WAR VETERANS IN BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA: FROM ETHNIC WARRIORS TO AGENTS OF INTER-ETHNIC COOPERATION. HOW TO EXPLAIN THE CHANGE?1

In this article, the attention is paid to the Bosnian war veterans' organisations. In the postDayton period, veterans' associations could be characterized as non-egalitarian structures with strong ethnic ascription reproducing ethnic cleavages and with wide patron-client bonds to the highest level of politics enjoying preferential positions in socio-political and economic life. Today, the majority of veterans' organisations can be characterized as civic oriented NGOs rather inclusive with decreasing importance of the ethnicity as the defining principle, limited preferential political treatment, and with the potential to mobilize across ethnic lines and building cross-ethnic contacts and relations. I searched for mechanisms and processes that produced alternations in the veterans' organisations role and behaviour. The tracing of the political, societal and economic context in and outside of Bosnia and in the population of veterans' organisations discovered the existence of twelve mechanisms which combination and interplay "produced" the change in veterans' organisation's role and behaviour.