Facing the past, facing the future - Confronting ethnicity and conflict in Bosnia and former Yugoslavia

Bosnia-Herzegovina has seen a decade of post-war reconstruction.
As Bosnia has seen substantial advances in comparison to the immediate post-war period, Croatia and Serbia have democratized and the wars of the region have come to an end.
Nevertheless, none of the societies has yet come to terms with the recent past.
The political system in Bosnia furthermore consolidated some of the divisions over which the war was fought.
This book brings together political scientists, sociologists, and historians in a multi-disciplinary study of post-war Bosnia.
The articles in this book examine ways in which the past in Bosnia and in the region is being addressed, the post-war system of government and the challenges it poses for self-sustainability.
Other contributions focus on the perception of Bosnia and the conflict in the West, particular in North America.
The contributions challenge the notion of rigid national belonging constituting a natural cause of confrontation.
Instead, the articles demonstrate how Western perceptions and the legacy of the conflict have contributed to reconstruction without reconciliation.

Dr Florian Bieber is a Lecturer in East European Politics at the University of Kent, Canterbury. Between 2001 and 2006, he has been working in Belgrade (Serbia) and Sarajevo (Bosnia-Herzegovina) for the European Centre for Minority Issues. He is also a Visiting Professor at the Nationalism Studies Program at Central European University, at the Regional Masters Program for Democracy and Human Rights at the University of Sarajevo and the Interdisciplinary Master in East European Studies, University of Bologna.
His research interests include institutional design in multiethnic states, nationalism and ethnic conflict, as well as the political systems of South-eastern Europe.

Carsten Wieland is a political consultant and journalist, specialising in the middle east, where he lived for several years. He studied history, political science, international relations and philosophy at Humboldt University in Berlin, Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi and Duke University in North Carolina, before working as a research fellow at Georgetown University, Washington, DC. He is the author of Syria - Ballots or Bullets? Democracy, Islamism and Secularism in the Levant (CUNE Press, 2006) and Syria at Bay: Secularism, Islamism and "Pax Americana" (C Hurst, 2006).