Engaging Geopolitical Rebordering and EU Policy Practice: The Strategic Turn in Bosnia and Herzegovina

This article engages with the literature on geopolitical rebordering by examining the on-the-ground implications of the EU’s shifting preferences for daily policy implementation in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). We argue that geopolitical rebordering is part of broader shifts in EU studies, whereby trade, foreign policy, and enlargement—despite their distinctive conceptual frameworks—share a common assumption: the EU is moving from normative and technocratic policymaking towards more securitised and power-oriented approaches. We frame this convergence of theoretical endeavours as strategic turn studies, which encompasses multiple concepts associated with the emerging “geo” vocabulary. Building on this literature, we investigate EU policymaking in BiH to uncover changes in practice stemming from renewed EU policy priorities. BiH constitutes a particularly insightful case, as it allows for the observation of EU policy evolution in a context relatively insulated from the war exceptionalism generated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the exceptional circumstances faced by Eastern European states such as Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia. The analysis draws on data collected during a six-month research stay in BiH, including three months of participant observation within the EU Delegation. Empirically, we demonstrate that geopolitical rebordering generates tangible transformations in the everyday conduct of EU policymaking, including strategic reconfigurations, a relaxation of conditionalities, and spillovers from the EU’s economic security agenda. Theoretically, the article advances cross-cutting insights derived from the strategic turn framework and calls for a research agenda that moves beyond siloed approaches to develop robust analytical frameworks capable of linking multiple policy fields in order to capture EU decision-making more holistically.