Democratic Values, Ethnic Competition, and Electoral Participation in Bosnia
Democratic Values, Ethnic Competition, and Electoral Participation in Bosnia

Summary/Abstract: Abstract. Experiences of the 1992-95 war left a lasting impression on the population of the former Yugoslavia. In this article, the authors have investigated whether or not wartime experiences had an effect on democratic participation in the post-war polity by analyzing social and ethnic variations in voter turnout in Bosnia. They hypothesize that if turnout levels vary significantly across the same cleavages that produced the 1992-95 war, we must conclude that the new Bosnian democracy is in trouble. The data evaluated here, however, demonstrate that voter turnout in Bosnia has been almost identical across ethnic groups. Accordingly, the authors find that although building a new democracy in Bosnia has been difficult, differential turnout by ethnicity is not a factor that contributes to the problem.

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