I rolled into the shuttered Bosnian beach town of Neum as the sun bid the Adriatic Sea and sepia shore adieu. Neum is the opal of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s seaside, the second-smallest coastline in the world, after Monaco and just before Tuvalu. The next morning, the national citizens’ assembly in Bosnia and Herzegovina would reconvene for its second of three meetings.

Three weeks had lapsed since the group of 70 citizens had first come together in Sarajevo during the final flourish of winter. Between the weekend’s sessions, the 13 thematic areas related to reconciliation generated by the assembly had received in-depth analysis from the first weekend’s expert speakers. The stakes of the two days were high: the citizens’ assembly would transmute these themes and commentaries into concrete policy recommendations for the direct review of the Joint Commission for European Integration of the Parliamentary Assembly of BiH.

Re-Introductions

The citizens gathered in the basement of a resort hotel in short sleeves and sundresses—a far cry from the formality of their first meeting. Most returned to the unassigned seats and homogenous table groups of Sarajevo. Then the command came from above: find someone you haven’t spoken to yet. The assembly rose, as one, to seek a partner. Some participants were caught in the fray, stuck in the awkward dance of seeking and being sought for conversation.

Several questions were put to these novel pairs: what’s something interesting that happened to you since the first assembly session? What do you remember most from the first weekend? Did something you learned change how you think about reconciliation? What questions remain for this weekend? I watched the semiotics of these private discussions closely. Hands rubbed together as if to wipe away unfamiliarity. Eyebrows jumped; two older women shook hands warmly; arms crossed and uncrossed.

Getting Situated: Practice, Practice, Practice

After pleasantries, the second session began. The citizens were given the full packet of 13 themes with extensive expert comments. They conjured eyeglasses from pockets to perch on noses. Following this thorough review, the facilitators descended. At six different tables, assembly members discussed and designated the five most important values that would guide them in coming up with their policy recommendations. Smaller groups then combined, with groups of 25 or so selecting the collectively determined values they wished to emphasize. Solidarity, creativity, and respect, among other guiding tenets, were then etched on colored paper and fastened to the far wall.

The assembly next turned to a practice topic: how to address the epidemic of unlicensed electric scooters in urban areas. The subject animated the citizens: recommendations for minimum ages, max speeds, and specific lanes were met with claps and nods of approval. This mimetic process primed participants before the actual recommendations would be rendered.

Further situating the assembly members, organizers offered an overarching question: What policies, measures, or actions should institutions in Bosnia and Herzegovina, including the Joint Commission for European Integration, take to contribute to reconciliation? The question’s framing compellingly spoke to the enthusiasm citizens had shown in the entry survey to function as advisors to politicians.

Importantly, asking citizens what response they hoped and expected their recommendations would elicit put the flagging popular trust in BiH’s institutions front and center. A fall 2025 nationwide survey conducted by the UN Development Programme (UNDP) in BiH found that trust in state-level institutions remained low-to-moderate (4.3/10) and less than trust in local institutions. In the same breath, according to the UNDP, there is strong evidence of untapped civic potential: “Community Cooperation” — that is, mutual support and collective problem-solving in local communities in BiH — is relatively high (6.7/10) and “Civic Duty/Responsibility” has increased in recent years, from 4.9 in 2020 to 5.8 in 2025, pointing to a growing willingness among citizens to contribute to positive change. Nevertheless, Civic Awareness (knowledge of institutions, processes, and avenues for participation), remains comparatively low (4.5/10), representing a practical barrier for constructive civic engagement or meaningful participation in decision-making.

Participatory policymaking, like this national citizens’ assembly, can address this deficiency, informing people how to engage with government institutions, bolstering understanding of how governance works, and providing a presently absent structured civic engagement mechanism. Successful participatory processes help to renew relationships between policymakers and citizens and can lead to confidence that decisions are fair, representative, and impartial. These are pressing charges in our era of declining voter turnout and low trust in public institutions.

A ‘World Cafe’ Where Themes Become Recommendations

The citizens’ assembly joined anew and were introduced to the process for transforming themes into policy recommendations: the “World Cafe” Method. Beginning in small table groups, citizens would discuss one of four specific “topics” under the two larger thematic areas. The small groups would concurrently generate two to three recommendations with the support of a facilitator, and then join another table, which had worked on the same topic for a larger forum of targeted discussion. Recommendations would take the following form: 1) an explanation of the problem; 2) possible actions to address it; 3) who would take the lead and to which institution the recommendation was addressed. These recommendations would be marked down in “living” documents, receiving additions and alternative wordings as the tables cycled through the topics, allowing each of the 70 participating members the opportunity to include their perspective.

