The recently published Corruption Perception Index by Transparency International for 2023 expectedly brought nothing new, and even less positive, in terms of assessing the situation for BiH. According to the Index, BiH is perceived as the most corrupt country in Europe with the exception only of openly and completely totalitarian Russia. The negative trend, namely the deterioration of the corruption situation in the country, practically a free fall, can be tracked through all relevant research for more than a decade.
Enough character has been spent and internet space consumed, among other things precisely on these pages but also generally, on describing the harmful, socially and civically devastating consequences of corruption, from endangering human rights and freedoms, distorting democratic standards and procedures, entrenching poverty and inequality, to ultimately the loss of human lives as a result of corruption. Particularly devastating effects of corruption, in its terminal phases, complete metastasis, relate to the fact that it practically paralyzes social processes, to the level when it is practically almost impossible to stop the spiral of society and state decay, and when actually, besides the already well-known phenomenon of captured state, what we characterize as the phenomenon of captured society emerges.
Hence it is no wonder that social capital in society, as its binding tissue and agent of potential positive changes, is almost non-existent, just as trust, whether in institutions or mutual trust of citizens toward each other.
Globally speaking, viewing the challenges facing the world through the analytical prism of crises, namely so-called crisis narratives, has entered the broadest and everyday use. Thus, in everyday use, we speak of ecological crises, migration crises, crisis of trust, legitimacy, or crisis of representative democracy. On the wave of this trend, two derivatives of the term “crisis” attract special attention from the broadest public – polycrisis and permacrisis.
Before we proceed to contextualize these concepts in Bosnian-Herzegovinian reality, we should start from the general qualification of crisis as such in contemporary newspeak. With its clarity and simplicity, the definition offered by Adam Tooze captures attention, but also enables understanding of different types of crises, it reads: “A problem becomes a crisis when it exceeds our ability to overcome it, and consequently affects our identity.”
The term polycrisis actually denotes the accumulation of effects of multiple simultaneous crises, making it more complex than a simple sum of individual crises. The term
BiH represents an example in which it is possible to discern characteristics of both mentioned concepts. Multiple crises, present continuously over a longer time period such as economic, governance crisis, trust crisis, legitimacy crisis, and a whole series of others behind and beneath which it is possible to see the ominous face of corruption, create an explosive combination whose interdependence and aggregate effect has significant potential for unwanted escalation.
There exists an interesting phenomenon in social psychology, which can provide additional vivid insights into the (im)possibilities of social change and which is called self-fulfilling prophecy, also known as the Pygmalion or Rosenthal effect. What is this actually about? Self-fulfilling prophecy is actually an expectation, prediction, or belief that shapes the behavior of an individual or group, which then leads to behavior contributing to the outcome that was initially expected. Very simply, in this way we actually provoke in others the behavior we expect from them.
At the social level, for instance, if the prediction of the majority of citizens is that positive social change is impossible or unlikely, then it is quite certain that they will adapt their behavior to such an attitude, namely they will not engage socially excessively, they will look exclusively and only after their own affairs and interests, which is an extremely rational reaction, but has the consequence that positive social change will certainly not happen, because we all know that there is no unexpected force that suddenly appears and solves the matter, except as a music band.
“Great, it makes sense and what do we do with that now,” will say at best the diligent reader of the previous lines. Well, that too is sufficient for further reflections as a first step, because it implicitly suggests that we need some plan, here we come to one very important dimension, which was very well summarized by Peter Drucker, the father of modern management. He said approximately the following “Culture eats strategy for breakfast” trying to point out that long-term plans (no matter how good they may be) are not sufficient for the success of an organization, and we will say in our context the broader social community, if they are not accompanied by values, habits, and perceptions (thus, culture) of those who need to implement them or to whom they relate.
None of this is certainly reinventing the wheel, but this perspective is important when making any sensible plan, without which we will agree it is impossible to do anything meaningful. This is in line with what Fukuyama warned that in the process of state building, the easier part of the job is the formal one, passing laws and establishing institutions, but it is much harder to achieve that they function in practice, which requires generating culture in the broadest sense that supports such models.
Thus, for example, establishing the institution of Ombudsman and adopting a decision on direct application of the European Convention on Human Rights will not solve the problem of endangering human rights. Or the existence of judiciary, parliament, and government does not necessarily mean that in practice we also have real separation of powers, or the existence of elections by itself in no way means that there are also signs of political accountability.
And that was precisely one of the mistakes we have persistently and too often made so far, trying to copy good models that work very well elsewhere, according to the principle of reverse engineering, neglecting the entire context in the process. You already know that old good Einstein quote about what it means when you do the same things but expect a different outcome..
