Abstract
Party leadership in Bosnia and Herzegovina is rarely founded on professional leadership qualities, one’s ability to promote or maintain certain basic values, or integrity and competence. An average voter is focused on individuals representing the party and not so much on the essence of party programs or ideologies. As a result, strong leaders have solidified central positions within party organizations over time. Their names have become key for party identification among voters, their personalities outweighing the ideological persuasion of voters who are influenced by the personal appeal of candidates at the top of the voting ballot. This chapter analyzes two party leaders: Milorad Dodik (Alliance of Independent Social Democrats) and Dragan Čović (Croatian Democratic Union). They both shaped the past and contemporary party politics ethno-homogenization in BiH through explicit political embodiment of collectivized nationalist agency of the ordinary people they represent, and implicit preservation of palpable self-serving rival mass sentiments.
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Notes
- 1.
The Law on Political Organizations of the Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, published in the Official Gazette of SR BiH, no. 27/91.
- 2.
There are no uniform criteria for political party registration or a registry of political parties in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Political parties in the Republika Srpska entity can be registered in 5 municipal (basic) and in one district court (in East Sarajevo), or in 10 municipal courts in the Federation entity, or in the municipal court of Brčko District. The laws regulating the registration procedure are: the Law on Political Organizations of the Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (for FBIH) and the Law on Political Organizations (for RS), and the Law on Political Organizations (for Brčko District).
- 3.
For the Bosniak electorate, the dominant parties are SDA (Party of Democratic Action), SBB (Alliance for Better Future), and the Party for Bosnia and Herzegovina (Stranka za BiH, SBiH). For the Bosnian Croat electorate, HDZ BiH (Croatian Democratic Union of BiH), NHI the New Croatian Initiative, and HDZ-1990 (Croatian Democratic Union 1990) are dominant. For the Bosnian Serb electorate, predominantly voting in the Republika Srpska entity, these are SNSD (Union of Independent Social Democrats), SDS (Serbian Democratic Party) and PDP (Party of Democratic Progress).
- 4.
Savez nezavisnih socijaldemokrata (SNSD) was founded in 1996 following the cooperation of the Independent Members of Parliament Caucus in the National Assembly of RS (Klub nezavisnih poslanika u Narodnoj Skupštini Republike Srpske), which was in opposition to the SDS during the war (Tomić & Herceg, 1999, p. 268).
- 5.
Variations in population size are in direct correlation with the inability of Bosnian Croats to influence the decision-making process as one of the country’s three constituent peoples. This is closely linked to calls for establishing a third, ‘Croat’ entity. Variations in identity explain the establishment of the subnational entities and considerable differences between their internal designs. These variations, supported by those in the political landscape, explain the ethno-territorial compositions of the BiH Parliamentary Assembly. For more information, please see Sahadžić (2019, p. 69).
- 6.
The HDZ BIH leadership has been the target of multiple investigations and indictments by the ICTY for war crimes committed in Central Bosnia and Herzegovina (Subotić, 2016, p. 126).
- 7.
Registered at the Ministry of Justice of Bosnia and Herzegovina, no. RU-1635/14, officially represented by Dragan Čović, the association president.
- 8.
There were several attempts to reconstruct and remodel the current constitutional set-up of BiH. Most notable ones are April Package in 2006, the Prud Agreement of 2008, and the Butmir Process of 2009. All attempts failed, and effectively reinforced the existing decision-making structures based on ethnic frameworks (Leydesdorff, 2011).
- 9.
For example, RTRS: ‘Dodik za RTRS: Protesti u FBiH politicki motivisani’ (Dodik for RTRS: Protests in FBiH are politically motivated), http://lat.rtrs.tv/vijesti/vijest.php?id=106894 and ‘Dodik za RTRS: Važno je da Srpska sacuva stabilnost’ (Dodik for RTRS: It is important for Srpska to maintain its stability), http://lat.rtrs.tv/vijesti/vijest.php?id=106224.
- 10.
Under Dodik’s patronage, the Assembly of Republika Srpska approved the referendum on the Bosnian State Court in April 2011, which was interpreted by many as a direct attack on the fragile state institutions. A similar thing happened with the referendum in September 2016, when Dodik used his position to mobilize representatives in RS institutions and organized a referendum on RS national day (January 9), thus ignoring the decision of the Constitutional Court of BIH that declared the celebration of this day unconstitutional.
- 11.
SNSD added ‘Milorad Dodik’ or ‘Dodik’ to its public name-tags and displays on all recent elections and all social media, so that voters could identify the party with its leader.
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Hasić, J. (2020). ‘Deviating’ Party Leadership Strategies in Bosnia and Herzegovina: A Comparison of Milorad Dodik and Dragan Čović. In: Gherghina, S. (eds) Party Leaders in Eastern Europe. Palgrave Studies in Political Psychology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32025-6_2
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