Combinatorics of Failure: Industrial Giants and Workers' Struggles within Transformation Processes in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1989–2020

Talk by Anđela Pepić (University of Banja Luka) as part of the Research Seminar Series of the IOS Economics Department.

This seminar talk analyzes the impact of privatization and neoliberal transition on worker struggles in Bosnia and Herzegovina, viewed through the lens of the European periphery. The research centers on case studies of three former industrial giants: “Rudi Čajavec”, Energoinvest, and Aluminij. By combining a macro-perspective of structural changes with micro-narratives collected through interviews with (former) workers of the three industrial giants, this presentation reconstructs the period from 1989 to 2020. It examines how dominant ethnonational frameworks and various strategies of "pacification" (such as political clientelism, blackmail, and bribery) fragmented the working class and undermined broader solidarity. The talk will first provide a brief overview of transformation processes with emphasis on privatization. It will then focus on the workers' struggles: from socialist self-managers to passive observers or dispossessed shareholders, and the mechanisms employed by political and economic elites to pacify workers' revolt. Finally, it discusses “the combinatorics of failure”: the specific interplay of factors that resulted in the closure or weakening of these industrial complexes.