Social Embeddedness and Conflict Potential

This paper seeks to understand first how social connections have evolved in Bosnia and Herzegovina, a postconflict successor state, over the last two decades and second whether social connections may play a role in attenuating separatist and self-exclusionary beliefs, using a dataset collected just before the collapse of the former Yugoslavia. In post-conflict societies, low levels of social interactions across ethnic and religious groups is not surprising, however the persistence of divisions long after the establishment of peace signals that the cessation of conflict may be only the first precondition for the reconstruction of the social relationships disrupted during a conflict. Our results suggest that social connections may play a role in reducing separatist and self-exclusionary attitudes above and beyond self-confessional ethnic and religious identity. As a result, the evidence presented here assists in the formulations of monitoring indicators in multi-ethnic contexts.