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Incident-driven Democracy at Europe’s Edge. The Case of Bosnia-Herzegovina

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2017

Yves Dejaeghere  and
Peter Vermeersch
Yves Dejaeghere
Affiliation:
University of Antwerp, Sint-Jacobsstraat 2, 2000 Antwerpen, Belgium. Email: [email protected]
Peter Vermeersch
Affiliation:
University of Leuven, Parkstraat 45, 3000 Leuven, Belgium. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

In recent years, several instances of social protest in Europe have transformed into new initiatives for citizens’ participation (e.g. citizens’ assemblies, deliberative forums, etc). Can such a transformation also take place in the more volatile political settings of a post-conflict democratizing state? We turn our attention to the plenums in Bosnia-Herzegovina, which were spontaneously organized citizens’ assemblies in the spring of 2014. We conclude that these plenums were a form of incident-driven democracy. In a country where the regular institutions of representative democracy continue to be widely mistrusted and civil society organizations, which normally have a mitigating role between citizens and state institutions in times of crisis, are weak, untrustworthy or absent, such incidental institutions have an important role to play. Their effect in the short term may be limited, but if new opportunities arise they may function as a useful memory for activists, a model for citizens’ participation outside elections, and therefore an instigator of further democratization.

Type
Articles
Information
European Review , Volume 25 , Issue 4 , October 2017 , pp. 608 - 622
Copyright
© Academia Europaea 2017 

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References

References and Notes

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