Description
In post-war Bosnia-Herzegovina, foreign policy has been one of the first competences to
be transferred from the governments of the entities to the central institutions in Sarajevo. Yet,
Republika Srpska has show extremely proactive in leading paradiplomatic activities of its own,
disconnected from the foreign policy objectives of the central government, and more often than
not directly clashing with them. Over the years, Republika Srpska has built a dense network of
representation that serves a twofold purpose: conducting fully-fledged activities of paradiplomacy
like any other sub-state entity, and scouting for partners and allies to push forward its
secessionist agenda.
This is through the lens of this duality that the paper will analyse the international
engagement of Republika Srpska from the Dayton Peace Agreement in 1995, so to unpack the
trajectory of a former de facto state reintegrated, against its government’s approval, into its parent
that has been reclaiming statehood and reconnecting with the goal of secession over the last
decades. How do the nature and forms of its international engagement reflect these evolutions
and how has RS been navigating at the crossroads of diplomacy, paradiplomacy and
transnational activism? The research is based on archive materials available at the National
Archives of RS in Banja Luka, on the official documentations produced by RS representative
offices and on interviews carried out in Banja Luka, Belgrade and Brussels with RS
representatives.
