The “national key” in Bosnia and Herzegovina: a historical perspective†

2015 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 213-232 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sevan Pearson
Keyword(s):  
Bosnia And Herzegovina ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Legal Aspects ◽  
Proportional Representation ◽  
Peace Agreement ◽  
Socialist Republic ◽  
Ethnic Quotas ◽  
Dayton Peace Agreement

The 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement in Bosnia and Herzegovina instituted ethnic quotas between Bosniaks, Serbs, and Croats: the three “constituent peoples.” This institutionalization of ethnicity, criticized by some contemporary authors, is often seen as a creation of the peace agreement. Interestingly, several scholars deem such proportional representation a legacy from socialist times. But the existing literature lacks a historical perspective on the question of ethnic quotas. In addressing this issue, this paper reminds one of the existence of ethnic quotas, called the “national key,” during socialist times. A deeper analysis of the “national key” in the Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and of the ethnic quotas in the last two decades shows, interestingly, more differences than continuity. The article concludes that few similarities and more differences can be observed between the two periods, especially regarding the legal aspects of the “national key,” in ideological justification and in the conceptions based on parity or proportional representation.

scholarly journals PROPERTY RELATIONS OF MARITAL PARTNERS THROUGH THE HISTORY OF BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 106-117
Author(s):  
Boris Krešić ◽  
◽  
Ervina Halilović ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Bosnia And Herzegovina ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Family Law ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Socialist Republic ◽  
Marriage And Family ◽  
Property Relations ◽  
Basic Law ◽  
History Of ◽  
Marital Partners

The institutes of contemporary family law are rooted in Roman law, including the property relations of marital partners. From the historical perspective, the property-legal relations of marital partners in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) were subject to religious regulations and the rules of the General Civil Code and Family Law of the Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The article analyzes the solutions applied during the Roman, the Ottoman, and the AustroHungarian rule as well as the solutions included in the currently valid Basic Law on Marriage and Family Laws in BiH. The authors focus on the development of family law in terms of property relations of marital partners and provide historical-legal overview of the development of family law from the absolute power of pater familias to the full equality of marital partners.

From Yugoslavia to Bosnia: Accommodating National Identity in National and International Law

1999 ◽  
Vol 6 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 1-63
Author(s):  
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
National Identity ◽  
International Law ◽  
Bosnia And Herzegovina ◽  
Peace Agreement ◽  
Historical Process ◽  
Detailed Consideration ◽  
Legal Responses ◽  
Dayton Peace Agreement ◽  
Dayton Agreement

AbstractThis article examines the constitutional and international law aspects of accommodating national identity in the historical process from Yugoslavia to Bosnia. Broad strategies to deal with crises are outlined. Detailed consideration is given to the whole range of international legal responses to the conflict in Yugoslavia, which were deployed in the pursuit of accommodating national identity. The Dayton Peace Agreement of November 1995, which included a Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina and an Agreement on Human Rights, is analyzed. Particular attention is given to the 'internationalizing' of the Constitution of Bosnia in terms of its making, its terms and its implementation. The article contains an assessment of the implementation and of the significance of the Dayton Agreement three years on. The concluding sections provide an overall assessment of the international responses and consider future strategies for accommodating national identity.

scholarly journals The Republic of Srpska between Scylla and Charybdis

2005 ◽  
pp. 125-156
Author(s):  
Milijan Popovic
Keyword(s):  
Bosnia And Herzegovina ◽  
International Community ◽  
Constitutional Court ◽  
Peace Agreement ◽  
Police Reform ◽  
Legal Nature ◽  
Yugoslav Republic ◽  
Dayton Peace Agreement ◽  
The Republic ◽  
National Defence

