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On the heels of the October general elections, representatives of Germany and the United Kingdom announced a new initiative to engage with Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) and re-shape its European integration path after years of stalemate or even reform regression. The initiative includes all of the off-the-shelf ingredients of previous efforts to jump-start the reform process in BiH, such as written commitments (applied in the past to police reform, constitutional reform, etc.) and a reform agenda (as in the Partnership Document). But it lacks the specificity or leverage of these past efforts. The aim seems to be to steer around all contentious issues and focus on socio-economic development without associated “political” reforms. To this end, it postpones and substantially weakens the condition that the European Court of Human Rights’ Sejdid-Finci ruling be implemented. But the economic pillars of power of the BiH political elites are just as sensitive for them as the ethno-nationalist ones. The initiative builds on the shaky foundation of the EU’s prior behavior in BiH, which has led local political leaders to rightly discount the Union’s seriousness on conditionality. Unless this perception is changed, this initiative is likely to fail just as those which preceded it.
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Two comments are often (and increasingly) heard about politics, elections and citizens in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH): 1. “If citizens want political change, they should vote for political change”1 2. “BiH needs more political accountability from its elected leaders at all levels, (but without difficult, substantial, politically impossible changes to the constitutional structure or election system).” Few would doubt the apparent truth behind these statements. A core element of a functioning, accountable democracy is the regular possibility for the alternation of power, as citizens vote out, and vote in, different leaders and parties that offer different platforms for the future. Voters should be able to use the election system to force politicians to deliver and to be accountable. Nothing is standing in the way of BiH’s path to a more prosperous, reform-oriented, Euro-Atlantic future other than citizens voting for new leaders who can bring this vision to reality. However, based on the experience of the past 18 years, is this a realistic approach to politics in a post-Dayton, pre-EU BiH? This paper considers whether there are incentives in the BiH electoral and political system that promote a relationship based on accountability between the electorate and the elected, and whether it is likely that a country that purports to be hungry for reform and progress, and tired of the same old faces in politics, can or will demonstrate this interest through their choices in the general elections in October. Why does it seem like every election in BiH is meant to be “pivotal,” while in reality little seems to change?
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“Compared with today's events in Kyiv, the Orange Revolution seems a children's party” – a foreign media outlet wrote when violent clashes on Hrushevskoho Street in Kyiv erupted between protesters and police and when the first blood was shed. And it's hard to disagree ... While the Orange Revolution of 2004 was a kind of joyful “festival of democracy” with songs, dances, humor, and blossoming of folk art, the "Revolution of Dignity" of 2013-2014, as it is now called, included tragic events of the kind that had never happened in the independent Ukraine. These two impressive popular revolutions in Ukraine do have a number of elements in common. They both started on November 21 (nine years apart), on the day of the Archangel Michael, the official patron saint of Kyiv and the head of the “heavenly army.” People often spoke about the mystical underpinnings of the protests, asserting that heavenly forces led by the Archangel Michael inspired people to fight against the regime. It is not surprising that the more than one hundred activists killed on the Maidan were promptly dubbed the “Heavenly Hundred.”
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As angry Icelandic citizens prepare for early parliamentary elections this autumn, a bill to adopt the world’s first crowd sourced constitution sits on ice in Reykjavik. The bill, already approved by national referendum, has lain dormant since parliamentary elections ousted its sponsor parties back in 2013. The six-year history of Iceland’s constitutional bill, with all its twists and turns, is a practical case study for Bosnia and Herzegovina (hereafter BiH). Not only does Iceland provide workable models for the drafting phase, it, realistically, confronts the political setbacks inevitable in any constitutional reform effort. Both Iceland and BiH adopted their existing constitutions in wartime (World War II and the Bosnian War, respectively). While these wars and the constitutions of Iceland and BiH differ vastly, the political environment in which Icelandic lawmakers adopted their constitution, the constitution’s durability thereafter, and the country’s bottom-up reform process hold valuable lessons for BiH.
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This study analyzes the level of democracy and its perception in the policies of Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan and China. First, they assess these countries with the optics of Western research into democracy and hybrid regimes. From this point of view, in three cases, hegemonic electoral regimes (Belarus, Russia and Uzbekistan) and in the fourth case the closed authoritarian regime. It is therefore the country in the least democratic part of the classification spectrum. Russia has long been the most democratic of the four analyzed countries; in the last 15 years, the situation has changed and Russia has gradually moved closer to the level of authoritarianism in Belarus. On the other hand, Uzbekistan is approaching China, whose development in recent years has also been witnessing a renewed strengthening of authoritarian tendencies.Secondly, the study revealed similar positions in these countries in a number of areas in terms of democracy perception by representatives of the four countries surveyed. In all cases, the primary role of democracy was the link not to formal political procedures but to socio-economic stability and security. It can be assumed that this view is shared by the population of the surveyed countries, which is further supported by massive government propaganda and little understanding of the institutional aspects of democracy in the West.Emphasis is not usually placed on democracy, but on the legitimacy of a regime that is not derived from electoral results, but just from the degree of stability, security or prosperity. There are, however, significant differences between the countries studied: In the case of Russia, there are in parallel different discourses about democracy, many of which are very close to the Western concept. In China, there is a relatively open intellectual debate on democracy. In relation to the West, however, democracy in all four countries is perceived as an instrument of power intervention or, for example, in Putin's Russia, as a source of dual standards. If these limitations and cultural limits are taken into account, there is considerable room for effective democracy support in all these countries (see the recommendations in the conclusion of the study).
