Discursive Democracy and the Challenge of State Building in Divided Societies: Reckoning with Symbolic Capital in Bosnia and Herzegovina

38 Nationalities Papers 449-468 (July 2010)

44 Pages Posted: 11 Apr 2012 Last revised: 21 Apr 2012

See all articles by Robert Ivie

Robert Ivie

Indiana University Bloomington - Department of Communication & Culture

Timothy William Waters

Indiana University - Maurer School of Law

Date Written: July 1, 2010

Abstract

Current approaches to democratic state building place serious conceptual limits on policy options. A democratic future for Bosnia’s people will require far more searching engagement with identity formation and its politicization than reform efforts have so far contemplated. Theories of discursive democracy illuminate how this might be possible. We deploy the discursive idea of symbolic capital to show how one might identify the lines along which people in Bosnia could constitute meaningful, internally legitimated political communities – or that would indicate the experiment was not worth attempting. Unless advocates of democratic state building can articulate, rather than assume, a sufficiency of common ground among the populations’ multiple, overlapping and conflicting identities, they may have to revert to the default of separate political communities.

Keywords: discursive democracy, state building, Bosnia, symbolic capital, citizenship

JEL Classification: J00, J70, J78, K33, K10, N30, N40, O52, P30, P26

Suggested Citation

Ivie, Robert and Waters, Timothy William, Discursive Democracy and the Challenge of State Building in Divided Societies: Reckoning with Symbolic Capital in Bosnia and Herzegovina (July 1, 2010). 38 Nationalities Papers 449-468 (July 2010), Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2037824

Robert Ivie

Indiana University Bloomington - Department of Communication & Culture ( email )

800 E 3rd St.
Bloomington, IN 47405
United States

Timothy William Waters (Contact Author)

Indiana University - Maurer School of Law ( email )

211 S. Indiana Ave.
Bloomington, IN 47405
United States

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
49
Abstract Views
853
PlumX Metrics