The international community’s management of ‘Post-Conflict’ with particular reference to Bosnia and Herzegovina
The purpose of the thesis is to examine the International Community’s (IC) responses to post-conflict at the turn of the twenty-first century and in a period of transition. The thesis will establish whether there are any standard models for the IC’s engagement in post-conflict and if so whether these models are gradually ‘evolutionary’ or subject to radical change. The thesis will situate the IC’s response within the existing academic models and will encompass a review of these models so as to establish whether recent post-conflict interventions can be adequately defined by them. The thesis will also define a typology of post-conflict so as to establish whether the existing definitions are ‘fit for purpose’. The thesis will make use of a substantial body of empirical evidence which was gathered by the author during a period of fourteen years spent in the Western Balkans. It will in consequence address the issue of ‘observation’ in the research design and conclusion. The thesis will use this corpus of evidence gathered to illuminate the points raised during the thesis and to establish whether the changes in the typology of the IC’s response to post-conflict in the Western Balkans were specific to those particular missions or whether they represented a longer-term change in approach by the IC. As part of this changing approach to post-conflict, the thesis will also examine the role of the European Union (EU) and question the role which the EU, only one amongst many regional and sub-regional organisations, has ascribed to itself in the IC’s management of post-conflict.
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