Bosnia and Herzegovina (or Bosnia) is facing a critical test of its ability to survive intact as a state. Its two main factions – Republika Srpska (RS), the smaller of its two ethnically divided parts, and the central government in Sarajevo – are in a steadily escalating confrontation, with RS threatening to secede. The country’s international supervisor, High Representative Christian Schmidt, is arguably making the crisis worse by using his office’s executive power to ward off the threat of a breakup. His office was created under the Dayton Accords – the peace deal inked in 1995 that brought an end to the country’s civil war. For more than a decade, RS President Milorad Dodik has probed and tested the authority of the Bosnian state through a mix of incendiary rhetoric and carefully calibrated defiance, enacting separatist laws and then quietly shelving them, aiming all the time to chisel away at Sarajevo’s authority while avoiding provoking a strong U.S. or EU response. This time around, however, Dodik will be hard pressed to walk back from the clash of powers.

In large part, that is because Dodik’s defiance of the high representative has culminated in a court conviction that could lead to his arrest, potentially spurring his allies in RS to make a more definitive break with the central government. In February, Bosnia’s state court – which was established by a previous high representative – convicted Dodik of violating a law that made it a crime to fail to obey Schmidt’s edicts. (High Representative Schmidt imposed this law in reaction to a law from RS in 2023 that sought to block his authority on its territory.) Dodik and other RS leaders reject Schmidt’s writ and have called him a “German tourist”. The court sentenced Dodik to one year in prison and banned him from politics for six years, though those punishments are suspended as he appeals; a final judgment is expected later in the year. Meanwhile, the RS National Assembly responded to the verdict by passing laws that edge them halfway to independence. On 26 March, the Bosnian state court in turn announced it was seeking an international arrest warrant for Dodik and two other high-ranking RS officials. 

Looking Back to Dayton

While Dodik and his party have long campaigned for separation from Bosnia and unification with Serbia, their actions suggest that is probably not what they are seeking on this occasion. In the past, they have threatened to boycott Bosnian state institutions and withdraw from the joint armed forces – key steps toward establishing RS as a separate state – but in general they have not followed through with those incendiary moves. Within the RS leadership, the realisation has dawned that making secession work is very hard. Few, if any, countries are likely to recognise a breakaway state. That is particularly true for RS, which is divided into two separate parts by the Brčko district – a strategically vital multi-ethnic region belonging to both parts of Bosnia, but which governs itself. In addition, RS already has a higher degree of autonomy than any other subnational unit in Europe, with its own legislature, courts and police, and a de facto veto over the central government’s decision-making. Rather than gamble it all on a probably doomed bid for independence, the RS leadership likely hopes its actions can cement and extend its self-governing prerogatives. 

This approach has a name: returning to the “original Dayton Accords”. 

Negotiated by the administration of U.S. President Bill Clinton, the Dayton agreement ended Bosnia’s war but left the country’s central government too weak to survive for long. An annex to the text was a constitution that divided the country into two entities: the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and RS. These entities were to be governed from the national capital, Sarajevo, by a bicameral parliament and a three-person collective presidency comprising one Bosniak, one Croat and one Serb member. The national government had limited powers, while the subnational entities were responsible for justice, most policing, taxation, education, health care, defence and security. Another annex provided for an international high representative to coordinate implementation of the agreement’s civilian aspects.

That framework soon made for a failing state, however. RS mounted a systematic campaign of obstruction and Serbs boycotted the state presidency and other common institutions. Refugees could not safely go home or reclaim their property. The police and armed forces employed war criminals. The region risked sliding back into armed conflict.

In response, at a meeting held in Bonn, Germany, in 1997, the Peace Implementation Council (PIC) – a group of 55 states and agencies helping manage the peace process – endowed the high representative with broad governing authority (known as the Bonn powers). Over the next several years, successive high representatives used these powers with increasing effect, transforming the country. They removed and appointed leaders; amended both entities’ constitutions; and enacted important laws, including one that created a state court – which sentenced Dodik in February. High representatives relied on the NATO-led peacekeeping mission and on the backing of heavyweights on the PIC’s Steering Board, notably the U.S., France, Germany, Italy, Russia and the UK. Bosnia’s Constitutional Court reinforced these changes and added some of its own.

The Serb and Croat minorities, jointly representing about half the population of Bosnia, have resented this rule by international fiat. Indeed, the system that emerged out of the Dayton Accords and the Bonn powers has arguably lasted too long. Foreign judges on Bosnia’s Constitutional Court have joined with Bosniak judges to push through controversial rulings, such as finding that state property belongs to Bosnia, rather than the subnational entities, and ruling that RS’s national holiday violates the constitution. RS leaders allege that the combination of high representatives, foreign judges and meddling diplomats has conspired to deprive the entities of many of the powers they were given under the Dayton Accords. The state court, for example, has the power to try many of the same crimes as the entities’ courts, in addition to infractions such as genocide denial (when “carried out in a manner likely to incite to violence or hatred”). This, RS officials say, is depriving them of self-determination. Under Dodik’s leadership, RS is trying not only to expel the high representative but also to roll back most or all of his predecessors’ interventions. The state court is a leading target, along with the Constitutional Court’s rulings on state property.

Targeting the High Representative

Leaders of RS have also led an offensive against the high representative, with the entity’s National Assembly passing a series of laws that push back forcefully against the office’s powers in the aftermath of Dodik’s conviction. One law denies the jurisdiction of four vital Bosnian authorities, all of which were created by previous high representatives: the court and prosecutor’s office that indicted and convicted Dodik; the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council that supervises the judiciary; and the State Investigation and Prosecution Agency, the closest Bosnia comes to state-level law enforcement. It also bans officials of these bodies from operating on RS territory. A second law creates a Judicial and Prosecutorial Council for RS, with members directly appointed by the entity’s parliament as well as by its courts and prosecutors’ offices, boosting the regional government’s influence over judges. The third law requires RS citizens who serve as Bosnian officials to carry out policy set by the RS National Assembly. Taken together, these steps deprive the Bosnian state of much of its authority over RS without crossing the line into overt secession.

Dodik’s presumption appears to have been that he could count on unprecedented international support for his latest campaign against the high representative. But even amid the current geopolitical turbulence, there is no certainty that foreign powers will give him the backing he longs for. Dodik has aligned himself with U.S. President Donald Trump, saying in December 2023 that RS would declare independence during a second Trump term. When Trump won the November 2024 election, Dodik cheered the victory, donning a “Make America Great Again” hat during a press briefing. He also hosted the president’s former lawyer Rudy Giuliani in the RS capital Banja Luka the following February.