Republika Srpska as a strong nationalizing state and its consequences for postethnic activism

Fifteen years after the end of the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the country remains sharply divided along ethnic lines. Since the 2005 election of Milorad Dodik as prime minister of Republika Srpska, tensions between political leaders have flared up and especially election periods have been marked by continuous ethnic and nationalist rhetoric. The constitution, an integral part of the Dayton Peace Agreement, contains ethnic incentives perpetuating the problematic situation. The recent debates on the policy of the international community towards Bosnia-Herzegovina and to a certain extent academic debates as well, have centred on the legacy of the Dayton and the ways to amend it. Since 2006, various attempts at changing the constitution have been made, to little avail. This paper highlights another aspect of the legacy of Dayton. It centres on the differences in the political opportunity structures of both the RS and the Federation of Bosnia- Herzegovina, and analyses in detail how the political opportunity structure of the RS affects the possible development of resistance against dominant ethnic politics or post ethnic activism in this entity. The first part of the paper will expand on the definition of post ethnic activism, explaining what it is and how I proceeded in researching post ethnic groups in Bosnia-Herzegovina. I then shortly discuss the preliminary findings of this fieldwork, cantering on the marked difference between cases in the RS and the Federation. The second part proposes to use the framework of political opportunity structure as a heuristic device for assessing the influence of environmental factors on the emergence and development of post ethnic activism. The third and final part of the paper is a detailed analysis of the political opportunity structure of the RS.status: publishe