Meet the Citizens

At lunch, I made the conscious decision to change my approach from the first weekend—I would speak directly with some of the citizens to learn about their backgrounds and their experience thus far at the assembly. I gravitated to a retired woman around 70 named Mirzeta, with whom I had briefly interacted during the Sarajevo session. We sat on the sun-soaked balcony of the aptly named Hotel Sunce. Mirzeta had been born in Priejdor, an ethnically mixed city in the northwestern part of Republika Srpska (RS, one of the sub-state entities in BiH) with a larger population in 1971 than today. She had grown up in nearby Ključ, just over the RS-Federation border, before moving to the United States for over 20 years, retiring, and returning to BiH to live in Sarajevo. Mirzeta, who had been raised amongst peers from all of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s constituent peoples, was adamant: “there are no issues between citizens here. Only at the politician level are there true divisions.”

I then sat with two unlikely friends: Miroslav, a Bosnian Serb from Banja Luka, and Sead, a Bosniak Muslim from Tuzla. Both were middle-aged with greying hair. Miroslav was ambivalent about the assembly thus far, noting that he wished “there were more people from Banja Luka” participating. Sead, on the other hand, expressed happiness that I had “come all the way to see Bosnia,” as he felt some foreigners assumed they were “savages” because of the war. Reaffirming Mirzeta’s position, Sead held that the citizens in BiH harbored no ill will towards each other.

Politicians and their Promises

After lunch, Zdenko Ćosić, Chairman of the Joint Commission for European Integration of the Parliamentary Assembly of BiH, greeted the citizens’ assembly. The recommendations they generated over the weekend would go directly to his desk. Chairman Ćosić acknowledged the important work on reconciliation that lay ahead for BiH, describing these efforts as a long process that “would not happen overnight.” He cited the often unspoken reality that stymied reconciliation, stating that “all three groups were victims of war crimes [in the 90s] and some were war criminals.” Ćosić entreated the assembly: “When we remember victims of our people, we should also remember those of others.” Mutual acknowledgment of harm done represents, for him, a principle that is important to any democratic country.

Truth be told, Ćosić’s address was met with a muted reception. Perhaps it was mid-afternoon languor or perhaps a reaction to decades of political platitudes. Nevertheless, Ćosić’s presence sent an important signal—he supported the assembly and saw the benefits of a citizen-elite partnership, including for higher goals like BiH’s EU accession.

Back to Work: Maintaining Decorum

The citizens jumped back into their task, cycling through the four topics of the first thematic area: How do we remember and what do we remember? (Kako se sjećamo i šta pamtimo?). The topics, framed as “challenges” to be dealt with pragmatically, included: 1) Education of teachers in the field of reconciliation; 2) Awareness and treatment of trauma as a prerequisite for reconciliation and community building of the future; 3) Education reforms on the way to building and preserving peace; 4) Lack of systemic mechanisms that enable people to meet different people views of the past.

After four successive rounds of the “World Café” for each topic in the first thematic area, the citizens’ assembly returned to its full form to deliberate on the wording of the recommendations they had collectively constructed. From the outset, sharp disagreement tinged the air. Voices rose.

One specific difference of opinion centered on whether the expert training teachers in BiH on reconciliation subjects could be from one of the former Yugoslavia countries. Those against this proposal cited the potential “baggage” an expert might carry from their or their family’s wartime experience. Conversely, other citizens argued that having someone from the region instructing teachers would prevent “outside influence” and that the proposed restrictions would mean that “they’ll never be able to solve their problems from within.” While the room was divided, there seemed to be internal consensus within the smaller table groups. The issue was put to a vote: if two-thirds of citizens supported the restriction on teacher trainers, then it would be included. Only about 25 hands shot up, falling short of the benchmark; the proposal was struck from the recommendation.

The voting benchmarks signaled an important innovation since BiH’s previous national citizens’ assembly in 2022. Four years ago, if five of the 57 assembly members had been against an amendment to a recommendation, then it would have been jettisoned. Now the onus had been shifted from detraction to advocacy: if a super-majority supported making a change, then it would be adopted.

After each recommendation received group assent, the assembly members broke into applause. The process was not always smooth: semantics were frequently problematized, with citizens throwing their weight around one phrasing or another (such as splitting hairs over whether to organize “conversations,” razgovori, or “discussions,” diskusije, with survivors suffering from PTSD). These semantic debates sometimes gave way to more general questions about the goal behind the goal: what material need would a policy address in the advancement of reconciliation? Such thinking faced complications. Policy recommendations were not goals; they were strategic actions directed at specific actors in the Byzantine political system of BiH.

Unsurprisingly, confusion also pervaded this first session of recommendation-making. There seemed to have been a disconnect between facilitators over the procedure of addition and subtraction for recommendations and the subsequent green-red color coding. I read on citizens’ faces exasperation and waning focus. One older man took a phone call in the middle of the session; another aimlessly scrolled through the news.

