PROBLEMATIC ASPECTS IN ELECTORAL REGULATION OF BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA REGARDING THE ELECTION OF THREE-MEMBER PRESIDENCY – ONE REVIEW 25 YEARS AFTER DAYTON

Nikola Ambarkov PhD in Political Science

Abstract: Late last year, Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) marked 25 years since the signing of the Dayton Peace Accords (DPA). This Agreement ended the country’s brutal ethnic war (1992-95). The established political system in Dayton was qualified as a classic consociational agreement but from the new wave. It provided consensual power-sharing between the political elites of the three constituent peoples – the Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats, including in the collective three-member Presidency. The collective form of the BiH Presidency was not an innovation in peace talks under US-mediation in Dayton, but an institution rooted in Yugoslav traditions. Therefore, in this paper, first, an overview of the development of the institution collective head of state in the political system of BiH will be given. Then it will be crossed to the main goal of this analysis – the problematic aspects in the election regulations regarding the election of its members, above all the Croatian, as well as the issue of passive suffrage, including for the so-called “unconstitutional” peoples. Finally, certain ideas for overcoming these problems that exist in the constitutional solutions and provisions of the BiH Electoral Code will be sublimated. Hence the main thesis of this paper is that the electoral system of Bosnia and Herzegovina, including in terms of the presidential elections, a quarter-century after Dayton, insufficiently and poorly reflects the constitutional, legal, national, political and ethnic structure of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Keywords: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Dayton Peace Agreement, BiH Electoral Code, the Presidency, Consociational Democracy;