DE-DISCOURSIFICATION: AN ATTEMPT TO UNDERSTAND CONTINUATION OF THE "STATE OF WAR" IN POST-DAYTON BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA

This essay proposes an application of the theory of dediscoursification, as a theory of one of the major causes of war, in understanding the post-Dayton politics in Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH). One of the key premises of the theory reads that wars are frequently preceded, and made possible, by the process of failed negotiating in which at least one of the negotiating parties acquires the status of a dediscoursifier as a party who violates the key moral-discursive values involved in the use of discourse. The first part of the essay expounds the theory's rudimentary structure and relates it to both discourse-ethics and republican political theory. The second part explains the sense in which we can describe Alija Izetbegovic as a dediscoursifier not only in the period preceding the outbreak of war in BiH (1992), but also throughout the period of an apparent implementation of the Dayton peace agreement, especially in the aftermath of his 1998 BiH Constitutional Court appeal against the BiH entities' constitutions. In the third part I explain the role of the international community representatives in post-Dayton BiH, who exploited Izetbegovic's loose attitude toward the Dayton peace framework and thus contributed to the destabilization of BiH in the post-Dayton period. The concluding part examines briefly the issue of motivation of the international actors as well as the future direction that the BiH-related developments are likely to take.