The Republic of Srpska was created during the civil war in the territory of the former Yugoslav republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992-1995. Within the general framework of the agreement to establich peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina (the Dayton Peace Agreement), in Novembar 1995 it was recognized as an entity within Bosnia and Herzegovina. According to the Dayton Constitution, by its legal nature The Republic of Srpska was a confederative unit (with some elements of a federal unit) within Bosnia and Herzegovina as a confederation (with the some elements of a federation). During the last ten years, both Bosnia and Herzegovina and The Republic of Srpska underwent deep transformations. An indication of these deep transformations was the decision of the president of the Arbitration Tribunal to establish the District of Brcko as the third entity sui generis (in addition to The Republic of Srpska and The Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina). Two basic levers in the anti-Dayton transformational processes which occurred in Bosnia and Herzegovina and its entities were The Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as The High Representative of the international community for Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina passed a series of anti-Dayton decisions; by its consequences the most far-reaching decision was related to the issue U 50/2000 which declared the constitutionality of the Bosniacs, the Croats and the Serbs in the entities. On the basis of that decision, in 2000 a set of amendments to The Constitution of The Republic of Srpska was passed which deeply changed the legal nature of The Republic of Srpska. It was transformed from a confederative into to a federal unit. The anti-Dayton activity of The High Representative of the international community is even more pronounced. He became the main constitutional and legislative factor of Bosnia and Herzegovina and its entities. Under his pressure, in 2003 new amendments to The Constitution of The Republic of Srpska were passed which further diminished the authorities in The Republic of Srpska, specially in the field of national defence and public security. The High Representative himself brought and declared dozens of laws for Bosnia and Herzegovina with which he transformed Bosnia and Herzegovina from the union of states into a federation. With the police reform he announced, he is preparing to regionalize Bosnia and Herzegovina, not taking into account the entity borders, and thus to pave the way for the final abolition of entities including The Republic of Srpska.

scholarly journals (Dis)Advantages af Decentralization Models Driven by Non-Economic Reasons: The Case of Bosnia and Herzegovina

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-92
Author(s):  
Aida Soko
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Bosnia And Herzegovina ◽  
Peace Agreement ◽  
Average Efficiency ◽  
Efficiency Estimation ◽  
Dayton Peace Agreement ◽  
Overall Efficiency ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Budget Revenue

Abstract This paper uses a DEA-VRS methodology for the estimation of municipal efficiency to provide empirical evidence of the impact of decentralization in BiH under the Dayton Peace Agreement (DPA) on overall municipal efficiency. In particular, the paper focuses on the analysis of the overall efficiency of 33 new municipalities established under DPA. The findings suggest that the average municipal efficiency in BiH is rather low, and only 23 or 16% of municipalities in BiH are efficient. The average efficiency achieved is around 0.71. This means that with the same level of inputs (budget revenue) outputs may be increased by almost 30%, on average. The results of DEA-VRS efficiency estimation suggest that new municipalities have lower average efficiency (0.60) in comparison to “older” municipalities (0.74). In our sample, only six percent of newly created municipalities are efficient, 12% exhibit some level of efficiency, while the remaining 82% are inefficient, with significant share (39%) of very inefficient municipalities

Letting Nature Swallow the Past: Politics, Memory, and Abandoned Monuments in Postwar Bosnia and Herzegovina

2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 248-263
Author(s):  
Beth K. Dougherty
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Bosnia And Herzegovina ◽  
Ethnic Cleansing ◽  
Peace Agreement ◽  
The Past ◽  
National Monuments ◽  
Dayton Peace Agreement

AbstractDuring the 1992–1995 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the built physical landscape and places of cultural heritage were deliberately targeted and destroyed as part of the strategy of ethnic cleansing. The 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement recognized the potential for cultural heritage to contribute to postwar reconciliation and rebuilding; Annex 8 established a commission to preserve national monuments. This paper examines the politics of cultural heritage in post-Dayton Bosnia and the ways in which it has been (ab)used to propagate a narrow, exclusivist identity. It focuses on the struggles to control the Commission to Preserve National Monuments as well as the fates of two monuments in particular—Vraca Memorial Park and the Partisans’ Memorial Cemetery—whose abandonment signifies the wider struggles over memory and identity in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

scholarly journals Dayton and post-Dayton concept of the administrative power in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Twenty five years after Dayton Peace Agreement

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (20) ◽  
pp. 81-93
Author(s):  
Nevenko Vranješ
Keyword(s):  
Bosnia And Herzegovina ◽  
State Level ◽  
Basic Research ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
Executive Branch ◽  
The State ◽  
Administrative Authority ◽  
Peace Agreement ◽  
Administrative Power ◽  
Dayton Peace Agreement