Near the end of the day, discord erupted over the regime of public sector employment in BiH and whether someone can work in education with a political party affiliation. The Bosnian public sector employs 44 percent of all formal sector salaried workers, among the largest in Europe, and is a disproportionately large employer of highly skilled workers (58 percent in 2023). Forty-nine percent of all employed women work in the public sector, with a concentration in education and health. Based on analysis by Transparency International, parties in Bosnia and Herzegovina “maintain their power by controlling resources and access to employment, keeping institutions under their influence, resulting in the absence of accountability and a weakening democracy… political parties, through public procurement, concessions and employment in the public sector, [can] use public resources for the benefit of party networks rather than citizens.”

A spirited back-and-forth ensued in which one man asserted, “there isn’t anyone who’s unaffiliated with a political party,” only to be met with a chorus, “we aren’t in one!” (Nima!). Finally, one of the facilitators interjected, clarifying that a law already existed for forbidding political advocacy for a party in a school context. The citizens decided to keep the recommendation as a means of clarifying the extant law. This episode crowned the day; the assembly members trickled out into the sun.

Day 2: Recommendations and a Race to the Finish

The second day of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s national citizens’ assembly meeting in Neum began on a philosophical note. Is it easier to admit you’re wrong or change your mind? I’m a zealous proponent of civil discourse as a democratic good and a necessary driving force for “democratic renovation.” Citizens’ assemblies embody this guiding force. During the CA in BiH, conversations about recommendations were agile, weighing competing values against each other. Civil discourse is a difficult dance, which moves to a rhythm of fallibilism (that human beings are prone to err) and a beat of pluralism (that an empowered group will often reach different conclusions). The organizers write the music; the facilitators conduct.

Discussions turned to the second thematic area: conditions for reconciliation, from the economy to building peace and EU integration. The recommendations would fit within four topics: 1) Informing Citizens About the Advantages of BiH Joining the European Union; 2) Rationalizing Funds for Reconciliation Mechanisms; 3) Stimulating Economic Prosperity in BiH; 4) Financial Education of Citizens.

Citizens filed back to the assigned table groups of the prior day. As they cycled through the topics, the smaller groups synthesized into larger cohorts of 17 or so members, sharing recommendations and offering comments. The back-and-forth between citizens was dynamic—votes were cast, language was tidied. Some citizens met transition periods with disgruntlement, gesturing dramatically and raising their voices.

When the proverbial lunch bell rang, I fell into lockstep with Ivo Čarapina, one of the assembly’s facilitators. Ivo is hard to miss, with his shock of curly black hair. Though just thirty, Ivo has spent half of his life as an activist dedicated to reconciliation in Bosnia and Herzegovina—work he began in high school in his native Mostar. He’s an expert conversation steward. I was eager to pick his brain on group management in the assembly. Ivo described taking a “soft approach,” leaving open the option for anyone to excuse themselves when they desired. There were many smokers among the citizens; Ivo found that these participants can sometimes “create a minefield,” artificially speeding up the recommendation process or infusing it with anxiety. He keeps norms flexible, inviting citizens to step out, have a cigarette, then return refreshed.

Ivo’s dexterity is a testament to the need for local facilitators in citizens’ assemblies. Experts are much more portable, but facilitators who understand the tedious cultural levers one must pull to get the most out of the group are essential to a fluid process. Particularly in an intergenerational context like the national citizens’ assembly, facilitators become the vanguards of morale and inclusivity, formally and informally. As Ivo and I wrapped up our lunch, an assembly member in her seventies named Spomenka approached our table. She smiled widely and gestured to her phone, entreating Ivo to take it from her. Spomenka asked Ivo to write out a Facebook post for her about the assembly, dictating how she had been invited to Neum and what the experience entailed. After pruning the prose, she scrolled through the photos admiringly, showing us the likes and comments she had previously received on her post about the Sarajevo session.

Beginning the afternoon, the lead facilitator announced how to code edits to recommendations: green for additions, red for alternative explanations. The citizens completed their review of the remaining topics in the second theme. Some of the suggestions were reorganized amidst volleying “Ne’s” and “Da’s.”

As recommendations were workshopped topic by topic, the peloton of the inaugural “Tour of Bosnia and Herzegovina” roared through the sleepy beach town to finish at Neum’s towering St. Nicholas’ Catholic Church. Like the citizens’ assembly, the bike race had begun in Sarajevo, winding its way through Central Bosnia to the Herzegovinian seaside. The unusual April crowds in Neum were, alas, not drawn by the allure of deliberative democracy.

See You in Srpska

The second weekend of the national citizens’ assembly had crossed its finish line. In total, for two thematic areas, the citizens had generated 27 recommendations. They would return for the assembly’s flourish in Teslić, Republika Srpska, in three weeks’ time. There, on the banks of the spring of the Usora River and thermal baths of Banja Vrućica, they would discuss a final theme, The Role of Media Between Connecting and Dividing, compile recommendations, and put all policy proposals to a vote.

