Peacebuilding in Practice by Adam Moore

Author:Adam Moore [Moore, Adam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Peace, Political Science
ISBN: 9780801451997
Google: ac8OAAAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 17472093
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 2013-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

The Supervisory Regime and the Concentration of Political Authority in Brčko

One of the most fascinating and consequential aspects of international intervention in Brčko has been the series of awards issued by the Arbitral Tribunal, the ad hoc legal institution charged with ruling on the disputed portion of the IEBL in the Brčko area. As noted in chapter 3, the First Award, which created the OHR supervisory regime in the Brčko area, gave supervisors the power to “promulgate binding regulations and orders” that would supersede “any conflicting law.”1 The Final Award two years later further expanded the mandate of OHR Brčko in the District: it was charged with writing a statute for the new District government; appointing an interim assembly; setting up a law review commission to rewrite the laws inherited by the entities; establishing an independent tax system and budget authority; constructing new, multiethnic institutions; and deciding when the IEBL had no legal significance—and thus ceased to exist—within the Brčko area. Essentially the Final Award made the supervisory regime the “final authority in the District on virtually everything.”2

This comprehensive mandate and sweeping set of powers was central to the success of peacebuilding in Brčko. To begin it has concentrated policy authority in OHR Brčko’s hands at a level unmatched in Mostar or other field offices in Bosnia. As Henry Clarke has observed about the internal dynamics of OHR elsewhere in the country during his time as supervisor, “The 2001 Office of the High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina was a large, centralized staff in Sarajevo, which shared little authority and information about its plans with a deliberately weak set of field offices.”3 The OHR Brčko office in contrast was relatively powerful and independent, since its source of authority derived from the Arbitral Tribunal’s awards. One key benefit of this political dynamic is that supervisors were afforded greater latitude to tailor their policies to local conditions. The decisions by the first three supervisors to delay political and economic liberalization in the face of opposition by distant superiors and outside consultants (see chapter 5) are merely the two most salient examples of the utility of this political independence.

This is not to suggest that the authority of the supervisory regime has been uncontested over the years. Susan Johnson, Brčko’s fourth supervisor (2004–6), was removed from office in 2006 after repeatedly defying directives from OHR Sarajevo and the State Department aimed at ending supervision in the District. Also, OHR Sarajevo persistently argued—with limited success—that supervisors are subordinate to the High Representative, and the entities have frequently fought OHR Brčko’s efforts to protect the District from their predatory behavior.4 However these disputes tended to further legitimate rather than undermine OHR Brčko’s standing in the District by creating, as I outline in the following chapter, what amounted to a close patron-client relationship between it and local political and economic elites. This dynamic was a critical—though overlooked—component of peacebuilding in Brčko insofar as the resulting political alliance in turn positively affected peacebuilding efforts within the District.

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