From Dayton to Bernese Jura: The Election of the Croat Member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina

Abstract

After the signing of the Dayton Agreement, critical literature has attempted to portray consociation in Bosnia and Herzegovina as the predominant source of the country's political problems. At the same time, this literature has widely neglected the centripetal rules that have existed since the first elections of the tripartite Presidency. The paper analyzes the outcomes of the existing centripetal cross‐ethnic vote pooling rules. It concludes that such outcomes are negative and it then discusses a possible solution by drawing inspiration from the application of the Bernese Jura's geometric mean. The paper focuses on the election of the Croat member in the tripartite Presidency as representative of the least numerous ethnic group. We argue that the application of the geometric mean based upon results in Croat‐majority municipalities could eliminate certain grievances and weakens the chances for election of the Croat member by voters from dominantly Bosniak areas.

Centripetalism in Consociational Democracy: The Multiple Proportional Vote and the Belgian Case

“…As the Bosnians are the majority in this constituency, all it takes is for a moderate percentage of them to decide to vote for a moderate Croat candidate to have a decisive impact on the election. The legitimacy of the Croatian member of the college has been therefore regularly challenged since 2006 (Djolai, 2022; Fraenkel, 2020; Pepic & Kasapovic, 2023).…”

“…The use of a geometric mean, combined with several types of constituencies, has been suggested as a solution to the legitimacy problem in Bosnia by several political scientists (Bochsler, 2012; Hodžić, & Stojanović, 2011; Pepic & Kasapović, 2023). All these proposals favour cross‐over votes while giving intra‐group votes a higher value than inter‐group votes.…”

Making Representative Politics Work: Cross‐Segmental Parties in Consociations

“…There is evidence of this across consociations, corporate and liberal alike, where seats are allocated to community representatives but votes can be cast across the divide. As a result, in Bosnia-Herzegovina representatives of different community backgrounds can be elected on lists of segmental and cross-segmental parties (Pepić & Kasapović, 2023), in Lebanon voters can support candidates best suited to contest a seat allocated to a specific sect (Deets & Skulte-Ouaiss, 2020) and in Kosovo cross-ethnic voting (until recently) allowed minority parties the opportunity for a ministerial position (Hodžić, 2020). In all these cases, the literature has been overdetermined by explanations grounded in the corporate/liberal designs of the system to explain which interests will be represented and by whom: while liberal consociations acknowledge (albeit implicitly) that individuals have layered and multiple identities which can be variously important at the ballot box, corporate consociations do not (McCulloch, 2014).…”

“…On the other hand, voters who approve of cross-segmental representation often need to be sure that representatives running on segmental tickets are more concerned with the 'first dimension' underpinning party competition than those on cross-segmental ones. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, the persistent electoral success of the SDP can in part be explained by the party alternating nominations of Bosniak and Croat candidates in the 1996, 1998 and 2002 elections, ensuring continuous vote returns (Pepić & Kasapović, 2023). At the same time, since its establishment in 2008 Naša Stranka has validated its position as an actor of municipal politics in the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, fielding a (Serb) mayor of the (predominantly Bosniak) municipality Sarajevo Centar and, since January 2021, the prime minister of the Sarajevo Canton, in addition to holding one ministerial post at the federal level and two seats in the House of Representatives.…”