I drove back to Sarajevo from Neum with a citizen also in his mid 20s from Tuzla named Bakir. He had studied in Croatia for five years before joining the Bosnian military, and eventually settling in supply chain management. We chatted about the assembly and I asked what had drawn him to participate. Bakir was unambiguous—he came because he was interested in how EU accession would shape Bosnia’s future and the opportunities it would grant his children. In this regard, the expert inputs and discussions on the second thematic area had been productive and instructive. His time in Croatia had evidently led him to drink Brussels’ Kool-Aid.

However, Bakir also expressed a feeling that the older generation at the assembly was less friendly to those of his younger cohort. At the assembly and in daily life, he lamented how Bosnians who had lived through the war remained fixated on it; any conversation or topic somehow circled back to these traumatic experiences. As Bakir discussed his few qualms, we passed a series of road signs near Neum where the Cyrillic names had been graffitied out. With the flourish of a spray can, BiH’s need for reconciliation was highlighted in red paint.

In the Herzegovina-Neretva Canton, Serbs make up just 3 percent, with the remaining population split between a Croat majority and a significant Bosniak minority. We then looped through Stolac, an idyllic municipality with the largest number of cultural monuments in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Stolac, however, is also known for its ethnic segregation, with the overall Bosniak minority inhabiting the old town, and the Croat majority living in communities on the periphery. This de facto partition is distilled by a well-documented phenomenon in BiH called Two Schools Under One Roof (TSUOR). Under TSUOR, children are segregated by ethnicity, increasing mistrust among the national groups, impeding reconciliation, and threatening stability, security, and economic prosperity. While the practice is in breach of international conventions and domestic legislation, with a domestic court even having found TSUOR in Stolac and Čapljina (another city in the canton) as discriminatory, these rules have not been implemented to date.

Here was another reminder of the gravity and urgency of the citizens’ assembly.

Share

I trudged through the lash of Sarajevo’s late spring snow, watching as the flurries turned to slush at my feet. It was the morning of Saturday, March 28, 2026. I would spend the weekend observing democracy in situ in the form of a nationwide citizens’ assembly (CA) (skupština građana), joining 70 citizens from across Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) for the first of three meetings this spring.

The Assembly welcomed all of Bosnia into one room: from Bihać to Banja Luka, Tuzla to Trebinje, Višegrad to Vitez, and Stolac to Srebrenica. In these first sessions, citizens would hear from eight experts as they discussed and prepared to recommend pathways for spurring reconciliation, strengthening trust, and building social cohesion.

The Skupština thus closely aligned with Priority Five of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s accession path to the European Union (EU). The process was commissioned by the Joint Commission for European Integration and funded by the EU Service for Foreign Policy Instruments project “Strengthening Trust and Cohesion in Communities in Bosnia and Herzegovina - We Can Do Better” (Jačanje povjerenja i kohezije u zajednicama u Bosni i Hercegovini – Možemo bolje). The Assembly was jointly implemented in BiH by the EU, the United Nations, the OSCE Mission, and the Council of Europe. International donors had pooled their financial and human resources. After three weekends, beginning that Sarajevo Saturday, citizens participants would agree on policy recommendations then submitted to the Joint Commission for European Integration of the Parliamentary Assembly of BiH and Chairman Zdenko Ćosić.

The representativeness and independence of the CA selection process was not merely normative; it served pragmatic ends in an era of political polarization. Chosen by stratified random selection, the citizen members of the Assembly reflect BiH’s demographic diversity, in gender, age, geography, education, language, and ethnicity. This diversity is a perennial strength of BiH, and its inclusion supports the applicability of the recommendations that would arise from the Assembly.

Great Expectations

I was familiar with the citizens’ assemblies conceptually and eager to directly witness their acclaimed “transformative” potential. But what did this transformation look like? When did it begin?

Advocates like Marjan H. Ehsassi, Executive Director, FIDE – North America, and Yale Political Science Professor Hélène Landemore – and her provocative new book Politics Without Politicians: The Case for Citizen Rule – form the choir of praises for citizens’ assemblies. For example, in a 2023 article, Ehsassi describes how Assemblies can “inspire apathetic and cynical people to engage, to become informed and socially connected, to enthusiastically participate in politics,” contending that the “[s]caling these deliberative processes can catalyze the renewal many democracies desperately need… [and] cure the deep polarization, populism and pessimism that currently plagues our societies.”

For all these great expectations, the milling and murmuring of 70 strangers in a hotel conference room did not signal imminent personal transformation or the triumphant resurgence of democracy. I cast my eyes across the room. CA members sat at tables of eight or so, organically self-sorting by age and gender. To my right, a group of women clustered, several in jackets with matching gold buttons; to my left, a set of middle-aged men, adorned with synonymous leather cross-body bags and salt-and-pepper crowns.

Introductions

The Assembly was then called to quorum. The brief introductions seemed to pre-empt some of my unspoken questions. “The Skupština is not a ‘quick problem-solving’ mechanism; rather it constitutes one part of a complex, long-term process.” The raison d’être of the CA was two-fold: on one register was policy ideation contributing to Bosnia’s European future; the learning and personal growth of citizen participants were a separate, parallel path.

