Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.20901/an.18.03
The Issue of Legitimate Political Representation of Croats in the House of Peoples in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina – a Consociationalist Overview
Valentino Grbavac
; School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Abstract
This article analyses the issue of legitimate political representation of Croats in the House of Peoples of the Parliament of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH) using consociationalism, uni-directional vote pooling and the Uncle Tom phenomenon as theoretical lenses. The article first summarizes the history of the House of Peoples of the Parliament of FBiH and explores the importance of the amendments to the Constitution of FBiH imposed by High Representative Wolfgang Petritsch in 2002 and ruling U-23-14 of the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina ("Ljubić") from 2016. Next, the article discusses the realistic possibility of Croat representatives being completely excluded from the ruling coalition at all levels of government due to the non-implementation of the "Ljubić" ruling and the possibility of unilateral amendments to the Constitution of FBiH by Bosniak-majority parties after the 2022 general elections. Finally, the article discusses operationalization of legitimate Croat representation in the House of Peoples in FBiH and offers an alternative potential solution for this issue. The main argument of this article is that due to deficiencies in electoral law and the illogical operationalization of consociational features in FBiH, Croats cannot elect their own legitimate representatives in the Croat Club of the House of Peoples in FBiH, which is, for them, the most important political institution.
Keywords
Bosnia and Herzegovina; consociational democracy; legitimate representation; Croats; constituent peoples; false representation; uni-directional vote pooling; "Uncle Tom Phenomenon";
Hrčak ID:
256164
URI
Publication date:
13.12.2021.
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