Suchergebnisse

This Technical Note was prepared in the context of a joint World Bank-IMF Financial Sector Assessment Program mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina during October-November 2014. Bosnia's capital markets are currently small, but they have the potential to play a more important role in the country's future.

Since Bosnia and Herzegovina's declaration of independence in 1995, its path has been a rocky one. Unwillingness by the international community to stand by the central government and stand in the way of the neighboring states of Serbia and Croatia's territorial pretensions, produced a succession of ceasefire agreements, culminating in the final, Dayton Peace Agreement. Each of these agreements espoused the ethnic principle as the guiding philosophy for the organization of the state. The post-war period demonstrates that despite the passage of time, the principle of organization of multi-ethnic state along ethnic lines presents a stumbling block to the functioning of the political, economic and social life in the country. The political history of post-independence Bosnia and Herzegovina (B&H) therefore reads as a history of protracted political paralysis, with no hope of rectifying the problems without another forceful intervention of the international community.

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 is known as migratory dynamic state. Causes for this migration are mainly of political and economical nature. Intensity of migration through Bosnia and Herzegovina in second half of the 19th century and throughout 20th century was cicely intensifying at almost regular time intervals and was caused mainly with political, but also with economical factors. This paper is intended to examine migration streaming in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the last decade of 20th and the beginning of the 21st century. It examines the forced migration generated by war that was raging in the state in the period of 1992-1995, as well as the post-war migration caused by economical and political factors, but it also examines the return of displaced people to their homes after the war ending. By using all available domestic and foreign written sources in this field, authors will give consideration to entire series of questions that are intruding into these issues. Analysis of the consequences of former migration flows and probability of their reduction, that is, defining the vision of the state in these new conditions, certainly dominates this paper among all other things.

"In terms of legal frameworks and institutional stability, Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) can be said to fulfill the formal conditions for democracy. Yet BiH falls short on democratic substance. The country lacks active citizen participation, horizontal and vertical accountability, true freedom of the media, issue-driven public discourse, and political dialogue. The Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA) that BiH signed with the European Union (EU) on 16 June 2008 has been considered one of the most significant political developments since the signing of the Dayton Agreement in 1995. In spite of this positive development, the feeling that the status of democracy in BiH has substantially deteriorated since the 2006 elections remains prevalent. Furthermore, the political leadership has revived memories of past injustices in order to manipulate the public and win support for policies intended to maintain the status quo. Representatives of international organizations and states have increasingly seen the 'disengagement' of the Office of the High Representative (OHR) in connection with a more enforced European integration reform agenda." (author's abstract)

The Covid-19 pandemic has affected every single aspect of life including conversational practices both online and offline. New lexical and sociolinguistic changes have become part of our lives, which is especially vivid in the emergence of Covid-19 trending neologisms. The present study utilizes the descriptive-qualitative design in the analysis of morphological structures of neologisms in Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian languages. Specifically, the paper is based on the analysis of morphological structures of the neologisms that use the discourse of the Covid pandemic as a base/modifier, i.e., that contain either corona- / korona-, coronavirus- / koronavirus-, Covid-19- / Kovid-19-, and Covid- / Kovid- as a base of the neologism. The dataset consists of over 10,000 headlines related to Covid-19 information, found and collected in online newspaper sections Koronavirus – Dnevni Avaz (Bosnia and Herzegovina) between March 2020 and March 2021. The results show that there is an intensive usage of the Covid-19 neologisms, which manifests the dynamics of language as new words are used, added, and integrated into conversational practices daily. Moreover, the majority of these neologisms use the discourse of the Covid pandemic as a base/modifier. This paper aims to shed light not only on the meanings of the new words and their structure and function, but it can also serve as a foundation for creating a special Covid-19 glossary on the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The emerging literature on migration and security is predominantly focused on the threats that migration movements may have to the security in destination countries. This article shifts the focus to a migrant's sending country and explores different socio-economic factors that could be associated with the process of radicalisation and the development of violent extremism among youth there. We use survey data collected from a sample of 4,500 young people in Bosnia and Herzegovina (B.i.H.) by USAID MEASUREB. i.H. An index of radicalisation is constructed and used as a dependent variable. It is based on Bhui et al. and measures sympathies for violent protest and terrorism. It is regressed on a set of demographic characteristics, migration experience and social behaviour. The model was estimated by ordinary least squares (O.L.S.) with the index as a continuous dependent variable. The findings suggest that a range of factors including demographic characteristics, location, employment status, income, practicing of religion, and civic and political activism are associated with a degree of sympathy for violent extremism among youth in B.i.H. These results should provide useful insights into the relationship between the drivers and extremism, which then should help institutions to design more effective preventative and countering measures.

This paper outlines the theoretical underpinnings of the consociational power-sharing approach and its presence in the political system of the post-Dayton Bosnia and Herzegovina. The power-sharing framework used in this study provides insights into the theory of consociationalism as a power-sharing approach and tries to contribute to our understanding of the presence and relevance of this model to the Bosnian political system. The consociational framework emphasises the role of the political elites in providing the political stability and economic prosperity in the heterogeneous societies. It has four main features: grand coalition, proportional representation, segmental autonomy and mutual veto. The functioning and performance of this model depends, to a large extent, on factors that are conducive to elite cooperation. These factors are: population size, balance of power among segments, multiparty system, segmental isolation, nature of social cleavages, overarching loyalties and tradition of elite accommodation. This paper shows that all features of consociationalism exist in the post-Dayton Bosnian political system. However, grand coalitions are always made after the elections and mainly for the distribution of positions in the executive bodies of state apparatus and without any strategic platform and goals to be achieved and accounted for, agreed in advance. Proportionality has been mainly replaced with the parity-giving rise to imbalanced representation in state institutions. Segmental autonomy has been misconceived and veto power has been used to block all legislation beneficial to the state.

Since the early 1860s many Croat politicians, both prominent (from Ante Starčević and Ante Pavelić to Franjo Tudjman) and little known, have been openly expressing the ambition to annex Bosnia and Herzegovina to Croatia at a favourable moment and under certain conditions, invoking Croatian state and historical right in support of their pretensions. These pretensions, born out of the belief that the unfortunately shaped territory of Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia lacks the necessary strategic depth, have led to a fully-fledged strategy for creating an ethnically and religiously pure Greater Croatia and to constant conflict with the Serb side which also lays claims, predominantly ethnic, to Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Consociational democratic systems balance power between groups with the aim of avoiding or stopping (violent) conflict. Consociational democracy encourages, facilitates or necessitates the formation of a coalition between representatives of different societal groups. Consociational democracy is regarded as a highly influential and much debated area of research in political science, as well as the dominant model of democracy for divided societies. Consociational institutions are often implemented as part of peace agreements to create a stable democracy in a divided post-conflict society. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, consociational democratic arrangements formed part of the peace agreement that brought an end to the war in 1995. Yet, consociational democracy is scrutinized for not upholding liberal values and impeding the development of a country. The focus on the political representation of groups may come at the cost of individual rights and liberties. Furthermore, fixating on groups may only lead to further segmentation of societies, exacerbating the divisions that were already impeding social cooperation. The focus on elite-level politics may be at odds with democratic participation and deliberation. This study investigates whether and how a consociational theory for democracy can be compatible with liberal values of individual freedom and equality. It involves a theoretical exploration of the role that liberal values play in consociational theory. Furthermore, theoretical concerns about consociational democracy may have a significant impact in practice. A case study of consociational democracy in Bosnia and Herzegovina forms an important part of this study.