Power Sharing and Patronage Ethnic Politics: The Political Economy of Ethnic Party Dominance in the Dayton Bosnia

Satoshi Tanaka
Additional contact information
Satoshi Tanaka: Osaka School of International Public Policy (OSIPP), Osaka University

No 20E005, OSIPP Discussion Paper from Osaka School of International Public Policy, Osaka University

Abstract: The effectiveness of power sharing as a solution to ethnic conflict has long been a subject of scholarly debate. However, regardless of its supporters or critics, existing studies focus solely on the identity-based politician–citizen linkage within ethnic groups. In this paper, I use a patronage theory to examine the effect of power sharing on the material-based linkage between politicians and citizens, and I argue that power sharing has an effect to consolidate ethnic party dominance in post-settlement politics by solidifying the patronage system of governance. For empirical analysis, I examine the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Using both qualitative and quantitative methods, I conclude that the Dayton Constitution, which lays down typical power sharing arrangements between three ethnic groups, has provided ethnic parties with numerous job opportunities in the public sector and that these parties could remain dominant by distributing these job opportunities as patronage.

Keywords: power sharing; patronage politics; ethnic party (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 27 pages
Date: 2020-12
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.osipp.osaka-u.ac.jp/archives/DP/2020/DP2020E005.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:osp:wpaper:20e005

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in OSIPP Discussion Paper from Osaka School of International Public Policy, Osaka University Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Akiko Murashita ().