Dayton@30 in Perceptions

Understanding thirty years of the Dayton Peace Accords requires more than analysing institutions, political crises, or formal metrics of governance. It also requires hearing directly from the individuals who have followed this process most closely, and whose vantage points clarify what these three decades have meant in practice. For this reason, this edition of the Knowledge Transfer Module introduces a Perceptions component in which fourteen international and local experts were asked to reflect on Dayton through five lenses: The Good, The Bad, The Missing, The Lesson, and The Result.

Our five-question framework creates a disciplined yet open format, enabling each expert to articulate a concise reflection that captures both analytical insight and personal interpretation. The approach allows us to observe patterns, convergences, and divergences across a broad intellectual and professional spectrum - from diplomats and political scientists to sociologists, analysts, and practitioners who have followed and engaged with the Dayton process.

The aim is not to seek consensus, but to illuminate perceptional contours: how the Accords are remembered, how their effects are understood, and how their legacy is projected into the future. In doing so, this section complements the ‘30 Indices for 30 Years’ empirical analysis by offering a parallel interpretive layer. It captures how experts “see” Dayton after three decades, what they believe it achieved, what it failed to achieve, and what it reveals about modern peace keeping, building and implementation. The structure also symbolically mirrors the passage of time generating perceptions that map out the contours of Dayton’s evolving legacy and practice.

THE GOOD

Across all contributions, the dominant theme is unequivocal: Dayton ended the war and ensured that peace has been maintained for thirty years without a return to large-scale conflict. Every expert identifies the immediate cessation of violence as the agreement’s most important and enduring accomplishment. They also highlight the practical stabilisation effects that followed implementation: the restoration of freedom of movement, the introduction of a common currency, anonymised licence plates, the reopening of social and economic space, and the gradual normalisation of everyday life. These changes - large and small - are consistently cited as essential components of post-war reconstruction. Several contributors emphasise that this sustained peace is not only the product of international guarantees but also reflects the population’s strong aversion to renewed interethnic violence. Others underscore the resilience of society itself: the capacity of citizens to preserve basic humanity, coexistence, and stability despite unresolved war legacies and enduring nationalist pressures.

THE BAD

Taken together, the expert insights underscore a core problem: Dayton entrenched wartime divisions by embedding them into the country’s constitutional and administrative architecture. Many describe the system as overly complex, rigid, and easily exploited, noting that it preserved ethno-national separation and enabled political elites to consolidate power. Several emphasise that Dayton’s design institutionalised ethnocracy - transforming wartime territorial and political outcomes into enduring structures of governance. This produced long-term fragmentation across education, administration, and state institutions, allowing nationalist actors to block reforms, personalise authority, and maintain systems of patronage. Contributors also highlight the absence of a precise mechanism or timeline for constitutional evolution, which encouraged both domestic elites and international actors to treat Dayton as immutable. Others stress the broader consequences: chronic dysfunction of the state apparatus, deepened mistrust in institutions, and the marginalisation of civic voices. Collectively, the experts portray a framework that stopped the war but entrenched a political order marked by division, stagnation, and systemic unaccountability.

THE MISSING

The expert reflections point to one overwhelmingly cited omission: the failure to undertake constitutional reform during the period when political and international conditions were most favourable. The collapse of the 2006 April Package appears throughout the responses as the single most consequential missed opportunity to modernise institutions, reduce ethnic blockages, and move beyond Dayton’s provisional design. Several contributors also highlight the incomplete implementation of Annex 7, noting that the absence of secure, supported return of refugees hindered reconciliation and social reintegration. Others point to early post-war windows (particularly the first decade) when stronger international engagement could have encouraged a fairer and more functional governance model. Individual authors further note unaddressed areas, such as socio-economic and restorative justice, the failure to develop a civic social contract, and unseized democratic openings, such as the 2013–14 protests. Taken together, these missed opportunities steered Bosnia and Herzegovina toward gradual stagnation rather than systemic transformation.

THE LESSON

The collective insights point to a central lesson: stopping a war and building a durable peace are fundamentally different undertakings. Contributors emphasise that peace agreements must include mechanisms for adaptation, accountability, and long-term transformation, rather than arrangements that merely halt hostilities. Several stress that externally imposed power-sharing models require locally grounded legitimacy and must avoid creating systems sustained by negative consensus. Many underline the need for justice as an integral component of peacebuilding, arguing that agreements can stop tanks but cannot dismantle animosity or impunity without sustained effort. Others point to the importance of local ownership, balanced institutions, and clear exit strategies for international actors. Several warn that rigid or over-engineered frameworks risk freezing wartime divisions instead of overcoming them. Taken together, these perceptions suggest that modern peace processes must integrate flexibility, inclusivity, and civic equality, ensuring that negotiated peace evolves into a functional and just political order.

THE RESULT

Asked to define Dayton@30 in a single word, the experts produce a vocabulary that captures both the necessity and the limitations of the peace it created. Several choose terms such as requisite, process, and imperfect, describing Dayton as essential but intrinsically partial. Others select words like dead-end, cemented, and straitjacket, underscoring the rigid, restrictive, and hard-to-change structures that evolved from its design. A further group uses concepts such as paradox, incompleteness, disillusionment, ethnocracy, or crossroad to convey the sense of a political order suspended between conflicting logics -one that is stabilising yet constraining, necessary yet inhibiting renewal. One response stands apart, framing Dayton’s constitution as having placed citizens in “ethnic cages,” signalling the perceived depth of systemic limitation. Taken together, these single-word perceptions portray Dayton not as a finished settlement but as an enduring condition: a framework that ended the war and preserved stability, yet remains structurally unresolved and resistant to transformation.

Taken together, these Perceptions portray Dayton as a double legacy: a remarkable success in ending a devastating war and maintaining peace, and a structural framework that has constrained political development, civic equality, and institutional effectiveness. Viewed through The Good, The Bad, The Missing, The Lesson, and The Result lenses, the perceptions reveal a landscape defined by both stability and enduring limitation. Dayton@30 emerges not as a settled outcome but as a continuing political condition - one that requires critical engagement, renewed imagination, and a clearer vision of what the subsequent decades of peace must deliver.

We extend our sincere thanks to the authors who responded to our theme ‘Dayton @30: The Good, the Bad and the Missing’ for sharing their reflections, views, and perspectives, shaped by personal experiences, knowledge, and integrity: Bruce Hitchner, Dino Abazović, Dragan Bursać, Eric Gordy, Jessie Barton Hronešová, Kurt Bassuener, Miro Lazović, Sead Turčalo, Srecko Latal, Svetlana Cenić, Tanja Topić, Thomas Miller, Tomislav Tadić and Valery Perry.