Everyday Legitimacy in Post-Conflict Spaces: The Creation of Social Legitimacy in Bosnia-Herzegovina’s Cultural Arenas

The international community has long been criticized for its lack of social legitimacy in BiH and thus for its failure to create a sustainable social contract in which people can identify with the version of peace that is being implemented in the country. This is, to a large extent, due to the dysfunctionality of the public space in the light of people’s everyday experiences of peace. Although it has often been argued that there is hardly any legitimacy at all in post-war BiH, this paper claims that legitimacy has been moved from the public space to semi-public spaces, arenas where the public and the private are interrelated. One example of locations of displaced legitimacy are local cultural arenas, where hopes emerging in people’s everyday life are projected onto alternative visions of peace and a corresponding social contract. In that sense, cultural agencies have served as alternative social locations of legitimacy - as opposed to the lack of formal political legitimacy - due to their closer connection to people’s lives and needs