In “No man’s land”: Libraries in post-Dayton Bosnia and Herzegovina

This paper presents the complex situation that libraries in Bosnia and Herzegovina face and suggests possible avenues for improvement. After brief coverage of the history of libraries in the country from the Middle Ages to the communist period, the paper focuses on the devastation that occurred during the war that took place in Bosnia and Herzegovina between 1992 and 1995, which was formally brought to an end by the Dayton Peace Agreement. The problems that libraries have faced in the current period of peace cannot be understood without reference to this episode of the war. The most difficult problems they face today are the lack of adequate legislation, the politicization of library activities, and the war devastation. In addition, at the beginning of 2014, the library and information system of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which is based on a computer program for cooperative cataloging, was split into two parts. The fragmentation of contemporary Bosnian and Herzegovinian society is evidenced by the damage and division that politics has managed to effect, which the war did not.published or submitted for publicatio

Lijphart and Horowitz in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Institutional Design for Conflict Resolution or Conflict Reproduction?

The author analyses the prerequisites and consequences of the implementation of different conflict management mechanisms, consociational and centripetal, in deeply divided societies, by looking at the “Komšić case” in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The case concerns the election of the Croat member to the three-member Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Owing to the revision of electoral patterns laid down in the “Dayton Constitution” of 1995, prerequisites were created for the election of the Serb member of the Presidency by Serbs, the Bosniak member by Bosniaks, whereas only the Croat member could not be elected by Croats. Consequently, the Croat member of the Presidency was elected by votes of Bosniaks in the 2006 and 2010 presidential elections. This led to a political and constitutional crisis in the country

Bosnia and Herzegovina: Consociational or Liberal Democracy?

The author discusses the nature of the political system in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the possible outcome of the country’s institutional reforms. The article begins with giving a detailed overview of the structure of the main political institutions and it continues with presenting and evaluating favorable and unfavorable factors of consociationalism in BiH. In the conclusion, the author analyzes the political implications of the suggested constitutional reforms

Transition and Neoinstitutionalism: the Example of Croatia

The author examines the role of neoinstitutionalism in processes of transition in post-socialist countries, the renewal of a rather orthodox institutionalistic approch to problems of political and social transformation. For many structural reasons this approach does not produce the results Expected. This is proved on the example of the implementation of western poitical institutions and institutes in Croaria since 1990. The author primarily addresses the relationship between the electoral, party and parliamentary systems, especially the influence of the electoral system on the electoral and legislative party system, and on the government. She gives strcctural and institutional reasons for the „deviations" observed

Electoral Politics in Croatia 1990 – 2000

An analysis of the normative/institutional level of the Croatian politics shows that the constitutional arrangements at the levels of the social system and the political sub-system could be labelled as democratic, while the constitutional solutions that regulated the relations among major political institutions could turn out to be insufficient. Hence the semi-presidential system of government in the Croatian wartime/transitional context provided an appropriate institutional framework for authoritarian regressions in the processes of political decision-making and in the content of political decisions. The domination of the president of the state in Croatia’s political life did not stem solely from the existing constitutional arrangements; it also rested on a set of additional premises of activity: a) a decade of harmony between the president and the parliamentary majority; b) the charismatic/clientelist nature of the ruling party; c) a rather weak and suppressed opposition to the ruling party by the unconsolidated opposition parties; and d) the expressive model of orientation of the actors in political activity. Based on the above account of the institutional/political order and the activities of the major actors, it can be surmised that the democratic consolidation in Croatia at the beginning of 2000 was in its incipient stage. Also, the frequent and profound changes in the structure of the cleavageas and the electoral systems as well as the frequent party factioning stood in the way and slowed down the consolidation of the representational level of political system. Nevertheless, a certain level of consolidation is testified to by the four cycles of non-violent parliamentary elections, the peaceful alternation of the parties in power, the contextually relatively low fluctuation of voters, the moderate fragmentation of the parliament, and the acceptance of the parliamentary rules of the game by the majority of the population

Coalition Governments in Croatia: First Experience 2000-2003

The author analyzes the formation, functioning and termination of the mandate of the first coalition governments in the history of Croatia between 2000 and 2003. She suggests that the parliamentary system of moderate pluralism after the elections, as well as the pre-electoral coalition agreements, contributed to the building of coalition governments, but that this process was undermined by a lack of a developed coalition political culture among the creators of the coalition as well as among the public in general. The coalition governments operated on the basis of a written coalition agreement that identified the mechanisms for coalition management among the coalition partners and implicitly introduced voting discipline in the parliament and the patterns of the distribution of posts in ministries, parliamentary bodies and public companies. Its main drawback were sketchy public policies which means that these were policy blind coalitions. The first coalition government (2000-2002) was terminated due to the feuding among the key coalition partners, and the second coalition government (2002-2003) ended due to the regular parliamentary elections. Though the government of 2000-2002 was the first coalition government in Croatia’s history and an oversized coalition government to boot, it nevertheless lasted longer than the average similar governments in other European countries