The (Real) Elephant in the Room: Post-Dayton Power-Sharing Asymmetries

The Dayton Agreement established two ethnically dominated entities: the Bosniak-Croat Federation and the Serb-dominated Republika Srpska. Post-Dayton interventions, through institutions such as the OSCE, OHR, and the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), have sought to recognize all constituent peoples as equal across the entire territory of BiH. The literature has not addressed how this approach has created differential access for dominant segments to the four consociational elements – grand coalition, segmental autonomy, mutual veto, and proportionality – across entity and state levels in BiH. When a group is denied access to at least one of the four consociational elements, this exclusion creates an asymmetric dynamic among the ethnic groups. This article examines the cases and conditions of asymmetrical consociation in BiH. It argues that some inter-group conflicts are not inherent to consociationalism as prescribed in Dayton, but derive from the differential access to the four consociational elements in the post-Dayton period.