Bosnia and Herzegovina: a state without a government and without citizens. The ethnicification of the individual and its consequences on sovereignty and state functioning

Abstract

Finding a solution to Bosnia's convoluted institutional conflict is difficult. Neither the international community nor local politicians seem to reach consensus on the composition of the government, despite the threat of freezing general budgets if the situation persists. In the midst of this political chaos, citizens are asking for urgent solutions but they have no one to ask because not even the Council of Ministers has been established a year after the elections were held. With an institutional structure based on ethnocracy as constitutional sovereign - whose two key tools are the veto and the vital national interest - consensus is just an illusion because no ethnic group is willing to give up its share of power. The international community in its role as interlocutor does not seem to have found the formula to undo the Gordian knot despite the fact that it has the powers of Bonn which, from experience, are the only effective tool for consensus to prosper. Mired in the Shakespearian dilemma about what to do or not do, the country adds days as the state that has been without a government for the longest time, -with its political body getting paid, it must be said-, and in turn adds steps backwards. on the path towards integration into the European Union (EU). And what worse punishment for its citizens than denying them the opportunity to join the union due to the political irresponsibility of those who repeat themselves in power after each legislature.