The introductory framing of the CA acknowledged the spoiler role political inertia has often played in BiH’s democratic decision-making in the three decades since the Dayton Peace Agreement. With rising tides of ethno-nationalism, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Western Balkans, and globally, post-conflict peace and security appear more fragile than ever. “We know what it’s like to lose peace. We have a responsibility that after mass conflicts we can turn to dialogue.” Over two-thirds of the room, if not more, had survived the war in the 90s, whether as civilians or soldiers. Those remaining, born after the conflict, carried the trauma in their genetic code.

I read bereavement and resilience on the array of faces and furrowed brows. “How do we remember the past?” the introduction continued. “Your experiences and stories matter. We’re looking for your courage to say what you’ve lived. There are no perfect answers. The goal is to make recommendations that connect communities and build peace. This is a daily process.”

I was struck again by the rarity of what I would observe, even by the standards of other deliberative democracy initiatives. These citizens would be creating national policies for reckoning with the past while reconciling amongst themselves. The citizens’ assembly would be a form of embodied processing: of trauma and victimhood. Citizens would be testing policies, consciously or unconsciously, that would then sculpt their society. In the segregated reality of post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina, these three weekends might be the first opportunities for CA members to share their experience with one-time “enemies” and discuss how to move forward as a nation, with no extraneous political agenda or pressure. This opening alone seemed a worthy objective.

The March 2026 citizens’ assembly in Sarajevo was also the crest of a longer-term trend. This CA was the sixth held in BiH in the last five years, with the first convened in Mostar, Herzegovina, in 2021, a prior national CA involving 57 citizens split across two weekends focused on constitutional and electoral reform in 2022, one in Banja Luka, Republika Srpska in 2024, and another with constituencies from Sarajevo and East Sarajevo to develop a climate action plan in 2025. In each of the past five CAs, all proposals had received 80 percent support or more by participants.

Perhaps Bosnia and Herzegovina would follow in the footsteps of European peers Belgium, France, and Ireland by formally integrating citizens’ assemblies into government policy and legislative processes. This was a testing ground. Maybe Ehsassi’s bullish belief was not quixotic!

Where You Stand Depends on Where You Sit

Before the Assembly began, members completed a simple 17-question entry survey. Watching the pens scratch and heads downturned to phones, I thought of Miles’ Law: “where you stand depends on where you sit.” While other (likely more persuasive) factors can determine preferences, the image of the citizens-turned-policymakers seemed a fitting application. Each brought their set of life and war-time experiences: should citizens be expected to compartmentalize?

With the entry survey complete, several data points emerged. By and large, the CA participants seemed to have a strong self-belief, with over 90 percent agreeing that “citizens can make as good decisions as most of the politicians we elect.” Contrary to Professor Landemore’s conceptual jettisoning of politicians, less than half the Bosnian citizens (47 percent) affirmed that “A group of randomly selected citizens should make the final decisions instead of politicians,” with a strong minority (39 percent) neither agreeing nor disagreeing. A much greater percentage viewed citizens’ assemblies as inhabiting an “advisory” role for elected authorities (83 percent).

In terms of personal transformation, 86 percent saw “discussions among ordinary citizens, through citizens’ assemblies, [as] effective in overcoming social, economic, and political divisions and differences through dialogue.” A large majority (92 percent) saw the discussions of the CA as “help[ing] me to better understand the other members of the Assembly.”

In terms of fitness to serve, 84 percent thought that “ordinary citizens,” like themselves would put public over personal interest; 90 percent expected to have “ample opportunity to express [their] opinions;” 92 percent expected everyone to respect one another; 92 percent thought that “good proposals” would come of the CA; and 70 percent assented that they “would accept the recommendations of the group, adopted unanimously, even though they are not in line with [their] personal beliefs.”

Revealing differences in personality (a trait that sortition-based selection cannot consider!), a minority (25 percent) described themselves as “consciously remaining silent for fear of negative reactions,” while a majority (49 percent) asserted their willingness to be candid. Motivations were also measured; a sense of “duty as a citizen” (53 percent) and a desire to have one’s voice heard (43 percent) were the most cited reasons for participation in the CA.

Nevertheless, some skepticism remained: 45 percent were unsure if others would express “what they really think.” Pointing to a gap in perception (or meta-perception, i.e., beliefs about other’s beliefs), 57 percent were unsure if others were prepared to change their minds during the Assembly, whereas 78 percent agreed they would willingly change their outlook.

This first weekend focused on improving citizens’ understanding of the policy areas. From the outset, the survey indicated a high degree of self-confidence as 82 percent of participants held that they understood the problems citizens in Bosnia and Herzegovina face. Where did “taking concrete steps to promote an environment conducive to reconciliation in order to overcome the legacies of the war” fit among these problems? Time would tell.

