Involvement of Diasporas in Peacebuilding Processes: A Comparative Analysis of Local Elite Perceptions of Bosnian Diaspora's Incorporation in Ownership Frameworks
Academic research on peacebuilding, without the keywords 'local' or 'ownership' has become almost unthinkable nowadays. This thesis aims to contribute to current debates by offering insight into discursive and practical meanings of local elites' strategies to actively seek and utilize diaspora's capacity to help their own position in the peacebuilding ownership configuration. It focuses on examination of the local 'elite self empowerment' through power sharing arrangements with diaspora that can further offer a deeper understanding of how local ownership of peacebuilding is articulated and operationalized in a post conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina.This is a case oriented comparative study, which combines comparative methods and Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) tools. Ideal type and fsQCA are used for creating empirical typologies, as well as a systematic analysis of selected conditions across investigated mono and multiethnic sets of cases. Comparative methods are used for their further juxtaposition and finding similarities between individual cases belonging to the same group, and identifying overall differences between groups. The thesis demonstrates that overwhelming success of the Bosnian diaspora in the economic sphere can be an excellent indicator of their overall capacity to contribute to other areas of post conflict reconstruction and peacebuilding. Elite driven inclusion of conflict generated diaspora, as an agent of peacebuilding, contributes to more successful dynamics and management of the process, which as a result can advance local elites' share in 'owning' the process. There are several types of diaspora incorporation strategies in local peacebuilding frameworks, which are shaped and embedded in the local contexts; variations amongst them depend on factors that are not ethnically based but rather rationalist in their conception; incorporation of diaspora is perceived as a viable alternative to externally led peacebuilding and has the potential of overcoming the post conflict democratic transformation fatigue that currently exists in the country.Even though a core building block of any study of diaspora is the diasporic community itself, this study is not focused on examining their actions or patterns of behavior. This thesis is about exploring and testing alliance building strategies of local elites towards diaspora communities, a craft that has yet to be mastered. Currently, diasporas are considered as 'resources' or 'tools' for their countries of origin, not as genuine partners. This work shows that homeland local governments, need to avoid making assumptions of an inherent diasporic 'obligation to help' especially in post conflict reconstruction, and must work instead on developing local strategies of diaspora incorporation in order to profit from their involvement and enhance their local peacebuilding capacities.There exists a growing interest in inspecting the roles of diaspora groups in the countries and regions of their origins, yet scholarly work on Bosnian diaspora's political involvement in BiH is extremely limited. This study focuses on elites' perceptions of diaspora's role as an agent; it examines types of specific positioning locals have towards their potential engagement, and how it all impacts dynamics of the entire peacebuilding process. Exploring different venues for co option of Bosnian diaspora on a local level opens up and attracts new theoretical meanings to local ownership in peacebuilding processes. Research findings indicate that developing transnational management policies to attract diaspora's engagement, through sharing decision making powers on a local level, can contribute to compensating for shortcomings that locals have been unable to overcome in the past to advance their ownership position in the peacebuilding process.