Bosnia and Herzegovina, between the anvil and the hammer: an analysis of the programs of the major ethno-national parties

By comparing the programs of the major political parties in Bosnia and Herzegovina it is possibile not only to explain the current paralyses of the country's political system, but also to guess what political and media tools the main political actors might use trying to change the current institutional structure of Bosnia and Herzegovina

The political declarations – seen as an expression of general intentions of the political actors – play a value-related role and a pragmatic role. In their declarations the political actors express the values and the regulatory framework underlying their activities and, at the same time, they propose concrete and coordinated actions aimed at achieving specific political and ideological objectives. Every political declaration has a communicative potential: it allows the political actors to share with the public their understanding of the political reality and, at the same time, to present their positions which other political actors will have to confront. The political programs offer the public a dose of certainty, simplifying the complex reality reducing it to easily understandable ideas which the political actors set out to pursue. It is therefore not surprising if political declarations always arouse a great deal of public interest. Whole rivers of ink are poured out on this issue, it is widely discussed in television shows, using various interpretative tools to analyze, exalt or discredit the ideas expressed in the political declarations.

By comparing the programs of the major political parties in Bosnia and Herzegovina – the Party for Democratic Action (SDA), the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD), and the Croatian Democratic Union of Bosnia and Herzegovina (HDZ BiH) – it is possibile not only to explain the current paralyses of the country's political system, but also to guess what political and media tools the main political actors might use trying to change the current institutional structure of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The main objective of the three above-mentioned parties, as pointed out in their programs, is to carry forward the process of European integration of Bosnia and Herzegovina. SDA and HDZ also mention among their goals the entry of Bosnia and Herzegovina into the Atlantic alliance, while SNSD strongly opposes the country’s accession to NATO, deeming it potentially harmful to Republika Srpska (RS). If we leave out the propensity, now reduced to pure formality, to invoke certain values – such as cultural diversity, pluralism, democratic order, social sensitivity – European integration remains the only point that the programs of the main political parties in Bosnia and Herzegovina have in common.

A comparative analysis of these programs shows unequivocally that the political scene in Bosnia and Herzegovina is dominated by three intrasigent forces, unwilling to compromise.

The first force is reflected in the centrifugal, separatist trend that characterizes the program of SNSD, as its  members consider Republika Srpska as a state entity, trying to hold a popular referendum which could confirm the existance of an intrinsically autonomous identity of Republika Srpska, and eventually start a process of redifining the union between Republika Srpska and Federation of BiH, aimed at creating a confederal state.

In a programmatic declaration published in 2015, SNSD proposed a radical idea, a referendum on the independence of Republika Srpska, inviting at the same time Federation of BiH to accept “a peaceful separation and a mutual recognition“ [1] between the two entities. The entire process, as conceived by SNSD, should have led to the creation of a new state union based on a confederal model of administrative and territorial organization. The process was originally expected to be completed by 2017 when the National Assembly of the RS should have commented on any possibile violation of the Dayton Constitution, and decide whether to call a referendum or not. However, in the declaration in question there is no mention of any legal regulation which would justify the decision to hold a referendum, nor of any criteria for assessment of possibile violations of the Dayton system. Therefore, the separatist trend pursued by SNSD remains reduced to a populist rhetoric and to an attempt to prepare the ground for a negotiation which could push SNSD to take a position more favorable to a less radical solution than proposed in the above-mentiond declaration by SNSD.

This separatist trend also denies the importance of the international community which surely would not allow the country to be dissolved as it is aware that such a scenario would open a Pandora’s box, triggering similar processes throughout the region and beyond, processes that no one would be able to keep under control. In so doing, SNSD also denies the political realty of the moment in which Bosnia and Herzegovina was born, and its program acts as an ideological tool to “compact“ Republika Srpska, but also as a pragmatic tool used in negotiations with the political parties from the Federation of BiH in order to ensure to the political representatives and institutions of Republika Srpska a position of advantage over the central government. SNSD also places a strong emphasis on the importance of the Dayton Peace Agreement and of the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina contained in the agreement, but it almost completely ignores the concept of constituent peoples.

On the other hand, the centripetal force, opposed to that of SNSD, is based on the concept of unitarianism expressed in the Programmatic statement of the Party for Democratic Action (SDA) from 2019. According to SDA, Bosnia and Herzegovina should become a republic with three levels of government (central, regional, and local), while Sarajevo should become the political, administrative, economic, and cultural capital of the country. Therefore, the main goal of SDA is to create the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina in which citizens would be holders of sovereign power, a country organized according to a decentralization model aimed at creating multi-ethnic regions. SDA proposes that this model be applied in both entities, thus questioning the current status and political system of Republika Srpska. SDA opposes any territorial reorganization that would concern only the Federation of BiH.

In the declaration by SDA the Dayton Agreement is mentioned primarily as an agreement that ended the war in Bosnia, and also in the context of the obligations it entailed for Serbia and Croatia, and of some other questions, such as the return of refugees and displaced persons, and the statute of the city of Mostar, without even mentioning the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina contained in the Dayton Agreement. The principle of constituent peoples is mentioned only in the context of the need to achieve equality between the members of constituent peoples and other citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina, without providing any further clarification in this regard.

Both positions, that of SNSD and that of SDA, are state-centered. The idea proposed by SDA - the creation of a unitary republic that includes various cultural and religious identities – is based on the exaltation of “the centuries-old“ statehood of Bosnia and Herzegovina, resurrected during the period of the State Anti-fascist Council for the National Liberation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ZAVNOBiH), and then definitively reconfirmed by the Dayton Agreement.