Expert sessions, Day 1:

The first expert session topic, “Peace and Trust,” asked several questions: how could society move towards reconciliation? How to overcome victimhood? How to expose young people to different perspectives? What are the greatest threats to social cohesion?

One of the speakers argued that reconciliation does not have to include forgiveness. For her, forgiveness is a personal choice; it can and should not be required or stigmatized. After the thematic presentations, each table group then came up with two questions to pose to the speakers.

As the first topic session closed with the query – What do you want to see implemented in BiH from the presentation? – conversations spilled into the coffee hour. Participants seemed to speak more freely, with laughs, smiles, and animated gestures. However, some remained guarded with crossed arms and hands perpetually wringing or in pockets. As the coffee ended, I caught a glimpse of an older woman speaking in a hushed tone with the group psychotherapist in the hallway.

The second topic engaged with questions of memory: how and what do we remember? The first speaker took a broad-based approach to educating on the past, arguing that the specific details about the war in the 90s (including who is granted victimhood in official curricula) are much less important than teaching children to think critically and more rigorously training teachers. The following speaker noted the residual impact of war-time trauma on succeeding generations, noting how parents’ trauma, even when addressed, influences children’s behavior. She called for a mass rehabilitation in society, a process necessarily involving remembrance.

In contrast to the universal engagement of the morning, group discussions oscillated between ardency and lethargy. Questions to speakers in this session turned to the personal: What can I do? Participants could readily identify weaknesses in the system of memorialization and education about the past in BiH but were not yet making the leap to system-level policies.

Expert Sessions, Day 2:

The second day of the citizens’ assembly in Sarajevo began on a lighthearted note with a public opinion survey. The first question, though, was a controversial one: agree or disagree, Banja Luka has the best ćevapi (Bosnia and Herzegovina’s national dish). Banja Luka-style ćevapi trades the local Sarajevan approach of small mincemeat sausages in a somun flatbread for a larger meat patty: an issue ripe for polemics. The nuance of the day before was gone; the 70 citizens quickly took their place on an imaginary gradient, with most clustered on one extreme or the other.

Warmed up, CA members largely returned to their self-assigned seats of the prior day, clustering by gender and age. This development was expected, and the Assembly organizers had pre-empted it. The groups were scattered randomly, taking to the wind like snow flurries.

The third speaker session then commenced, examining the role of media as a connector or divider. Two investigative journalists discussed their work, the ethics of reporting and how media/social media build cultures of memory or revision. During the presentations, the CA remained engaged, with some questions eliciting laughter. The newly formed groups next transitioned to reflection, identifying the key points and practices to implement in BiH. As on the first day, the conversations flowed seamlessly into the coffee break. Old men spoke in energetic tones over espressos; mustaches danced over upper lips.

The citizens’ assembly reconvened for the final speaker session of the weekend: economic and geopolitical conditions for reconciliation. Issues of trust in public institutions were front and center. The first speaker noted how easy it is to sow hate between groups that are poor or unemployed, culminating in feelings of exclusive victimhood. “Where is the money,” (Gdje su pare), the speaker repeated. A shared experience of dissatisfaction with state corruption and bureaucracy united citizens of all creeds and backgrounds. The speaker empowered the CA: “imagine what you can do as a group.”

This framing primed participants for the last activity of the first citizens’ assembly meeting: formulating themes for their policymaking in the coming two weekends. In this process, members imagined, as they had been entreated, what they could accomplish for the public good. In total, 13 themes were generated for refinement in the second weekend of the CA, to be convened in mid-April in the seaside Herzegovinian city of Neum. In the interim, experts would weigh in on the themes and offer feedback on how to transmute them into actionable policies.

Subscribe now

Vidimo Se: Until Next Time

As I left the citizens’ assembly, snow still trailing in my wake, I thought of the role experts filled in the deliberative democracy process. Citizens are apt to defer to expert opinion when there is a gap in their knowledge; this abdication of position development can be a useful heuristic to become an “expert” themselves. But what happens when experts play an outsized role in the ideas behind policy? Does this defeat the purpose of the CA, with its careful selection of an independent and representative group?

I thought about where the CA was heading and the strides that would have to be made in two weekends later in the spring. At what point would members of the Assembly become “experts” themselves, reaching the “frontier of knowledge” for policies related to dealing with the past in BiH? As the entry survey reflected, 82 percent of participants had affirmed their understanding of the problems facing citizens in Bosnia and Herzegovina. But was the CA design conducive to allowing participants, particularly the 18 percent unsure of their credentials, the opportunity to independently develop a perspective on the issues? Did the pursuit of “getting everyone on the same page,” by leveling gaps in knowledge, undermine original thinking?

