I have been asked by the FCO to give a talk there later in January to a group of foreign visitors about Using Democracy for Peace. Or maybe it was Using Peace for Democracy.
I forget. One or the other.
As always the Balkans is/are a laboratory for cutting-edge research on such scientific issues.
Take Bosnia and Herzegovina. Here is Baroness Ashton at her European Parliament hearings:
… noting that there is no other choice but for the differing communities to live together.
At her parliamentary hearing in front of MEPs Ashton noted that: “They can have as many referendums as they like but at the end this is about one country coming together”.
… she expressed Brussels’ concern about the political situation in the country and said Brussels needs an “effective strategy to overcome the political stalemate in Bosnia-Herzegovina”.
She said she will have regular contact with High Representative Valnetine Inzko in an attempt to find a strategy to overcome the current situation. “The prospect of EU membership is the glue” that holds the country together, she said.
That (I assume) ad-libbed statement – “They can have as many referendums as they like but at the end this is about one country coming together” – is remarkable.
Here is Baroness Ashton on the subject of referenda in a different context:
On practically every question ever put to the British public on any subject, when asked if they would like a referendum on that subject, they have said that of course they would. I think that that is a measure of a healthy and thriving democracy.
The point there, where she argues against the British people having a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, is that she appears to be assuming that such a referendum would have full democratic legitimacy, but that in this case it is for Parliament and not a referendum to decide.
Yet in Bosnia referenda are relegated by her to miserable, second-class, irrelevant affairs of no consequence.
That can’t be right, if only because it makes no sense for the EU to organise elections in BH then expect politicians to ignore their electorates.
A Bosnian referendum on an issue which shows a strong public mood in favour of Option X duly empowers Bosnian leaders to insist on Option X, whether the EU likes it or not.
And what if a referendum result eg in Republika Srpska one day says that the voters there do not want the country as covered in EU glue to ‘come together’?
That said, even though Republika Srpska keeps threatening referenda on this and that does not mean that they are going to hold them: the threat of doing so may help win handy concessions:
For months, the Bosnian Serbs had prevented the country’s authorities from extending the contracts of international judges and prosecutors working in Bosnia’s highest court – now numbering just 11. The last contract was to expire on Tuesday (15 December). Inzko explained to Ashton, and also to diplomats from the countries that oversee the OHR’s work, that he would have to impose an extension…
But Inzko was told that imposing an extension of the judges’ contracts was out of the question because nobody had the appetite for a confrontation with Dodik. (It turned out that Canada, Japan and Turkey did – but that was of little interest to the EU.) The international judges and prosecutors working on organised crime and corruption cases in Bosnia would lose their jobs on 15 December – and they did. Inzko was allowed to extend only the contracts of international judges and prosecutors working on war crimes, an issue that is of far less personal interest to Dodik and other Bosnian politicians.
… Dodik announced that the decision to extend the war-crimes judges’ contracts carried no weight and might be subject to a referendum in the Republika Srpska.
For the second time in as many months, the EU, together with the US, had tried to appease Dodik, only to find him unappeasable. There could hardly have been a less auspicious start to Ashton’s term of office.
The country is bubbling with hatred and it is clear that the Dayton agreement has failed in its central aim of creating a new state capable of forging bonds with its citizens. The old multi-ethnic Bosnian culture, the Balkan melting pot, no longer exists. It has been replaced by a weak state hovering on the brink of collapse.
If Richard Holbrooke still considers Dayton to be a successful model for nation-building, then God help Afghanistan.
How does that help me writing my FCO presentation?
Conflict within a country over who rules it can be managed (more or less) through Democracy.
Conflict within a country over whether that country should exist in its current form is far less manageable – you may get a majority for a continuation of the status quo, but what do you do about the large minority who demanded something different, and who keep using democratic rights to block national integration?
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