B OSNIA-HERCEGOVINA might have a new government soon. Or maybe it won’t. No one seems to know. The country held elections last October but the winning parties have still not agreed on how to form one. In any case, Bosnia’s central government has little power; the country has three presidents, and their current chairman wishes it did not even exist. Tens of thousands of people emigrate every year, having lost any hope for the future.

From 1992 to 1995 Bosnia was the Syria of its day. Some 100,000 people died in the three-way war between the country’s communities: its Orthodox Serbs, its Catholic Croats and its Muslims (often referred to as Bosniaks). Unlike in Syria, though, Western powers intervened and eventually ended the shooting. A peace agreement was signed at an American airbase in Dayton, Ohio, and 60,000 peacekeepers were sent to make it stick. But today few believe that the complex deal made to end the war now delivers good governance. And there is no political will to reform the country in a way that could benefit everyone.

Bosnia’s central government has few powers, but co-operation with NATO is one of them, and disagreements about this are an obstacle to forming a new administration. Most power lies further down. Under the Dayton accords, the country was divided into two statelets. One is the Republika Srpska, populated overwhelmingly by Serbs, which is itself split into two pieces because a region around the town of Brcko was allowed to be autonomous. The other is a Bosniak-Croat federation, consisting of ten cantons. Many Croats want this federation to be divvied up, too, because they argue that the Muslim Bosniaks, who are more numerous, can always outvote them. The war swept away a tolerant and mixed society, yet Bosnians still work, trade and sometimes drink coffee together. They do not tend to live together, though, and mostly vote for nationalist parties which in turn parcel out jobs and patronage.