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Through a detailed examination of institutional discourses in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina, this article demonstrates that formal political institutions may play a more layered role than is allowed by existing theories of nationalist and ethnic conflict. Competing institutional preferences of Bosniak, Serb, and Croat elites are not simply instruments for the achievement of collective or individual goals. They are symbolically salient expressions of collective identity as well. For Bosniak elites, the stated preference for a non-ethnicized territorial framework and majoritarian central government suggest the vision of a multiethnic, but not institutionally multinational, Bosnian political community. Their Serb and Croat counterparts, by contrast, insist on the continued “ethnicization” of the territorial architecture and the central government apparatus. These preferences express an understanding of Bosnia as a state of three …