The British Academy funded project, ‘Assessing NATO and EU Conditionality on State Building in Bosnia and Herzegovina’ ran between 2007-2009. The project was made possible with the award of a Large British Academy grant of £79,966 to Gülnur Aybet (Principle Investigator) and Florian Bieber (Co Investigator) at the University of Kent. The project’s research associate, Neven Andjelic, joined the team in September 2007.
Although there is a wide array of literature on the power of international institutions impacting the state building and integration processes in Central and Eastern Europe, little research has been done on the impact of conditionality from peace to state building in post conflict states.
This project explores the impact of international organisations on the transition from peace building to state building in the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Our project specifically examines the role of the EU and NATO with respect to state building in Bosnia and Herzegovina. We found the role of these two institutions interesting because after a decade of post-war reconstruction, the EU and NATO have emerged as key international organizations in the promotion of state and peace building. The EU has expanded from mostly economic support to assume security functions in the field of police reform from the UN in 2002 and later also with regard to peacekeeping from NATO/SFOR. By 2007 the EU will also be the prime civilian peace building institution through the transformation of the OHR into the Office of the EU Special Representative. Whereas NATO’s role in Bosnia and Herzegovina has decreased, the conditionality with regard to defence reform in relation to membership in the Partnership for Peace has been strong over the past years. Both institutions have thus become setters of significant benchmarks for the undertaking of reforms in the fields of state building, in particular in regard to state institutions, policing and defence. Our research concentrates on evaluating reforms undertaken in Bosnia and Herzegovina since the implementation of the Dayton Accords in 1995, in these three areas.
The project hosted a series of workshops with experts from academia, the media, NATO, the EU and relevant policy institutions betweeb 2007 and 2008. Reports from these workshops are available on this website. The first of these workshops took place at Chatham House, London, in November 2007. . Two further workshops took place in Brussels and Sarajevo. In addition the research team undertook various field trips to Brussels and Bosnia and Herzegovina which continued throughout the duration of the project. Presentations about the findings of the project were made at the Woodrow Wilson Center, Washington DC, St Antony’s College Oxford and the Harriman Institute at Columbia University, NY. With ongoing work since the grant came to an end, we are continuing the establishment of a network of scholars and practitioners with an interest in this area and to generate a cross disciplinary exchange of views, through our workshops and this website. Forthcoming publications from the research project will be added on to this website as they become available.
