The state and problems of local self-government in Bosnia and Herzegovina
The state and problems of local self-government in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Summary/Abstract: The basic feature of the constitutional set-up in Bosnia and Herzegovina is that the entire state arrangement and the organisation of its authority have been based upon an explicit and one-sided domination by the ethnic factor. Such domination has attracted an especially unfavourable expression in a divided (territorialised) constituency of its three nations, where Bosniaks and Croats, but not Serbs, have been acknowledged as constituent nations of the BiH Federation, whereas Serbs, but not Bosniaks and Croats, have been acknowledged as the constituent of Republika Srpska. Thus, any of these three peoples have been divided into two categories; the second, unequal category being all those citizens not belonging to the constituent nation of the respective Entity. In other words, any of the three nations is fully equal on only one-half of the BiH territory (in one of the Entities), while people belonging to them living in the other Entity, as well as all other BiH citizens (people belonging to national minorities), are either unable to enforce many of their constitutional rights or are limited in their ability to do so. This has unavoidably caused basic problems for local self-government.

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