Between Brotherhood and Unity and Nationalism: The National Key in Socialist and Post-Dayton Bosnia and Hercegovina
Abstract
This study focuses on the national key, which was introduced by Yugoslav communists in their policy of 'Brotherhood and unity'. The paper evaluates how the national key concept worked in the Socialist Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina at the end of the 1980s.
The national key represented a very important component of harmonious interethnic relations, but the system of ethnic quotas wasn't incorporated into Bosnian legislation, nor was it applied to Bosnian society across. The study analyzes similarities and differences in the ways the national key was implemented in Bosnia after the signing of the Dayton Agreement.
A newly incorporated principle of consociational democracy in post-Dayton Bosnia applies parity in ethnic quotas. Although the national key assured peace and harmonious coexistence among nations and nationalities in Socialist Yugoslavia, it generates ethno-nationally defined disputes in post-Dayton Bosnia.
The Dayton scheme, which was based on equal representation of the three constitutive nations, is criticized for reinforcing the ethno-national paradigm in Bosnian society and strengthening nationalism. The parity according the national key provides existential guarantees to less numerous Bosnian Serbs and Bosnian Croats.
It is supposed to protect them being outvoted in constituent referenda. Despite being criticized for excessive emphasis on an ethno-national paradigm in post-Dayton Bosnia, this paper shows that the current institutional setting was based on a structure which worked for more than four decades in Socialist Yugoslavia.