UMD Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3
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Item Raising Hope in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Youth, Education, and Peacebuilding in the Post-war State(2018) Schneider, Mary Kate; Soltan, Karol; Tismaneanu, Vladimir; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In 1995, the Dayton Peace Agreement (DPA) ended the Bosnian War, a conflict fought along ethnic lines that claimed nearly 100,000 lives. The DPA created a new Bosnian government based on a power-sharing model that allocates political power according to the ethnic composition of the population. Although this arrangement has preserved an uneasy peace in Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH), it has also produced a political system in which ethnic politics prevail and social divisions are institutionally reinforced, particularly at the local level. Since 1995, institutions such as education have trended toward ‘separate but equal’ models. I argue that this poses a threat to the reconciliation process in BiH. Therefore, the question that this dissertation seeks to address is: what is the effect of ethnically divided education on the post-war generation of Bosnians? To answer this question, the dissertation traces the relationship between the extreme consociationalism first articulated at Dayton and the Bosnian education system, in which 14 education ministries—appointed through an entrenched local tradition of (ethnic) party patronage—have created the competing and often contradictory policies that currently govern Bosnian education. These policies include ethnically separating students into “two schools under one roof,” and adopting curricula and textbooks that favor one ethnic group over another. Because education is integral to identity formation, it stands to reason that education can therefore shape national identity as well as civic and social attitudes. Drawing from original survey data, focus groups, and interviews, I measure the attitudes of third- and fourth-year Bosnian high school students toward other ethnic groups, exploring whether or not there exists a pattern of intolerance that can be traced to school type. Although students across BiH reported largely tolerant attitudes toward other ethnic groups, patterns in the data also suggest that the notion of a codified Bosnian civic national identity is lacking. This lack of civic national identity is problematic because it means that not only is the post-war Bosnian state built upon a foundation of separateness rather than unity, but that little progress on national unity has been made in the twenty-two years since the DPA ended the war.Item Sustaining Peace? Environmental and Natural Resource Governance in Liberia and Sierra Leone(2011) Beevers, Michael David; Conca, Ken; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Over the last decade environmental and natural resources governance has received a growing share of attention on the international peacebuilding agenda. Few studies have scrutinized in detail the role of international peacebuilders or whether reforms and policies help or hinder peacebuilding outcomes. This dissertation examines international efforts to shape the governance of forests in Liberia and diamonds and minerals in Sierra Leone. I find that international peacebuilding organizations frame the challenge in both cases as transforming conflict resources into peace resources for the purpose of reducing the propensity for violence. To accomplish this transformation, international peacebuilders promote and establish governance reforms and policies designed to securitize and marketize the environment and natural resources. I find that, despite producing the potential peace enhancing benefits of increased stability and revenue, rapidly pushing such a transformation strategy comes with significant linked pathologies that run the risk of recreating pre-war political arrangements, provoking societal competition, undermining environmental management and sustainable livelihoods, and creating unrealistic expectations. These effects can produce contention, foster resistance and increase the likelihood of violence in ways that undermine the conditions essential for achieving a long-term peace. An alternative approach would be to mitigate the effects of securitization and marketization by first addressing issues that have historically led to violence and contention in the environmental and natural resources sector, including land ownership and tenure issues, genuine public participation, government corruption and a lack of sustainable livelihoods.Item Regimes of Truth: The Microfoundations of Post-Conflict Justice(2011) Loyle, Cyanne E.; Birnir, Johanna K.; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)What is the effect of political exclusion on individual participation in national post-conflict justice institutions? To date, most of the post-conflict justice literature has examined these institutions (e.g. truth commissions, trials, reparations, etc.) on the national level, which prevents us from accounting for strategic motivation in justice selection, and from observing variation in implementing the process within a given country. I argue that there is a strategic incentive for post-conflict governments to frame conflict events in a politically advantageous way. This frame determines the mandate of the post-conflict justice process, which may or may not correspond with an individual's conflict experience. This strategic selection is important because it creates: 1) a possible disjuncture between what events an individual encountered, and what events the justice process addresses; and 2) reduced support, and perhaps even animosity, toward the justice effort put forward. Depending upon which victim and which violations are incorporated into the institution, post-conflict justice processes can exclude the experiences of certain groups and compel them to (in)action. To examine this process, I conducted over 80 interviews in post-conflict Rwanda and Northern Ireland. In addition, I used quantitative disaggregated data on both conflicts to both substantiate the experiences reported in the interviews, and pair these experiences with the focus of the existing post-conflict justice process.