Finally, I wondered: does striving to create policy experts from the common citizens lead to the Einstellung effect (when existing attitudes actually hinder innovative thinking)? In this case, many members of the citizens’ assembly in BiH had a wealth of firsthand experience with issues of reconciliation, but may have never had the opportunity, platform, or motivation to think critically about how to approach them from a policy perspective. The experts, similarly, bringing their constellation of experiences, offered pragmatic ways that they’ve sought to “deal with the past” – engaging youth, reforming education, using journalism for political accountability, and studying institutional corruption. I did not question these experts’ credibility. Rather, I prompted, how, in designing deliberative processes, do we strike the balance of “less is more?” Can we treat experts as signposts which guide the citizens’ assembly through the forest of novel thinking?

In three weeks, the 70 citizens would join together once more, trading frosty Sarajevo for the sunny Adriatic city of Neum. What questions would the citizens ponder in the interim? To whom would they speak about their experience? Would they take the research into their own hands, galvanized by the speakers? During this period, the silt of expert opinions and unlikely conversations across differences would settle in the citizens, becoming the background for the recommendations that would follow.

Leave a comment

Today

bones are given names

and numbers //

Eight new

and two

old //

Bones plucked

from dirt

before dust (again) //

Then flayed open

to pour out

Nucleotides1 //

Deposited in banks

of anonymity

amongst tearful syringes //

Blood and bone exhumed

before cameras,

blood and bone resumed //

Blood and bone

fragranced with lilies

and lily-white words about the shuhada2 //

~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~

The bereaved wade into

a sea of marble

marauding between obelisks, identical //

to find themselves amongst the dead //

to dig through the weeds of grief

and supplicate to memory—

a reified ritual //

How long had it last been?

Years trod underfoot

churned again, the dirt makes amends //

But life laughs

next to bones

and their names //

A toddler dances in the grass

while sunset

marches up the hill //

New names new names

old bones

with new names //

A father weeps over

a father

clawing back time //

His palms are stained green

from years of smoothing

grief’s edges //

As the deluge of the Dženaza3 dries

and to dirt the bones

return //

for a year

the shovels fall silent

and collect only rain

The tulips open their eyes

Hesitant to break their hermetic seals

Easing into maturity //

Dazed, they pluck and prune

Already memento moris

Yearning to arrest the sapping seconds //

Is their sacrifice inevitable?

Swallowed by the hungry dawn //

Naivety grows into stasis

Easing anxious minds

Wrinkled with worries

Lavished with platitudes

Yellow with jaundiced jests //

Bemused by this brief cycle

Only a blink

Reared for verdancy

Now drying like ink

Subscribe now

A fragrant branch

reaches for a man

its preening pink flowers

on the cusp

of conception //

A woman woos daisies

flushed with pastels

and tongues

twisted

by words like Anthocyanin //

I summon my lens from its bubble wrap swaddle

humming along to the allegro click and wind //

Wrinkled obelisks

greet an old man

through the sting of nettles

Bokeh-ed marble

blinks winter out of its eyes //

White flowers still buds

covet

the eleven white petals and green irises1

that bloom eternal

on concrete

Subscribe now

The line for bread swells in the minutes before Iftar

one after one

trading seconds for somuns1 //

The forbearant

crowds together

like kalonji2 in fresh dough //

The Pivara3 is empty

in this month of piety

And the flowers are dry

beneath the marble plaque //

A flat cap throws day-old bread into the Miljacka4

Bread traded for seconds //

Seconds grown stale //

The line files

absent-minded

past the plaque //

How long had they been waiting?

Till the carnations became ritual

Till the siege broke

Till memory shrunk to the confines of age //

Did the line for bread

know

they were cutting ahead

of the six dead?

Subscribe now

Men congregate around the chessboard, becoming pieces themselves.

An opera unfolds, heroic tenors and baritone foils. Black is traded for white.

The layers of the gallery weave and unravel. Men in different stages of decline, dour expressions and crossed arms.

A mustached man in a blue short-sleeved button-down conducts the black cavalry. His opponent, in a too-tight gray t-shirt, wields the white.

The moves come in flurries, quick and rapacious.

As the game reaches its climax, the steps become slower, more deliberate. The tension of the moment is worn on the spectators’ faces.

Like a judge’s gavel, the bass barks “allez allez.” His slouched shoulders, coliseum of white hair, and faded aubergine shirt are anachronistic against garish cycling glasses.

Back-and-forth it goes, between cigarette puffs and gulps of Sarajevsko tamno. White set against black—a duet and a duel.

The man in the gray takes a call. The blue-shirt casts a Cheshire smile, stalking across the board. Recitation rears against cadenza.

The Serbian Orthodox Church chimes 5:30. Suddenly, the winner is decided, but I miss the cue.

The game returns to its opening scene. The actors switch roles, the singers swap voices. The opera runs again. Winding like a roll of film, this performance is cast in my memory.

