Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Südosteuropäische Geschichte

Background

From the outset, the Bosnian War was strongly shaped—though not determined—by international engagement. Early efforts were feeble: lightly armed peacekeepers were deployed into a situation of intense violence with no peace to keep, while humanitarian responses often merely alleviated suffering without preventing it.

Over time, however, international intervention became increasingly assertive. First, in March 1994, U.S.-led pressure helped end the “war within the war” between Bosnian Croats and Bosniaks, resulting in the Washington Agreement.

From then on, the international community’s role intensified. By arming and training the Croatian Army and launching a sustained NATO air campaign against Bosnian Serb positions, international actors played a decisive role in ending the war. These efforts culminated in the Dayton Peace Agreement (DPA), signed in November 1995, which formally ended hostilities.

As the implementation of the DPA’s civilian provisions faltered, the Peace Implementation Council expanded the authority of the High Representative. This included powers to impose binding decisions (decrees) when local parties failed to agree, and to remove public officials who obstructed implementation. Initially, these increasingly intrusive measures were met with massive resistance—particularly from nationalist actors seeking to undermine the unified Dayton framework, however weak it may have been. However, by 2002, these extraordinary powers were regularly used—and, crucially, largely respected—despite the Office of the High Representative lacking direct executive authority.

Research Aims

This research project investigates the gradual rise of assertiveness in the international intervention in Bosnia-Herzegovina as the result of complex interactions within a contested and shifting political arena. It addresses the following interrelated questions and analytical puzzle:

1. Why did the international intervention become assertive only gradually and hesitantly?
2. How did local Bosnian actors assess, negotiate, and adapt to growing international pressure—whether by resisting, yielding, cooperating, or manipulating it?
3. In what ways did these local-international interactions shape both the evolving nature of the intervention and the political structure of post-war Bosnia-Herzegovina?

By exploring these questions, the project aims to shed light on the long-term impact of international intervention, the processes of institutional learning, and the contested emergence of the political order that defines Bosnia-Herzegovina after 1992.

The scope of the research

Given the project's interest in institutional learning at both higher and lower levels of intervening international organisations (IOs), the research will examine two interrelated scales:

• The headquarters level, including Sarajevo-based missions and BiH/Federation-wide structures; and
• The field level, where implementation dynamics and adaptations often differed significantly.

The primary field-level case study will focus on Southern Bosnia-Herzegovina, centring on the city of Mostar, where I began field research for my dissertation in August 1995. I subsequently worked there intermittently for international organisations — first for the European Union Administration of Mostar (EUAM) in 1996, and later for the Office of the High Representative (OHR) between 1997 and 2002.

This region was a focal point of the conflict between Bosniaks and Bosnian Croats, the latter aiming to establish the separatist entity of Herceg-Bosna along the southwestern corridor of Herzegovina bordering Croatia. As such, the area represents a critical site in the post-war contest over the unity of Bosnia-Herzegovina — making it a particularly revealing case for analysing how international assertiveness and local responses evolved over time.