Whose integration? a critical perspective on labor reform in Bosnia and Herzegovina between 2015 and 2018

Abstract

This dissertation examines mechanisms of supervised sovereignty in Bosnia and Herzegovina's 2015-2018 labor market reforms, investigating how international actors shape domestic policy outcomes while maintaining the appearance of consensual reform. Drawing on decoloniality theory, the study employs discourse analysis of 84 policy documents, social network analysis of coordination architectures, and interviews with 20 labor market experts to analyze how supervised sovereignty operates through discourse legitimation, coordination architecture, and expert intermediation. The research reveals that international and domestic actors deploy complementary legitimation strategies that make externally-driven reforms appear simultaneously scientifically necessary, politically inevitable, and democratically legitimate. Social network analysis exposes structural design flaws in the Reform Agenda's coordination architecture, including excessive centralization and systematic marginalization of implementation actors and constitutionally mandated governance levels. Expert interviews demonstrate how local professionals become institutionally formed subjects whose identities require compliance with international frameworks, creating cycles where structural alienation generates deeper attachment to exclusionary systems rather than resistance. These findings contribute to understanding contemporary international governance by revealing how post-conflict interventions have evolved beyond overt administration toward sophisticated forms of epistemic control that maintain hierarchical relationships while preserving the appearance of partnership. The research challenges conventional explanations that attribute reform failures to insufficient political will or administrative capacity, demonstrating instead how structural design inadequacies reproduce the problems they claim to address while systematically marginalizing locally grounded alternatives to externally imposed development paradigms.