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This book represents the first ever comprehensive study of the EU’s foreign and security policy in Bosnia since the dissolution of the Yugoslav Federation in 1991. Drawing on historical institutionalism, it explains the EU’s contribution to post-conflict stabilisation and conflict resolution in Bosnia. The book demonstrates that institutions are a key variable in explaining levels of coherence and effectiveness of the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and that institutional legacies and unintended consequences have shaped CFSP impact over time. In doing so, it also sheds new light on the role that intergovernmental, bureaucratic and local political contestation have played in the formulation and implementation of a European foreign and security policy. The study concludes that the EU’s involvement in Bosnia has not only had a significant impact on this Balkan country in its path from stabilisation to integration, but has also transformed the EU, its foreign and security policy and shaped the development of the EU’s international identity along the way.
The concluding chapter summarises the findings and further reflects on the institutional and political challenges to the EU’s foreign and security policy in Bosnia. It reviews the impact of institutionalisation on the EU’s foreign and security policy, the politics of coherence and effectiveness and the overall contribution of EU foreign policy to conflict resolution in Bosnia. The case study of Bosnia provides evidence to support three key findings. First, that institutions have had a crucial impact on levels of coherence and effectiveness over time. Second, that contrary to rationalist assumptions about the purported efficiency of institutions, the increasing CFSP institutionalisation has not done away with problems of coherence and effectiveness and in some cases it has raised new ones. Unintended consequences, path dependency and obstacles to the institutionalisation of learning can be blamed in this regard. Third, the concluding chapter also provides evidence that intergovernmental, bureaucratic and local political contestation have played a key role in the formulation and implementation of a European foreign and security policy.
foreign and security policy. In sum, by examining the coherence and effectiveness of the EU’s intervention in Bosnia, this book contributes to the assessment of post-conflict stabilisation and resolution in Bosnia as well as the complex and changing nature of EU foreign and security policy. More specifically, the book defends the position that the EU’s involvement in Bosnia has not only had a significant