SNSD, for its part, is interested exclusively in the institutional order of Republika Srpska, invoking only political rights and responsabilities regarding the RS. Therefore, the institutional activities of SNSD, as well as its imagination, do not go beyond the borders of Republika Srpska, pursuing the idea of a particularistic entity, while SDA proposes an abstract idea of a unitary state.

The most obvious difference between the two declarations concerns the concept of identity. On the one hand, SNSD does not consider it necessary to emphasize the rootedness and dominance of Serbian national identity on the territory of Republika Srpska, on the other hand it insists on the development of Republika Srpska and on its modernization, also through EU membership. As far as the relationship with the Federation of BiH is concerned, SNSD took a hostile attitude, emphasizing difficult relationships between the major etno-national groups in the country that, according to SNSD, harm above all the Serbs.

SDA instead plays a double game on the identity issues: it never misses an opportunity to emphasize the importance of cultural diversity, considering it a resource, and pays special attention to the affirmation and protection of Bosniak identity. At the same time, however, it continues to insist on identity politics focused on the affirmation of Bosnian identity, understood as a common identity of all citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina – while maintaining ethnic specificities [2]. SDA poses the affirmationa and protection of Bosniak identity as conditio sine qua non of the development of a supra-ethnic and patriotic identity.

Therefore, the objective of SDA is to preserve Bosniak tradition, culture, and identity within a larger process of the affirmation of Bosnian identity as a common identity of all citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The ethnic specificities would be kept only in the cultural context, without affecting the political sphere where, according to SDA, a common Bosnian identity should prevail. However, this strategy could prove to be a double-edged sword. It is true that rejecting the concept of constituent peoples and their national identities opens the possibility of equating the national identity to a supra-ethnic Bosnian (and Herzegovinian) identity. It is equally true, however, that if SDA were to promote such supra-ethnic identity, it would definitely gain absolute domination on the political and social level, but it would also question the Bosniak national identity. In order to avoid falling into this identity trap, the SDA leadership insists on the concept of the so-called titular ethnicity: while maintaining its cultural, religious, and political specificities, the Bosniak identity would become a generating source of a common national identity, that is of the identity of Bosnian and Herzegovinian nation which would find its perfect fulfillment in a state territorally reorganized so as to be divided into regions inhabited by different ethnic groups, without any ethnic group ever prevailing over the others. The problem however is that the other two constituent peoples – the Croats and the Serbs – have no intention to accept the idea of a new common identity and of a territorial reorganization as the one proposed by SDA.

The political postions of the Bosnian Croat leadership are stuck between the anvil of pseudo-secular unitarianism of SDA and the hammer of separatism of SNSD. The programs of the Croatian Democratic Union of Bosnia and Herzegovina (HDZ BiH) and of the Croatian National Assembly of Bosnia Herzegovina (HNS BiH) propose a federal model as middle ground between centripetal and centrifugal forces, stating that Bosnia and Herzegovina can only survive as a union of the constituent peoples equal to each other, while guaranteeing equal rights to all citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovinam, including members of national minorities. The principle of constitutiveness is clearly underlined as a fundamental principal of Bosnian and Herzegovinian state which should ensure the political equality between the three constituent peoples. Therefore, by recognizing diversity not only at the religious and cultural level, but also at the political level, the Croat political parties try to enforce the principles related to the power of representation that the Constitution confers on certain institutions and public officials. HDZ and HNS do not hide that their ultimate purpose is to ensure the survival and protection of the Croats of Bosnia and Herzegovina, however they are convinced that the fight for the above-mentioned principles can guarantee the enjoyment of equal right to all citizens, not only to Croats, thus contributing to the stability, territorial integrity, and functionality of the whole country.

The objective of the political parties that represent the Croats of Bosnia and Herzegvoina is not to maintain the status quo nor to strengthen the consociative mechanisms which increase the possibility of stonewalling and blocking the institutions. Their main goal is to put an end to the tendency to abuse the electoral law, that is the will of the three constituent peoples expressed at the polls. This means that the issues related to the complex structure and malfunctioning of the institutions of Bosnia and Herzegovina can no longer be addressed by relying exclusively on international political actors, instead efforts must be made to find a compromise solution leading to creation of a stable and sustainable political system. Due to its constitutional order and its complex history, Bosnia and Herzegovina can survive only as a decentralized state where all levels of government are coordinated and complementary to each other, so as to avoid the overlapping of competencies and diffusion of responsability.

Finally, it should be emphasized that the political vision of Bosnia and Herzegovina, both in its practical and value dimension, proposed in the programs of the political parties of the Bosnian Croats, refers to the European tradition and to the various multinational state models that proved functional. The idea of a functional and egualitarian Bosnian and Herzegovinian state, expressed in the Declaration of HNS BiH, presupposes the maintaince of the Dayton system which, however, should be modernized by adopting some principles of the EU, including “the principles of federalism, decentralization, subsidiarity, and legitimate political representation, as underlined in the resolutions of the European parliament of 2014 and 2017“[3]. Only when Bosnia and Herzegovina officially obtains the status of candidate country for EU membership, we will know more clearly if the insistence on a balanced federalism may be the (only) right path towards a sustainable and functional Bosnian and Herzegovinian state.

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[1] Declaration “Republika Srpska – free and independent, the future and the responnsability“, the the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats, Istočno Sarajevo, 25 April 2015, p. 6.

[2] Programmatic declaration of the Seventh SDA Congress, Sarajevo, 14 September 2019, p. 8.

[3] Declaration of the Eight CNA BiH session, the Croatian National Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Mostar, 26 January 2019.