Experiences of the 1992-95 war left a lasting impression on the population of the former Yugoslavia. In this article, the authors have investigated whether or not wartime experiences had an effect on democratic participation in the post-war polity by analyzing social and ethnic variations in voter turnout in Bosnia. They hypothesize that if turnout levels vary significantly across the same cleavages that produced the 1992-95 war, we must conclude that the new Bosnian democracy is in trouble.

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... data evaluated here, however, demonstrate that voter turnout in Bosnia has been almost identical across ethnic groups. Accordingly, the authors find that although building a new democracy in Bosnia has been difficult, differential turnout by ethnicity is not a factor that contributes to the problem.