The Dayton Peace Agreement of 1995 established today's Bosnia and Herzegovina as a multiple, complex, specific, and unique state with international legal subjectivity with regard to state law, constitutional law, and administrative law. As a result, the form of socio-political order such as it exists in Bosnia and Herzegovina is unknown in modern political systems. From the initial minimum competences granted to state-level institutions as regulated by the Dayton Constitution, there have been, over the course of twenty-five years, significant amendments made in this respect. With the intervention of the Office of the High Representative (OHR) into the constitutional and legal framework, and, to a lesser extent, by consensual transfer of jurisdiction from the entity level to the state level, administrative capacities of Bosnia and Herzegovina have been strengthened in organisational and functional terms, thus significantly derogating the respective administrative authority of the entities of the Republic of Srpska and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. This is accompanied by strong hyperinflation of the administrative bodies and organisations at the state level, mostly of unstable legitimacy, which, along with the existence of administrative structures at the remaining thirteen levels of government, classifies the post-Dayton Bosnia and Herzegovina as a complex, segmented, and dysfunctional state. The subject of this paper is an analysis of the Dayton and post-Dayton conceptions of the administrative power of Bosnia and Herzegovina twenty five years since its establishment. The paper, using methods of qualitative analysis of legal acts, legal exegesis, as well as comparative and axiological methods, and relying on the theories and conceptions of the distribution of competences in a complex state, seeks to present the Dayton and post-Dayton conceptions of the administrative power in Bosnia and Herzegovina from a twenty-five year distance. The basic research hypothesis is that states with complex organisational structure, such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, require decentralised organisational and material structures in the executive branch both from the aspect of functionality and economy and the aspect of their sustainability.

Bosnia and Herzegovina: From War to Negative Peace

2021 ◽  
Vol 35 (35) ◽  
pp. 50-64
Author(s):  
Rastislav Kazansky ◽  
Marijana Musladin ◽  
Ivana Ondrejmiskova
Keyword(s):  
Bosnia And Herzegovina ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
Conflict Transformation ◽  
Peace Agreement ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Total War ◽  
Eu Membership ◽  
The People ◽  
Constitutional Reforms ◽  
Dayton Peace Agreement

Through the history Bosnia and Herzegovina, as a territory and as a country, has been very unstable and full of ethnical diversity; nowadays not much has changed. It is a new century, there is a new political ideology and new structures; however, the protagonists still have different ethnical backgrounds. Changing the ideology in the area of the Balkans was very difficult and followed by dispute between the people and by a bloody war. To whom the territory belongs, who was first there, and who has more right to claim that territory – these are the main questions with which nationalists and politicians rule over the whole populations. This contribution is focusing on the process of conflict transformation from violence and total war into the reduction of violence. Bosnia and Herzegovina formally applied for EU membership on 15 February 2016, following years of constitutional reforms and commitments with the Dayton Peace Agreement.

Bosnia and Herzegovina: Unifying Armed Forces in a Divided State

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Danijela Dudley
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Bosnia And Herzegovina ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
International Community ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Peace Agreement ◽  
Civil Military Relations ◽  
Institutional Structures ◽  
Dayton Peace Agreement ◽  
Military Relations

Bosnia and Herzegovina emerged as an independent state in 1995 after a bloody civil war that accompanied the dissolution of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The new state faced the task of democratizing its political system and constructing its civil–military relations in the context of postconflict reconstruction and reconciliation, while working within the challenging parameters established by the Dayton Peace Agreement. In order to maintain a unified state of Bosnia and Herzegovina but at the same time create conditions in which Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs could coexist, the international community, which directed the terms of the Dayton Peace Agreement, divided the state internally into two entities and allocated public offices equally among the three ethnic groups, creating thus a convoluted power-sharing structure which continues to dominate the country’s political developments. In addition, the terms of the peace agreement established an extensive presence of the international community to oversee and to a large extent dictate the country’s postwar reforms and implementation of various aspects of the peace agreement. As a result of the context in which it reached statehood, the terms of the peace agreement, and regional circumstances, Bosnia and Herzegovina’s civil–military relations since independence have been shaped by three factors: sustained ethnic divisions among the three constituent peoples; continued, and sometimes forceful, presence of the international community; and the country’s desire for international integration, particularly potential membership in the European Union and NATO. For almost a decade after the war, Bosnia and Herzegovina lacked state-level defense institutions. In fact, the Dayton Peace Agreement allowed the three ethnic groups to maintain their wartime armed forces, leading to the maintenance of three separate militaries, each commanded and controlled by the corresponding ethnic group. Only after a decade of separate existence were the armed forces united and central institutions for their control established. This unification, however, would not have been possible without the international community’s actions and incentives. The continued presence of the Office of the High Representative, coupled with the country’s desire to satisfy the conditions of membership in the European Union and NATO, have led to the establishment of formal institutional structures for democratic civil–military relations and the unification of its ethnic-based armed forces into one military force. At the same time, while the armed forces have been unified and formal institutional structures for civilian control over the armed forces established, Bosnia and Herzegovina’s civil–military relations have yet to be classified as democratic because the formal powers of the civilian leadership have yet to be fully realized.

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