Prozesse des State Building in Bosnien-Herzegowina

Combining theoretical debates in sociocultural anthropology and public administration scholarship, this study advances a novel heuristic framework for understanding state-building processes in fragmented, post-conflict societies and proposes a new, ethnographically informed methodology.
Focusing on interactions between citizens, civil servants and members of international organisations in the city of Mostar, the study reveals how notions of community, the articulation of interests, as well as ideas and practices of statehood emerge, which neither correspond to consociational democratic statehood, as envisioned by the international community, nor to ideas of exclusive ethno-national communities, as propagated by political leaders.
Using this ethnography, the author argues for abandoning the state-building paradigm of academic description or policy prescription and identifies new avenues for a reflexive, transdisciplinary approach to studying public administration in contemporary glocal contexts.