Dayton at 30: Unpacking the Politics of Power-Sharing

This article introduces the special issue titled “Dayton at 30: Power-Sharing Lessons from Bosnia and Herzegovina.” It reflects on the central issues and findings of the special issue, reiterating the importance of new voices and local perspectives for understanding the last three decades of power-sharing in Bosnia and Herzegovina. We identify three themes which can offer crucial lessons to both researchers and key stakeholders in Bosnia and Herzegovina: 1) peace as the “taken for granted” and overlooked variable, 2) abused institutions as the “weak link” in a predominantly institutions-oriented peace-building processes, and 3) the external actors as unexpected spoilers. We situate the findings of the articles in this special issue within these wider themes, offering comparative lessons to other deeply divided places. We conclude that, despite a lack of formal constitutional reform in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the power-sharing system itself has evolved over the last three decades, adapting, spreading, and raising difficult questions about success and failure, international dependency versus local ownership, and about the very nature of representation.