Before even opening the book, Democracy by Decree: Prospects and Limits of Imposed Consociational Democracy in Bosnia and Herzegovina captures the reader’s attention with its intriguing and provocative title. But what author Adis Merdzanovic delivers in its pages is equally engaging. Merdzanovic illustrates how the consociational power-sharing arrangements in Bosnia and Herzegovina were imposed by the international community following the wars in the 1990s, rather than genuinely initiated from inside a country, and have, perhaps unsurprisingly, largely failed.

Before even opening the book, Democracy by Decree: Prospects and Limits of Imposed Consociational Democracy in Bosnia and Herzegovina captures the reader’s attention with its intriguing and provocative title. But what author Adis Merdzanovic delivers in its pages is equally engaging. Merdzanovic illustrates how the consociational power-sharing arrangements in Bosnia and Herzegovina were imposed by the international community following the wars in the 1990s, rather than genuinely initiated from inside a country, and have, perhaps unsurprisingly, largely failed.