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The migration crisis has stirred up political debates within the EU and its member states regarding not only possible solutions, but also about the future of the organisation. The first shock has come in the form of the Brexit referendum, the second one could have been the referendum in Hungary “against the quota system”, as the initiating government has calculated. The current analysis gives information about the referendum and examines its possible effects in the near future.
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During recent weeks, two major referenda have taken place with serious ambition: to create new states by secession, one in Catalonia in Spain, one in the Kurdish territory in Iraq. The current analysis sheds light to the international legal background of similar situations and their possible consequence under the current legal-political circumstances.
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In less than two weeks, on March 31,2019, the Ukrainians will head to the polling stations to cast their vote for the country's next President. However, the winner would be announced only at the beginning of May since it is highly unlikely that any of the candidates would secure more than 50% of votes in the first round. The level of unpredictability of this year's elections in Ukraine is unprecedented. Out of 39 candidates included in a ballot, at least three seem to have the biggest chance to get into the second round and, consequently, win the presidential race.
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The voting day passed rather calmly, and observers have not reported major electoral fraud, stating that basic standards of free elections were safeguarded. Hopefully the same will apply to the second round on April 21. // The final result of the first round comes as no surprise since the polls had done a good job predicting the outcome, although the gap between the two leading candidates proved to be larger than it was expected. The convincing victor was the comedian and TV-producer Volodymyr Zelenskyi with 30.2% of votes against the incumbent president Petro Poroshenko, who secured only around 16%. Yet, Poroshenko stays in the game after eliminating one his major rivals, Yulia Tymoshenko (13.4%), who had directed her criticism mainly against Poroshenko while avoiding confronting Zelenskyi.
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According to the results of the national exit poll that came out after the closure of voting stations on April 21, Volodymyr Zelenskyi is set to become the sixth president of Ukraine. The comedian and TV producer won a landslide victory — 73% against 26% — in a run-off against the current incumbent Petro Poroshenko.
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The survey was conducted on September 3-6, 2020 on 808 adults living in the city. He measured the confidence of the candidates for mayor, the voting intentions, the expectations of the future mayor, the degree of involvement of the mayor’s office in various administrative issues, the appreciation of national political leaders.
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Exit-poll made on 1485 inhabitants of the city. He measured the votes cast in the local elections in Râmnicu Sărat at the City Hall, the Local Council, the County Council, the Presidency of the County Council.
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Exit poll conducted on 2017 inhabitants of the city. He measured the votes cast in the local elections in Drobeta at the City Hall, the Local Council, the County Council, the Presidency of the County Council.
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This policy note dispels with the facile and simplistic myth that the only way for the international community to engage in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) is through either imposed solutions, or through an ownership policy of reliance on local elites - the current default setting. What the situation calls for is employing the coercive advantage of a transatlantic consensus to create an environment in which focused engagement by citizens to define a vision for a new social contract can be articulated. This top-down, bottom-up dynamic can be described as a “pressure sandwich” aimed at squeezing an elite that has no incentive to change the status quo.
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About 373,398 people aged between 18 and 35 (25.69% of the total of 1,453,013 participants in Moldova) participated in the parliamentary elections of February 24, 2019; in the local elections in October-November 2019, this figure fell to 277,669 (or 23.43% of the total of 1,184,779); in the first round of the last presidential election, 367,058 young people participated (or 26.82% of the total of 1,368,516), and in the second round – 469,603 young people, which represents about 28.46% of the total of 1,650,131 participants. That latter result could be achieved primarily due to the mobilization of young people abroad.
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The victory of November 15, 2020, in the presidential elections of the Republic of Moldova of the main exponent of the opposition, the pro-European Maia Sandu, to the detriment of the leader of the ruling party, the pro-Russian Igor Dodon, anticipated for the political year 2021 a confrontation between the presidency and parliament which is numerically dominated by political forces descending from the oligarchic regime. These predictions came true. The Republic of Moldova has been for over three months in a political-institutional deadlock caused by disputes on the topic of early political elections. This deadlock is fuelled also by the inconveniences of the constitutional norm, which has directly involved the Constitutional Court, to whom the political forces and the presidency often appealed in the process of unblocking the political and institutional processes in the Republic of Moldova.
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The early parliamentary elections of July 11, 2021, will end a cycle in the evolution of the Moldovan political system (the period of the oligarchic regime) and will establish the beginning of a new stage – of democratization and modernization of the Republic of Moldova according to the European model. The categorical, first of its kind, victory of a pro-European right-wing party, opens new perspectives for the political evolution of the Republic of Moldova. The future evolution or involution of the Moldovan political system will be directly dependent on whether or not the new ruling party will have the capacity, intelligence, and ability to properly manage the chance and the vote of confidence given to it by the Moldovan citizens on July 11, 2021.
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