DAYTON AND RIGHT-WING NATIONALISM IN THE WEST

Abstract

The article looks at the question of why Western powers that claimed to be committed to multiculturalism fashioned a post-conflict agreement for Bosnia-Herzegovina that cemented in place the ethnicization of territory that had been the goal of ethno-nationalist elites. In particular, why did officials from societies where far right forces with ideological views very similar to the nationalist forces in Bosnia were seen as marginal, accept that view as the basis for the Dayton Agreement? The paper answers the question by looking at the way in which political space has been constructed in the liberal democracies of the West and the ways in which majorities in those states imagine that political space. The paper also draws a parallel between these centrist officials approving of the Dayton Agreement and the rise of right-wing nativist forces in their own societies