There is a dog that bays outside my window

Every day without fail

It steps into the road

Imploring someone to notice it

To heed its hunger

To siphon its suffering //

I imagine what the dog must feel

Stepping into the road

To make itself real

To unmute its voice

To beg at death’s door for survival

Every day without fail //

When the dog steps into the road

It becomes a rock in a stream

The cars flow past it, deaf to its cries

And I see the dog’s erosion

Limping back and forth

Every day without fail //

But the stream flows both ways

Does the dog’s ostracism not erode us?

Confronted with the desperation of its yelps

We avoid its eyes as our pity turns to scorn

At the inconvenience of its plight,

Every day without fail //

Is this not how Sarajevans once felt?

Stepping into the road

To get bread or water

Under snipers’ bullets and mortars

To beg at death’s door for survival

Every day without fail //

Is this not how Gazans are forced to live?

Stepping into the road

Imploring the world to notice them

To heed their hunger

Blue press vests becoming targe

ts on their backs

Every day without fail //

Why am I unwilling to even step into the road?

To meet the dog

To heed its hunger

To siphon its suffering

To inconvenience myself with its plight

Every day without fail //

I’m confronted with desperation

In the baying outside my window

In images of ruin that flow past my feed

And I feel myself become

less

Every day without fail

The decline in Americans’ national pride is most acute among Gen Z, the cohort of nearly 70 million Americans born after 1997 who are now starting to vote and participate in political life. We have the lowest level of patriotism and national pride in history. In 2024, just 21 percent of young adults described themselves as “extremely proud to be an American,” compared to 54 percent of Americans aged 55 or above. This represents a significant drop from the peak of American patriotism among young adults in 2003, at 60 percent.

Today, as we celebrate our nation’s birth, patriotism should be at its highest. Yet, our nation’s single greatest unifier, the Stars and Stripes, is more divisive than ever before. Recent anti-ICE protests across the U.S. highlight a battle of banners. During these demonstrations, the green, white, and red striped Mexican flag has become a symbol of resistance. The Trump administration, in turn, has condemned these protests as anti-American insurrections. A June 7 White House post on X featured the American flag with the caption, “Law and Order.”

There is nothing patriotic about the Trump administration’s trampling on due process, circumventing and “baiting” the courts, and deploying the U.S. military against citizens exercising their constitutional right to protest. So why should the American flag fall under the ownership of Trump’s far-right MAGA movement?

But defining ourselves in opposition to the Trump administration’s anti-democratic actions is a temporary measure. We must trade a negative vision for the country for a positive one. Patriotism is malleable, not stagnant; it can be a wellspring of unity, constructive disagreement, and collective action.

Democrats and Independents have also ceded ownership of patriotic symbols like the flag to President Donald Trump and conservative politicians. To reinvigorate American patriotism, particularly among Gen Z, we must reclaim its quintessential emblems, beginning with the flag.

Global pro-democracy protest movements offer a template for the reimagining of American patriotism and recapturing the flag.

Demonstrations against then-Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro in 2020 consciously adopted the nation’s flag and national colors, green and white, as unifying symbols, with one organizer asserting, “When the Bolsonaristas take ownership of these symbols, they are able to reinforce a false narrative that they are the true Brazilians.” Since November 2024, several hundred thousand Serbian students have taken to the streets, protesting what they perceive as the “capture” of the state by President Aleksandar Vučić. The movement is nonpartisan, with only the Serbian national flag serving as the primary protest symbol in calls for greater government accountability and civic participation. For six months, until May 2025, tens of thousands of Slovak citizens mobilized against Prime Minister Robert Fico’s shift towards Russia and away from the EU. Protestors rallied under the slogan “Slovakia is Europe,” along with Slovak and EU flags, denouncing the alleged corruption, weakening democratic values, and pro-Moscow policies of the ruling Smer-SD (Direction–Social Democracy) party.

These citizens, among many others across the globe, place their calls for justice and criticisms of regimes in democratic backslide under the aegis of patriotism and their nations’ flags. We must follow their example and do the same.

On the Fourth of July, under a new patriotism, our sense of citizenship can be reborn. Critics of the Trump administration, particularly Gen Z, must retake ownership of patriotism.

In defining this new American patriotism, I turn to James Baldwin’s 1955 novel Notes of a Native Son: “I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.” A renewed sense of patriotism must include the courage to hold one’s country accountable when it fails to uphold its foundational principles of equality, liberty, free speech, due process, and freedom of assembly.

Drawing on global examples of dissent, we can sustain the energy of the five million strong that participated in Flag Day’s “No Kings” protests. Out of love for America, it is our duty as citizens, especially Gen Z, to criticize our nation perpetually. Glorification, without reflection, like the Trump administration’s military parade in Washington, D.C., will not rehabilitate us.

In advocating a new patriotism, I invoke Thomas Paine’s independence pamphlet, Common Sense: “The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind.” For Gen Z and all citizens, remaking and retaking American patriotism from the jaws of authoritarianism is the priority of today and the project of tomorrow.

Nicolas Pantelick graduated from Harvard College in 2024 and works as a research assistant at Harvard’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. He is from San Francisco.