Electoral Accountability in Bosnia and Herzegovina under the Dayton Framework Agreement

Abstract

This article examines the ways in which Bosnia's continuing governance problems are rooted in the relationship between voters and parties implied in the Dayton Accords. Political competition and the party system in Bosnia are influenced by the structure of government and electoral system in the Dayton Accords and subsequent regulations, which gives preference to a model of representation based on ethnic parties. This article examines the party system and nature of competition in order to show the weaknesses in this ethnic model of representation as well as the ongoing inability to establish alternative models such as broad multi-ethnic parties.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I wish to thank Soeren Keil, Valery Perry, the participants on the panel “Constitutional Reform, Party Politics And Policy Performance in Bosnia” at the Association for the Study of Nationalities World Convention in 2015, as well as the three anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments, which have greatly improved this paper.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John Hulsey is Assistant Professor of Political Science at James Madison University. He has published articles in Democratization and Communist and Post-Communist Studies on party politics in post-conflict societies.

Notes

1. Valery Perry, ‘Low Hanging Fruit: Towards a Compact for Agricultural Growth in Bosnia and Herzegovina’, Democratization Policy Council Blog, 14 Jun. 2015 (at: www.democratizationpolicy.org/low-hanging-fruit-towards-a-compact-for-agricultural-growth-in-bosnia-and-herzegovina).

2. International Crisis Group, ‘Bosnia's Future’, Crisis Group Europe Report No.232, Brussels: ICG, 2014.

3. Donald Rothchild and Philip G. Roeder, ‘Dilemmas of State-Building in Divided Societies’, in Philip G. Roeder and Donald Rothchild (eds), Sustainable Peace: Power and Democracy after Civil Wars, Ithaca, NY: Cornell, 2005, pp.15–19.

4. Arend Lijphart, Democracy in Plural Societies: A Comparative Exploration, New Haven, CT: Yale, 1977; Arend Lijphart, ‘Constitutional Design for Divided Societies’, Journal of Democracy, Vol.15, No.2, 2004, pp.96–109; Benjamin Reilly, ‘Institutional Design for Diverse Democracies: Consociationalism, Centripetalism and Communalism Compared’, European Political Science, Vol.11, No.3, 2012, pp.259–70; Stefan Wolff, ‘Post-Conflict State Building: The Debate on Institutional Choice’, Third World Quarterly, Vol.32, No.10, 2011, pp.1777–802.

5. Reilly (see n.4 above); Donald Horowitz, ‘Electoral Systems: A Primer for Decision Makers’, Journal of Democracy, Vol.14, No.4, 2003, pp.115–27; Donald Horowitz, ‘Ethnic Power Sharing: The Three Big Problems’, Journal of Democracy, Vol.15, No.2, 2014, pp.5–20. For a critique of centripetalist methods, see Allison McCulloch, ‘Does Moderation Pay? Centripetalism in Deeply Divided Societies’, Ethnopolitics: Formerly Global Review of Ethnopolitics, Vol.12, No.2, 2013, pp.111–32.

6. Donald Rothchild and Philip G. Roeder, ‘Dilemmas of State-Building in Divided Societies’, in Philip G. Roeder and Donald Rothchild (eds), Sustainable Peace: Power and Democracy after Civil Wars, Ithaca, NY: Cornell, 2005, pp.36–41.

7. As a result, Bosnia is best described as a ‘corporatist' consociational system that fixes representation according to pre-defined groups. For a more detailed discussion, see Allison McCulloch, ‘Consociational Settlements in Deeply Divided Societies: The Liberal-Corporate Distinction’, Democratization, Vol.21, No.3, 2014, pp.501–18.

8. Carrie Manning and Miljenko Antic, ‘The Limits of Electoral Engineering’, Journal of Democracy, Vol.14, No.3, 2003, pp.45–59.

9. The number of municipalities presented depends on the treatment of the electoral sub-units of the city of Mostar. In 2006, they are reported as separate municipal-level observations. In later years the districts are collapsed at the city level. The analysis presented here preserves the format in the original results.

10. Izborni Zakon Bosne I Herzegovine, Sluzbeni Glasnik BiH. Vol.23, 2001 (at: www.izbori.ba/Documents/documents/ZAKONI/Sl_gl_BiH_23_01/IZ-Sl_gl_23-01-bos.pdf).

11. For a full discussion of these attributes see John Hulsey, ‘Party Politics in Bosnia and Herzegovina’, in Soeren Keil and Valery Perry (eds), State Building and Democratization in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Farnham: Ashgate, 2015, pp.41–60; as well as Daniel Bochsler, ‘The Nationalisation of Post-Communist Party Systems’, Europe–Asia Studies, Vol.62, No.5, 2010, pp.807–27; Gary Cox, ‘Electoral Rules and Electoral Coordination’, Annual Review of Political Science, Vol.2, No.1, 1999, pp.145–61 for broader applications.

12. Note that these values are based on all votes cast in Bosnia as opposed to the proportion of votes cast in either Entity. Seat allocations are based on Entity-level vote share. Presenting the values as the proportion of votes in Bosnia makes it easier to compare across Entities.

13. The results are even starker when one looks at precinct-level data, which are a more granular measure of location but which are more difficult to interpret than municipal-level data.

14. Soeren Keil and Valery Perry, ‘Back to Square One? An Analysis of the 2014 General Elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina’, Electoral Studies, Vol.38, 2015, pp.82–136.

15. Nancy Bermeo, ‘What the Democratization Literature Says – or Doesn't Say – about Postwar Democratization’, Global Governance, Vol.9, No.2, 2003, pp.159–77.

16. For a full discussion of this idea see Soeren Keil, Multinational Federalism in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Farnham: Ashgate, 2013.

17. Maja Nenadovic, ‘An Uneasy Symbiosis: The Impact of International Administrations on Political Parties in Post-Conflict Countries’, Democratization, Vol.17, No.6, 2010, pp.1153–75.

18. Carrie Manning and Miljenko Antic, ‘The Limits of Electoral Engineering’, Journal of Democracy, Vol.14, No.3, 2003, pp.45–59.