State-breaking/State-making: Returning Refugees, NGOs, and the Political Geography of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Research Brief)

The unsettled condition of so many refugees, displaced persons, and returnees is indicative of a larger flux of the state in Bosnia. This flux points contradictorily to two trends in the scholarly literature on states: in the present era, states seem so real to participants and analysts alike that the most important theoretical strategy has been to de-reify the state as a unified entity. At the same time, scholars of all stripes have been declaring the failure and demise of the nation-state as an effective organizational form. Conditions in BiH complicate both of these approaches or assumptions. Not only is there no taken for granted “state” to de-reify in Bosnia, but in fact the state is hard to create, build up, and sustain.

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Andrew Gilbert, of the University of Chicago, was a 2001-02 Individual Advanced Research Opportunities (IARO) fellow.