Bosnia and Herzegovina has been fragile state controlled by the international community since the Bosnian war that was ended by the Dayton Peace Agreement made in 1995. As part of the Dayton Agreement a new institution called the Office of High Representative (OHR) was established as the controlling body ensuring the peace and stability in the country. The OHR found huge difficulties in implementing the Dayton Accords, and was soon given legislative powers, as well as controversial powers to control media and to remove elected politicians from their posts in order to secure the implementation of civil aspects of the Dayton Peace Accords. These new powers given to the OHR were widely legitimized by the concept ‘Spirit of Dayton’ in order to strengthen the OHR’s mandate. However, local political actors found the new interpretation as fake and not valid, and politicized the growth of powers of the OHR by verbally attacking the concept.
The rhetorical approach to politics sees the conc
epts used in argumentation as political tools. One of the most interesting aspects lies in the use of concepts as political tools, not in the validity or truth of the concept. Even false information or outright lie can be seen as very useful tools for a politician to gain power. From this perspective I study the OHR’s use of the concept – ‘Spirit of Dayton’ – namely they re-framed the concept to increase their power of action. The concept was frequently employed during the Dayton peace process widen the literal and strictly juridical interpretation of the Dayton Peace Agreement.
In order to understand the political use of certain concept there has to be a good understanding on the context where it has been used. It is important to make sure we have good understanding about the actors, their goals and preferences, as well as the historical background of the concepts. Such methods have been used by Quentin Skinner for example. George Lakoff and Patrick Thaddeus Jackson have studied concepts and their meanings for political action and see that certain concepts and their combinations are better for political argumentation than others. Following especially George Lakoff and Quentin Skinner, my study analyzes the use of the concept ‘Spirit of Dayton’ used by the OHR, in order to create a new framing for the Dayton peace agreement, as well as to create a new rhetorical commonplace to legitimize its powers.
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