IFES Election Guide - Country Profile: Bosnia and Herzegovina

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Upcoming Elections

Presidential
October 2014
Parliamentary
October 2014

Bosnia and Herzegovina
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Region: Europe

Description of government structure:

Chief of State: Chairman of the Presidency Željko Komšić KOMSIC
Head of Government: Chairman of the Council of Ministers Vjekoslav BEVANDA
Assembly: Bosnia and Herzegovina has a bicameral Parliamentary Assembly (Skupstina) consisting of the House of Peoples (Dom Naroda) with 15 seats and the National House of Representatives (Predstavnicki Dom) with 42 seats.

Description of electoral system:

The Chairman of the Presidency is elected by plurality vote to serve a 4-year term.*
The Chairman of the Council of Ministers is appointed by the president with the approval of the parliament.
In the House of Peoples (Dom Naroda) 15 members are indirectly elected by parliament to serve 4-year terms*. In the National House of Representatives (Predstavnicki Dom) 42 members are elected through an open-list proportional representation system to serve 4-year terms.**

* The presidency is a collective head of state which is constituted of three members of each constituent people: one Bosniak, one Croat and one Serb. Each member is separately elected by plurality vote. This is done via separate lists, with each voter in Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina choosing either a Bosniak or Croat candidate and those in the Republika Srpska electing a Serb candidate. The three members rotate every eight months. Željko Komšić became chairman in July 2011; presidency member since 1 October 2006 - Bosniak); other members of the three-member presidency are: Zeljko KOMSIC (presidency member since 1 October 2006 - Croat); and Nebojsa RADMANOVIC (presidency member since 1 October 2006 - Serb)

* The seats are made up of 5 Bosniaks, 5 Croats, and 5 Serbs. Members are elected by the Bosniak/Croat Federation s House of Representatives and the Republika Srpska s National Assembly.

** 28 seats are allocated from the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH) and 14 seats from the Republika Srpska (RS). In the FBiH, 21 of the 28 deputies are elected in five multi-member constituencies. The remaining seven are elected from political party compensatory lists. In the RS, 9 of the 14 deputies are elected in three multi-member constituencies, with the remaining five elected from political party compensatory lists. There is a 3 percent threshold for entering parliament. Bosnia and Herzegovina utilizes a "zipper" style gender quota, which means that members of the "minority gender" must be equally spaced out in the party list. Parties must allocate approximately one-third of their seats to the "minority gender."pure Seats are allocated using the pure Sainte-Lague method.