Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism, America.gov, as part of its feature “The Evolving Work of Democracy,” is asking academics and journalists from the United States and elsewhere to comment on the challenges to democracy that still lay ahead for countries of the former Eastern Bloc. What follows are their responses – and yours are welcomed as well.

What is the greatest challenge facing democracy in Bosnia and Herzegovina?

Structurally, the answer is relatively simple: constitutional reform and a drastic reduction in corruption. But the greatest challenge is attitudinal: how to convince the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) to adapt their political goals to current reality. They have done it before.

I first encountered BiH in the mid-1960s as a recent Yale graduate when I hitchhiked for six weeks throughout the former Socialist Federal Yugoslavia. It was hardly a paradise. The standard of living was considerably lower than today’s, and Tito’s secret police were a ruthless obstacle to genuine democratic expression. Nonetheless, people carved out their own personal spheres, and in BiH they were decidedly multi-ethnic. Serbs and Croats proudly differentiated their Bosnian way of life from that of their cousins in Belgrade or Zagreb. Statistics bore them out: Sarajevo boasted the highest rate of religious intermarriage of any city in Europe.

Fast-forward to 1996. As an OSCE election monitor in the country’s first free election, I paid a courtesy visit to the principal of a large elementary school in Bašcaršija, Sarajevo’s old town, which hosted a polling station. A Bosnian Muslim from Višegrad, he emotionally recalled how Bosnian Serbs had saved his father’s life during World War II. He also told, however, of how Bosnian Serb snipers had shot at his school’s pupils during the just ended siege of Sarajevo. I asked him what accounted for the change in attitude. “Ah,” he replied. “1992 was 1941 plus television.” Demagogic leaders had put personal gain above national interest and morality, utilizing the mass media to foment inter-ethnic hysteria.

Most of those leaders are now dead or on trial for their alleged crimes, but today’s politicians in BiH exhibit similar ultra-nationalist, albeit less violent, tendencies. Why should they alter their attitude?

Bosnian Serbs must realize that their future lies in the European Union, where national borders are increasingly irrelevant and minority rights are protected. Zoran Djindjić, the Bosnian-born former Serbian prime minister, told me a year before he was assassinated: “We Serbs must get over our romantic persecution complex. It is no longer 1389.”

The same holds true for Bosnian Croats. It is 2009. Bosnian Croats must see BiH as the primary element of their European home.

Finally, Bosnian Muslim leaders must understand that politics is the art of the possible, and that means compromise. A reformed, functional federalism is the only feasible structure for BiH. The central government must be strengthened, but the entities, with modified powers, are here to stay.

Learn more about Michael Haltzel.