EUROPA VÄNTAR PÅ OSS Bosniska etnonationalistiska partiers syn på den europeiska identiteten

Abstract

Europe is waiting for us is a discourse based text analysis of three Bosnian political parties. These three parties are the biggest ethnonationalist parties in the country, and each represents one of the three ethnicities; HDZ BiH for the Croats, SDA for the Bosniaks and SNSD for the Serbs. The material used in the study are official party documents, where the main focus is analyzing what constitutes Europe for these parties and also what makes the own party and implicitly their own ethnic group a part of Europe thus making them ”European”, ”Western” or ”Civilized”. The study shows that HDZ BiH views civilisation as something religious and uses the Croat nation’s Catholicism as the main argument. SDA maintains how the rule of law must be followed and how Bosniaks respect these laws, thus making them ”Western”. SNSD argues that the party’s social democratic profile is per definition ”humanistic” and because of their social democracy they are a part of a ”European civilizational heritage”. Finally it is stated that each party has internalized various degrees off animosity towards the other ethnicities and a resentment for everything that can be deemed as ”Balkan qualities”.