar is a city dominated by the Croat and Serb ethnicity. With the city divided into 2 segments by a river and a bridge, this physical manifestation of ethnic division was clear from the start. This same mentality of the local government wielding power over educational institutes was present in our talk with the NGO Nansen Dialogue. Because of the divided nature of the educational system, the NGO has adopted an apolitical approach to attempting to put students of different ethnicities into dialogue despite their clear liberal take on politics. Instead of advocating for increased contact between the various ethnicities directly, Nansen Dialogue skirts around the issue.
This in itself allows us to see how the government and politics affect various other organisations that may not be directly related to the government. These NGOs are required to conform to the expectations of the local government in order to begin to assert their agenda in constructing social capital in Mostar.
Singapore’s Government is great I guess!
While chewing on all the new experiences and insights gained in the Balkans (Mental indigestion in the process!), we began to compare the 2 political systems of Singapore and Bosnia. Singapore’s political system utilises a more meritocratic system that does in a way still ensure minority representations but through differing means. The GRC system in Singapore may in itself be controversial due to the imposition of requirements to have a minority representative in each GRC, but it is far more desirable than the system Bosnia imposes which requires a total of 3 presidents.
The instability created by the rotation of presidents creates a hard to understand and digest system of policies that literally promote ethnic politics as each individual party can hold just a bias or focus toward a particular ethnic group. This is especially so in Republika Srpska which requires a Serb President from the region which increases the favourability of parties devoted to the cause of ethnic Serbs. This is unlike Singapore’s system where all the political parties are forced to maintain multi-ethnic appeal as each 5 man GRC would require the complicit support of all the ethnic groups within the region through the fielding of candidates not simply of the majority race in a locality.
However, the most recent Presidential elections in Singapore serve as a significant source of “tea” and similarity toward Bosnian politics. Ms Halima Yacob was born to an Indian parent and actually had to declare her ethnicity as Malay in order to run in this reserved Presidential elections. The main difference between the 2 situations would be that the President in Singapore does not hold as much political clout as in Bosnia, making it more of a symbolic position than that of actual political influence.
Also, as much as Singaporeans may dislike Social studies as a subject it does serve a purpose in developing a national consciousness. Compared to Bosnia’s system of separate education systems, having this common line of understanding does indeed help to develop social capital between the ethnic groups. This supports the system of centralised government for important matters such as education as a combined narrative would create a more cohesive system that ensures relatability and understanding between ethnic groups.
To sum up, Bosnia’s complex political system encourages a line of exclusive bonding within each ethnic community through the establishment of individual representatives for each ethnic group. This in turn affects the implementation of education curricula and the ability of various NGOs to effectively advocate for change in Bosnia.
Bibliography
Bosnia-herzegovina. (2018, October 8). Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-17211415
Emkic, E. (2018). Reconciliation and education in Bosnia and Herzegovina: from segregation to sustainable peace. Cham: Springer International Publishing.
It’s better than another war: a beginner’s guide to Bosnian politics. (2019, March 8). Retrieved June 10, 2019, from Emerging Europe | News, Intelligence, Community website: https://emerging-europe.com/intelligence/its-better-than-another-war-a-beginners-guide-to-bosnian-politics/
Subotić, J. (2016). For the love of homeland: croat ethnic party politics in bosnia- herzegovina. In S. Ramet & M. Valenta (Eds.), Ethnic Minorities and Politics in Post-Socialist Southeastern Europe (pp. 120–137). https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316671290.008
Wong, T. (2017, September 13). “Walkover” election troubles Singaporeans. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-41237318
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